Taken character names

[Tsumdere]

Two years is reasonable. As well as sending emails to the affected accounts a month before deletion warning them.

It really makes me wonder though, what name do you want? I have *never* encountered a problem naming any of my chars and I'm an altoholic. It is not like you can only have a one word name (like in TERA which prompted the name clearing there).

[Niwashi]

The level 30 requirement is ridiculous. The 45 days requirement is ridiculous. Either would destroy any chance of return customers.

If such a rule were in place strictly for characters who were created but never logged in and then inactive for a couple years, that might be all right. Maybe they could even get away with it for any level 1 characters who hadn't been active for a couple years. Even that creates problems, though, since there can be RP characters who are quite active without ever leveling, and roleplayers are probably more attached to their names than anyone else. So it's better to stick to the "has never logged in" criteria for determining inactivity.

Even so, it would only be needed on games that limit characters to a single name without punctuation. Here we have two names and at least some punctuation. There's absolutely no need for anyone to take a name someone already has.

[Mysticales]

Star Wars: TOR did a name cleansing a few years ago. I dont know why this game can't either. If a character hasnt been active in a couple of years their names should be returned to the system. The character would still remain, but the name would be free.

Yea about that... or during a server merge... I lost my name to someone else when I had it 1st during alpha and beta...

Needless to say, thats why we have "last" names on the game which helps prevent loss. Granted... a level 1 char shouldnt keep the name if its never played..

[Niwashi]

The thing i don't like about most mmo is that character name has to be unique. Can mmo game developers starts using other method to identify each characters in a server? For example autogenerated ids whenever you create a character.

Internally, I'm sure they probably have unique auto-generated IDs. The problem is that players don't know those, and:

/tell Player Name Hello

is a lot more natural and easier to work with than:

/tell ID9470331 Hello

[TaleraRistain]

Be more original

[Catwho]

Not sure if this is in the right place, but, here it goes. Can you all look into implementing a system like the housing demolish for characters and character names. So many times i have tried name changes to something cute to no avail it was taken by a level 1 character. Implementing a loss of character function if the character is not above lvl 30 and active within the last 45 days. The only people this could possibly get angry are the jerks who lock namea and NEVER USE THEM thankies much love fro sargatanis.

I'm one of those jerks with about 30 level 1 characters across many servers all with the same name. (Xiv Fashion.) This was to prevent spoofing since I run a Tumblr blog and also do photo shoots of people on different servers.

They may be level 1, but I'm protecting my brand identity for a reason.

[Xeonerable]

Guess you'll have to come up with something else besides Game of Thrones names :P

[Ametrine]

I've had some issues when trying to stick to lore friendly names, so I've just rolled my second or third choice in those cases.

I would be immensely pissed if I found, after taking a few months off, my character's name was fried for inactivity. Yoshi-P has stated multible times he wants players to feel comfortable with taking extended breaks to enjoy other games or activities, with the heavily limited housing system being the one part of the game that punishes inactive players. Even the, apartments don't free up ever.

I do not want this.

[Niraye]

There are also many names that you can never reuse when you delete a character and wanted that name, they can at least fix that for people, just figured id throw that out there, ive done this to my self several times now making alts for something to do and deleted a name i liked and cannot reuse it.

[Bacent]

This reminds me of a similar thread where someone was angry that their name 'Alucard somethingorother' was taken by someone who doesn't even play anymore and was basically demanding the character be deleted.