Name wipe


Adelante

 

Posted

Will there be another wipe so people can have names to use? It's so crazy that the dead realms have all the good names reserved still and yet theyre never active.

Anyone know if they're working on a way to improve this? It's getting very limited for creations and imagination. Alot of us are already using capital I as lowercase L to bypass this.


 

Posted

Nope.


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Originally Posted by Nethergoat View Post
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Posted

Here we go again.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project View Post
Here we go again.
Rude and immature


 

Posted

No, simply factual. We get these threads A LOT.

You asked if there will be another wipe, or any plans to address the naming problem. There won't be another wipe, there are no plans to address the naming problem.


 

Posted

yea another one. But doubt it will happen anytime soon.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Adelante View Post
Will there be another wipe so people can have names to use? It's so crazy that the dead realms have all the good names reserved still and yet theyre never active.

Anyone know if they're working on a way to improve this? It's getting very limited for creations and imagination. Alot of us are already using capital I as lowercase L to bypass this.
out of curiosity, what names are you going for that is not available?


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Originally Posted by mauk2 View Post
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Posted

For reference, when this was done at the time of the games highest popularity, it was all characters on inactive accounts that were level 6 or lower. This was determined to be the method that would have the lowest impact on potential returning customers.

Very few names were actually freed. This means that "the good names" are still being used by active accounts, or that a not insignificant amount of time was spent playing with those names.

Under Freedom, there is no such thing as an "inactive account," so I do not foresee any name wipes in the near future.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hopeling View Post
there are no plans to address the naming problem.
Right like it would take months to organize a name wipe... /em rolleyes

not saying it is necassary but your acting like its backbreaking dev work...


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Adelante View Post
Will there be another wipe so people can have names to use? It's so crazy that the dead realms have all the good names reserved still and yet theyre never active.

Anyone know if they're working on a way to improve this? It's getting very limited for creations and imagination. Alot of us are already using capital I as lowercase L to bypass this.
Short Answer: NO

Slightly Longer Answer: The devs have NO plans to do this again.

Even Longer Answer:
  • This thread is nothing new. It's simply a retreat of the same basic idea that's been pushed in dozens (or hundreds) of threads in the last few years. Beating the devs and other players over the head with the issue on a constant basis does very VERY little to overcome the annoyance with such repetitive memes, and hardens resistance to addressing the idea.
  • Nobody knows how many names this would free up
  • Nobody has any guarantees about the "quality" of the names that would be freed up.
  • There's ZERO demonstrable way to determine if such a purge happens since someone getting a freed name would be no different than someone getting a name that hadn't been used previously. So, when the names certain players ACTUALLY want are STILL not available, they're going to gripe for ever-broader name purges.
  • There's no indication that the tool they used to free up names last time would work again. Possibly necessitating the development of such a tool. This costs both developer time and money. Money that could be spent elsewhere in the game. Bringing new features and content.
  • There's a schism in the player-base over this issue. While many players might like something like this, many players simply DON'T WANT IT. For myriad reasons, some of which are listed above.



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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by BricksTown Thug15 View Post
Right like it would take months to organize a name wipe... /em rolleyes

not saying it is necassary but your acting like its backbreaking dev work...
...no, I'm not saying it would be hard. Adelante asked if they're working on anything to improve this. They aren't.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hopeling View Post
No, simply factual. We get these threads A LOT.

You asked if there will be another wipe, or any plans to address the naming problem. There won't be another wipe, there are no plans to address the naming problem.
You also forgot "There is no demonstrable way to prove the existence of a "naming problem" in any relevant context. As "I can't get the name I want, someone already took it" is a design feature, not a flaw."



Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

 

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by BricksTown Thug15 View Post
Right like it would take months to organize a name wipe... /em rolleyes


Quote:
not saying it is necassary but your acting like its backbreaking dev work...
Okay, I deal with databases as part of my job.

In some, you can simply kill things out with:
Code:
delete FIELD(S) from TABLE where CRITERIA
In some, if you do that in certain tables or fields the app goes NUTS.

So it's not the matter of taking a couple minutes to come up with a basic SQL query and running it on the live servers in an afternoon.

It has to be tested to make sure the query is doing what's intended, and that the underlying application can HANDLE something like this.

This takes dev/programmer time.
This takes testing time.
And since these people are getting paid to work, time = money. So yeah, it costs money.
Additionally, you're diverting resources towards this and away from other projects.



Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lightfoot View Post
For reference, when this was done at the time of the games highest popularity, it was all characters on inactive accounts that were level 6 or lower.
Not entirely accurate. That was the second time it was run. The first time it was run the level was set at 35 and under. The devs looked at the names that were freed up and saw that most of the names being freed were garbage names like bfdsrew547, or nameofRMTsite, so they decided to lower the level to 6 when they ran it again.


 

Posted

If they run it again, they should just do all names, any level, and only accounts that are banned.

Which probably won't free much.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by BricksTown Thug15 View Post
Right like it would take months to organize a name wipe... /em rolleyes

not saying it is necassary but your acting like its backbreaking dev work...
No, no, no. It's EASY. The script is already written.
It's not a matter of difficulty. It's a matter of it being a bad idea.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ironblade View Post
No, no, no. It's EASY. The script is already written.
It's not a matter of difficulty. It's a matter of it being a bad idea.

That depends on what is being asked for. The script you are referring to doesn't "wipe" any names. It merely flags the names on inactive accounts as available. If the account holder logs into the game before anyone else tries to claim a name then all the names on his account are reset as beng unavailable.

A name wipe would remove the names altogether from the inactive accounts, which is something the devs have never done.

Personally I think the OP is referring to the name freeing script which the devs have made clear they have no intention of running again at any time in the near future if ever.


 

Posted

Yep there's a name wipe coming right now.

Everyone delete old toons now!!!


 

Posted

Honestly, I don't see why we need unique names in the first place. We can identify characters uniquely by name+global. It might be nice to get a little, "There are already 17 people with that name, are you sure?", though.

Of course it's a bit late for this now. But City2 is only, what, five years away?


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Adelante View Post
Will there be another wipe so people can have names to use? It's so crazy that the dead realms have all the good names reserved still and yet theyre never active.
How do you know they're never active?


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Posted

Exactly, many log in at odd times or on off days, The issue is simply if you took a week long vacation and came back and your fav alt had been set to ginaric because of something like this you would be pissed no company wants to deal with something like that so they will not do it.

The back lash could be far worse then the praise they could get, IMHO the idea to drop the unique requirement is a far better idea for a solution the the problem that is real.

In the last few years i have resorted to translating every name i want into Latin...i have yet to not get a name i want since starting that but they can seem odd


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Posted

Oh and before the inevitable "I don't want to use a foreign language for a name." whining starts. The truth of the matter is there is no such thing as a name in "English". Most of the English language is derived from words taken from other languages.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack_NoMind View Post
Honestly, I don't see why we need unique names in the first place. We can identify characters uniquely by name+global. It might be nice to get a little, "There are already 17 people with that name, are you sure?", though.
This assertion has already been addressed in every other thread on the subject, so i'm not going to go into it yet again, but the arguments against this system are just as valid now as they were then. i will point out since it seems to be frequently overlooked in other threads on the topic that it would require rewriting some of the fundamental game code to enable a (non-unique)server+(unique)global name system since everything related to character names was written with the assumption that they are unique on every server. It's unlikely to be a trivial task.

Quote:
Of course it's a bit late for this now. But City2 is only, what, five years away?
Much more than that since City of Heroes 2 is NOT currently in development and an MMO generally takes longer than that to go live from a dead start of not even being funded.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project View Post
The following threads all requesting names be freed were all made within the past year.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...ighlight=purge

etc....

As you and anyone else can see there is nothing rude nor immature about my post. It's simply an observation that once again the dead horse is getting a beating.
I would have guessed this topic comes up about once a month. 16 threads in the past year (plus this one) means it comes up once every three weeks!


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