People taking character names with no intention of using

[DeaconMoore]

Two weeks is a bit lenient

Sub drops account goes poof.

Characters should obviously be deleted upon logging off. If you really wanted that character you'd stay logged in.

[Derio]

I would say if the account hasnt been used in over 12 months then the name should be forfeited, not the character deleted.

[InkstainedGwyn]

You telling me that if I'm not levelling my alts I'm not playing them the way you want is so, so hilarious. "You can be everything on one character so you don't need other characters, if you're not levelling them then clearly you don't care."

1) You don't have to level to RP. I don't RP in XIV but I have in other games, and I had plenty of level 1 or very low characters because of that.
2) I've got alts because they're the remakes of characters I had in other games that I love and miss. Beryllia, my lalafell archer, will never play like my hobbit hunter from LotRO, so I'm not keen on playing her, but I miss her, and it's fun to log her in and play with emotes.
3) Some of my characters exist simply because I wanted a character of a specific race and gender to dress up.

If you want the same original name that someone else has I find it exceedingly hard to believe, and if you want the same "fandom/gimmick/cosplay" name, get in line. It doesn't belong to anyone beyond the original creators and you have no more right over it because you want to level as someone at level 1 has because they got there first.

[Yshnal]

Some of us keep old character names when we make a change (for example due to keeping it lore friendly after a race change) to prevent any malicious player from impersonating us. As SE can't know if we've saved a name due to this reason, or for any other, I don't think that they should take any names away from us. That's it, unless an account has been inactive for -literally- years.

[PyurBlue]

I think the best solution to this is to not tie character identity to their names. If you look on the lodestone, your character url is tied to a number. If character ID in game referenced this numbers, then we could have duplicate names.

Players definitely shouldn't lose names that they give their characters. If it's easy to refer to character ID's instead of names, I think it should be implemented. The only issue that I see is how to integrate this with the UI. Tells might go from /tell Player Name to /tell 123456, but that's less intuitive. If characters that are offline, far away, not friended, etc are filtered out, then we might be able to keep referencing names while using a filter of some sort.

[Nyvara]

Man, come 5.0 I can't wait to see all the XxSquallxX or Squall McClouds better get them now!

Unless you're going for names like that It's not really an issue. Other MMOs you get a first name and that's it. You could spend hours trying to get a name on a high pop server. Never had an Issue here Cept for that time I was trying to get Magical-Girl Sakura! (Not really :P)

[Avatre]

Should there be a way for a player to submit a ticket in to get that name so they can actually use it or is it okay that people can essentially just take a name and not level it a single time & not have anything but the starter gear on it? Your thoughts?

Enter the never ending "But I want that name because I'm a weeb!" cycle where the support system will be bogged down due to unoriginal names.

[HyoMinPark]

Disagree. If people come up with original names over trying to just use the names of anime/other video game characters, you're unlikely to run into this problem. All of my characters have unique, original names and I've never had a prompt telling me the name was unavailable (and all are established characters I've had for years - a few for over a decade). Only my main has her name taken by a few random players on other servers, but that's probably because she shares it with a Korean idol (who was not whom she was named after - that was just a strange coincidence).

I've also established a few alts by the name "Hyomin Park" on other servers. I eventually clean them out, as they are more for looking at housing ideas or markets, but I do have a few on different data centers I want to level at some point. When that point may be has yet to be decided, but it is planned.

I don't think players who would want my name (can't imagine why they would outside of naming a character after the aforementioned idol, who is not as popular in Korea as she used to be) should be able to dictate I change it after having a character made on a server well before they decided to make one. It would be highly coincidental if they had an original character that just happened to share my name.

[Tsumdere]

What name could you possibly want that is already taken? You get both a first and last name, and even over a bunch of alts I've never encountered an issue in naming my characters, even the ones with more generic names like < Diamond Dawn.

[Penthea]

I don't know about now, but certainly before Blizzard allowed players to request names to be released from long-time abandoned low level WoW characters. However in that game you are far more limited with name creation because there is no surname option and you can't use spaces or any form of punctuation. On top of that if you want to try a new class in that game you have to make another character. There is also the fact that there are two factions, and people create alts so they can play on both. It is extremely rare to come across a player who has no alts on the same server as their main. I had great difficulty naming characters in WoW. Often even names I made up were taken.

Having both a first name and surname field in FFXIV and the fact that you do not need to make alts to try other content means that if someone is using the name you want it usually means the name is well known (Cloud Strife for example), because frankly the chances of two people choosing the exact same original names in both fields is super low.

Anyone who has found their desired name taken in FFXIV has either encountered an ultra rare coincidence or they need to try to choose a more original name.

What I'm saying is the option to get a name released in WoW makes more sense there due to the restrictive naming options and the fact that nearly every player has several alts. In FFXIV we have far more freedom due to having two name fields and that there are far less characters per account due to not needing to make alts to try other classes. I don't see SE offering a service that not only would be rarely used, but is far from necessary because of the ease of being able to create an original unused name.

Also I don't like the idea of taking names from players. This isn't housing. The amount of different names available isn't limited. Someone else having a name you want doesn't prevent you from choosing another name for yourself.