Name Taken on New World

[shortysenpai]

Due to congestion on Aether DC I\\'ve been considering transferring to Crystal to take advantage of the free transfer and join a friend over there. However, I looked and saw that my character\\'s name had already been taken.

I\\'m super upset because I\\'ve played my character for 3 years and am super attached to her. I don\\'t think it\\'s fair to have to change my name because someone else took the name and abandoned the game afterwards. I\\'d be less upset if it was an active character but it doesn\\'t seem to be.

There has to be a way to prioritize active characters names when doing world transfers, and if not there should be. Especially considering Lalafell, whose lack of name variety can easily cause problems like this.

Would anyone else have thoughts on this or any answers for me?

[KageTokage]

This is a major fault of SE's system since as far as I can tell, they don't ever free up used names not even ones that are on banned accounts.

This means that there are hundreds if not thousands of names from the name generators that have already been taken by inactive/banned players and/or bots.

WoW has a practice of allowing your name to be taken by another player if you've spend a prolonged period of time inactive, which seems only fair.

[ICountFrom0]

Thing is, this game TELLS us to take breaks, so having our name go "POOF" if we do that wouldn't be very friendly to break taking.

Now, banned players, yes please.
Free up the name, remove the name from all lists in game, and let somebody new get it.

[KageTokage]

Thing is, this game TELLS us to take breaks, so having our name go "POOF" if we do that wouldn't be very friendly to break taking.

Now, banned players, yes please.
Free up the name, remove the name from all lists in game, and let somebody new get it.

I don't think relinquishing names after a year of inactivity would be unreasonable.

There are people who purposefully deny certain names from being used by "reserving" them with alt characters that they never actually use which really shouldn't be a thing.

[kaynide]

I would say:

Permaban = unlock name in about a week.
Inactive trial = unlock after 6 months without play.
Active paying accounts = never unlock, regardless of the actual character’s usage (as in protect barely used alts; regardless of reasons, certain names are kept in reserve. As an example, I never use him, but I have an alt “kaynide” to match/protect my forum name).
Inactive account = unlock after 4 years inactive. I know people who play the game, enjoy the game, then stop until 2 expansions are out for them to play. 4 years is enough time I feel.