Old Character And Linkshell Names? Looking For Clarification.
Hi. :)
Little story here: I started on Hades in 2004 and made a linkshell which I held dearly til around 2011 when Hades was merged in to Cerberus. When I logged in to the server I found the name was taken, and other variations of the same name had been taken. Someone had to have logged in and made linkshells out of spite; but no idea who. I ended up making the LS anyways with a shorter name, but it didn't feel the same and I disbanded the LS a year later for other reasons.
I tried making it again today, but the name remains taken. Out of curiosity I called a GM to ask about it, and they told me it was impossible to get the name back. I'm almost certain whoever took the name is not active anymore, I would be highly surprised.
The GM made a good point in that I have no right to the name. I understand that completely. However, it got me thinking about how many inactive characters continue to use player and linkshell names which will forever be restricted. It got me thinking, perhaps there should be a policy where you give up the right to a name if your account is inactive for a long period of time?
I guess I'm looking for clarification whether this is how the game is designed and no policy will change it? Would it be too much to look in to this for players upon request? I would be willing to pay a small charge for the inconvenience to the team. I don't have the full picture, but from my end I find it disappointing how many players lose their names after a server merge and have no way to recover their names at a later date.
Names are more important to some than others. Names can have historical value, and are synonymous with certain characters. My expectations remain low, I do not expect anything to come from this and have already accepted I will never get the name back.
It would be nice to hear from other players who may have encountered the same thing and whether they would use a service which could (perhaps) recover lost names.
Apologies if this is in the wrong section. I wasn't sure where to post it. Regardless of what I feel about names, I continue to enjoy FFXI after all these years and GM Emworash was kind enough to talk to me about it for a while. They understood my point, but did not have the power to do anything or pass it along to the FFXI team. I would love a response from someone in the team and how they feel about the hundreds (perhaps thousands) of inactive names that are forever restricted to the remaining.