Quote Originally Posted by Dzian View Post
I'd imagine it'd be for names. Maybe there's a level 1 cloud strife and they want the name....

they could delete inactive accounts characters though. would likely require an email notification to the registered address or something giving that player a chance to log on and keep it sort of thing. kinda like what they do with reclaiming housing plots but on a longer time frame.

that said I have a couple of level 1 characters that hold names I've used in the past or may use again in future. if I ever change race again.

long term it can become a problem admittedly. you can look at things like xbox live or psn, hell even gmail lol. where its almost impossible to get an id that doesn't have a million numbers at the end or some other babble so yeah I can see a valid argument for removing long standing inactive accounts / names.
I really don't see this as an issue, names are unique only within the server you are on, the worst that should be needed would be changing the spelling or adding an initial or something. Look at one of the more common female character names drawn from popular fiction, Asuna from SAO; there are only 2 Asuna YYuki's in the entire game, but probably one Asuna Yuki on each and every server. A slight alteration in spelling fixes it in most cases.

Other variations that would work would include;
A'suna Yuki
Asuna Y'Yuki
Asuna Yuk'i
Asuna' Yuki
...
and so on, and so forth.

This supposed shortage of names is a non issue really.