Please free up inactive names.

[SurianBedivere]

Would it be possible for you to free up the names of any FFXI character that has been inactive/banned for longer than 6 months, for those of us who lost our names to other people in the server merges, and also for those who are willing to create new characters but are unable to do so with a proper name?

Currently all the decent 4 to 6 character names are taken, mostly by players who are no longer around, and the only alternatives (from the automated name generator as well) are 10 to 12 character long gibberish names.

I know such a tool does not currently exist at this time, and simply flagging a name to be available still causes it to be locked in place, but i and i'm sure many others would greatly appreciate if at least a few hours of development time could be spared to deal with this issue. It's not asking much to have a group of long time players feel a little appreciated with this.

It's quite troublesome to the people who are still playing that have been doing so under a new name they were forced into during the last server merges. I can guarantee you not a small amount of players lost their names and would be dying to possibly get it back.

I thank you for your time.

[Zaknafein]

I am very much in support of this! Lost my name I'd had since 04' when we were merged during this past year. Was pretty frustrating losing it to a guy who has been completely inactive since march of 08'

[Dragoy]

As this is the SITE FEEDBACK forum, you might want to post at the General Discussion-forum instead. ^^;

As for the topic itself, yeah, unused names should be freed after some time. I can't remember if it's anywhere clearly stated, but I think there is such a feature but as long as the content ID is active, that would not happen fer sure. I'm not sure if the content ID itself for the character needs to be active, or just the account...

But I do think I remember that there is a kind of a system in place for this. My memory isn't always of course in the right, though.

[Mirage]

6 months is too short. A year or two sounds more like it. I think it is very likely that less hardcore gamers would take a 6 month break now and then, or for other reasons be unable to play, such as military service, or stuff like that.

[Volkai]

Currently there is a system in place that forces a rename if your character moves to a server where a character with that name is already active. Would it be possible to flag characters inactive for over a year in such a manner?

[Kristal]

Currently there is a system in place that forces a rename if your character moves to a server where a character with that name is already active. Would it be possible to flag characters inactive for over a year in such a manner?

No. When characters are moved, any items left in dbox are lost. That includes AH sales and spare gear people might have had stored in dbox. There's also the problem with impersonation. You could pretend to be a banned character finally getting their character back, or unknowingly inherit the bad name of said banned character. And if the character was merely inactive, they would be rather annoyed when they find out you are responsible for their loss of items, gil and name when they came back from a long trip abroad...