Name Release System

[Lost Ninja]

Base it on login for the global account rather than character level, make it very clear (emails to the connected forum account clear). Then after three months of zero activity those names are no longer locked. Names won't be reassigned unless someone requests them, but equally the name won't be locked behind a level cap. A level fifty from someone who has moved on and will never play the game again shouldn't be more valuable than the name of a lowbie only used for RP on an account that is used every couple of days.

 

People who want to keep character names for characters that they might play in the future need to log in periodically. People who have low level characters holding onto a name for whatever reason don't automatically lose that character.

 

Personally I'm being generous saying three months (for the amount of activity), personally I'd say 1 month. Don't log in for a month and you might lose character names. (Though I can think of a few reasons why someone might legitimately not be able to log in for a month (Armed Forces being one).)

[Replacement]

Quote

Characters will be flagged as ‘inactive’ when the following time thresholds are met:

 

• Level 1-5 characters will be flagged as inactive if they have not been played in the last 30 days
• Level 6-20 characters will be flagged as inactive if they have not been played in the last 90 days
• Level 21-49 characters will be flagged as inactive if they have not been played in the last 365 days
• Level 50 characters will never be flagged as inactive

 

 

When a character is flagged as inactive they are not immediately renamed. Instead, their name is simply no longer locked. This allows another player to create a character with that name, at which point the original character will be renamed.

My problem with this topic is a lot of folks tend to freak out about the very idea of it instead of really reading those facts.

 

If you don't care enough to even play a name for a half hour, you can pull up your big boy/girl pants and log into it once/month.

 

I'm reasonably certain pretty much anyone who isn't XP-locking themselves will hit level 6 within a half hour, even running origin contacts.  And then you're at a much simpler 90 days.

 

I don't understand why people freak out about this.  If you love name-squatting, do the work.  

 

Honestly, I'm a bit bummed the code isn't in it for this (I'd think/hope a SQL script that you guys just schedule to run every 30 days would be doable).  Because I'm the opposite and think it's rude to squat a name that someone else would better realize, I now need to go manually free up some of my punnier names so you good folk can have them...

Edited November 22, 2019 by Replacement

[Spectre7878]

What aggravates me about name hoarding is that. I have a few 50s that I want to move from a quiet server to excelsior. That being said. All my character names are take.  If people are playing the characters. Great. They have the right to keep the name. If the player is not playing the character and or not even playing the game. Then the name should be released. People should not be sitting on names if they are not playing the game anymore. Accounts should get flagged if they are not being played anymore so that players can use names. 

[Doomguide2005]

And as has been brought up in other threads for everyone of the hoarders sitting on 20+ lvl x characters there's folks who for a variety of real life issues can't log into their accounts, nevermind characters, for longer spans of time as well.  And none of us are able to tell the difference between those two outliers.  It took days for me to download the game when I first created the account, yeah for living off a throttled hot spot in a rural area.  I've been forced offline by computer deaths, pandemic, new child/budget constraints, etc., etc. for well over a year.  My main as a level 50 is currently safe.  I've got others who would be in jeopardy.  For me when I get back online if some have been taken *shrug* I can live with it.  New names can be created, it's being in the game itself I'm truly missing.  And honestly I'd be surprised if more than one or two got taken even if I'm unable to log in far longer than the current year+.  At this point it would be a very tiny price to pay to see the city via my own characters avatar once again.

Edited November 17, 2021 by Doomguide2005

[arcane]

20 hours ago, Spectre7878 said:

What aggravates me about name hoarding is that. I have a few 50s that I want to move from a quiet server to excelsior. That being said. All my character names are take.  If people are playing the characters. Great. They have the right to keep the name. If the player is not playing the character and or not even playing the game. Then the name should be released. People should not be sitting on names if they are not playing the game anymore. Accounts should get flagged if they are not being played anymore so that players can use names. 

No thanks. I have the same problem. About 10% of my characters stuck on a quiet server because I choose to keep their names.

 

But I don’t support seizing other players’ stuff, so my problem is what it is. Tough.

[EyeLuvBooks]

When I saw 1000 character slots available I thought 'Challenge Accepted!" and I now have 1-2 pages of each AT. Many of these are under lvl 10. I would be more than willing to have them taken if I haven't logged in for 6 months or more. Once you hit double-digits, the name is yours IMHO.