Name warnings on just logged out characters

[lemming]

Moved a character for DayJob purposes and noted I was getting a name warning for them.  I tried a couple characters and if they were under 50 they got the "This character would be subject to the name release policy..." text and warning sign.

 

It seems to only crop up for the last logged out character.

[Oman]

I got it also. The character in question, a level 34, was only logged out five days.

 Is that how tight this is going to be, five days?

I can be gone from my (game)computer for 30 days or more.

Next extended trip is down to Australia for about 3 months. Will I lose all my sub 50's (only about 10) names in this case?

 

 

[jthequietone2]

Not having this issue on level 50s but it's affecting other characters. Never seen this before until now, I don't consider it a major issue however. 

 

EDIT: Does not seem to persist after a relog, I logged all the way out and closed the game, but not the launcher, and the problem did not continue. 

Edited December 2, 2022 by jthequietone2

[TheZag]

3 hours ago, Oman said:

I got it also. The character in question, a level 34, was only logged out five days.

 Is that how tight this is going to be, five days?

I can be gone from my (game)computer for 30 days or more.

Next extended trip is down to Australia for about 3 months. Will I lose all my sub 50's (only about 10) names in this case?

 

 

 

You wont lose any names since the system is only in warning mode.  The team will notify us if the name release system is going active.  Im also confident that they will ensure only properly inactive characters would be affected if they do activate name release.

 

And for whoever happens to read this,  name release system isnt the most accurate name for what it does.  It would more accurately be called the name reservation release system.  If activated,  affected character names are removed from reserved status,  thats it.  You dont lose any name unless someone else actually makes a character with the unreserved name.  

 

[lemming]

5 hours ago, jthequietone2 said:

Not having this issue on level 50s but it's affecting other characters. Never seen this before until now, I don't consider it a major issue however. 

 

EDIT: Does not seem to persist after a relog, I logged all the way out and closed the game, but not the launcher, and the problem did not continue. 

Good to know it doesn't persist.  Might be something with zero time logged off flagging it on check, so it would be a slim chance of someone snagging a name in the second that would be true.   The if statement probably needs checking.

[Oman]

6 hours ago, TheZag said:

 

You wont lose any names since the system is only in warning mode.  The team will notify us if the name release system is going active.  Im also confident that they will ensure only properly inactive characters would be affected if they do activate name release.

 

And for whoever happens to read this,  name release system isnt the most accurate name for what it does.  It would more accurately be called the name reservation release system.  If activated,  affected character names are removed from reserved status,  thats it.  You dont lose any name unless someone else actually makes a character with the unreserved name.  

 

Thanks. I realize it is not live yet. I am worried that 5 days is rather tight. Do SG names fall under this reservation release system? No activity in five days, the SG name is free for the stealing. 

[Michiyo]

3 hours ago, Oman said:

Thanks. I realize it is not live yet. I am worried that 5 days is rather tight. Do SG names fall under this reservation release system? No activity in five days, the SG name is free for the stealing. 

No, it's just character names.  Also where are you seeing 5 days?  As stated here:

• Level 1-5 characters will be flagged as inactive if they have not been played in the last 30 days.
• Level 6-49 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.

So no idea why you would see the warning after 5 days...

Edited December 3, 2022 by Michiyo

[UltraAlt]

This is happening to me as well, but only on Everlasting.

 

I logged into a level 40 character on Everlasting - I doubt they had been without log in for more than 40 days. When I logged out it was flagged for renaming.

It wasn't flagged before I logged in. It was only flagged afterwards.

 

*

 

I logged back in and log back out, but it was still present.

 

I played a character on Excelsior (no flag after logging out), went back and checked and the flag was gone on the character on Everlasting.

I logged in to the same character (Character A) and logged back out and the flag is back again.

 

Logged into Character B on Everlasting - level 34. Logged out. Now they are showing the name release policy flag; flag gone from Character A.

Logged into Character C on Everlasting - level 36. Logged out. Now they are showing the flag and not Character B.

Logged into Character D on Everlasting - level 29. Logged out. Now they are showing the flag and not Character C.

 

I checked my characters on other servers last night.

It was only occurring on Everlasting.

 

Note that all of these characters are over level 5.

I check all of my characters once a week to if I see any of them haven't logged in within 60 Days, and I log them in if I find them in that state.

 

This is the first time I have seen the warning message on any of my characters.

 

Based on the timing, I would think Winter Event related, but why on Everlasting and none of the other servers.

 

* Never take off your mask

 

 

 

Edited December 7, 2022 by UltraAlt

[Greycat]

On 12/2/2022 at 3:24 PM, Oman said:

Thanks. I realize it is not live yet. I am worried that 5 days is rather tight. Do SG names fall under this reservation release system? No activity in five days, the SG name is free for the stealing. 

 

It does not affect SG names at all.

 

 

Edit: Also, tried with two different accounts, multiple characters, and couldn't reproduce this.

Edited December 7, 2022 by Greycat

[PhantomBelcher]

One work-around I've encountered is to log into another character, which removes the flag off the just-logged-off character.  It seems to only affect those in the 30 to 45 range, but I cannot fully confirm this.

 

That said, the bug seems intermittent. I haven't seen it for a week or so, and then coming out of an MSR an hour ago (also on Everlasting, but I don't have alts on other servers) I got this:

 

Edited December 31, 2022 by PhantomBelcher

[RikOz]

21 hours ago, PhantomBelcher said:

It seems to only affect those in the 30 to 45 range, but I cannot fully confirm this.

 

I was getting it on characters 26-29:

 

 

It wasn't happening to me earlier in the day with other sub-50 characters (but all higher than 30), and then just suddenly started happening when I got to this particular page of characters.

 

[srmalloy]

On 12/2/2022 at 9:32 AM, lemming said:

Good to know it doesn't persist.  Might be something with zero time logged off flagging it on check, so it would be a slim chance of someone snagging a name in the second that would be true.   The if statement probably needs checking.

I think it's a database or network lag thing; I had the opposite problem today -- I was logging in characters to get the box of fireworks, and on one of them, when I logged them out, the character list showed the character with the same number of days since last played that they had before I'd logged them in, as if the client didn't get the update on how recently the character was played. So it may be something as simple as a dropped network packet containing the update that tells your client that the character is no longer flagged for possible name reclamation.

[RikOz]

Still happening. Had just gotten this character to 46 and logged out:

 

[Psychopithicus]

I just had this happen to me on a level 22. Logged out of a character, suddenly got the name release icon.

[UltraAlt]

4 hours ago, RikOz said:

Still happening. Had just gotten this character to 46 and logged out:

 

 

on Everlasting?

 

1 hour ago, Psychopithicus said:

I just had this happen to me on a level 22. Logged out of a character, suddenly got the name release icon.

 

on Everlasting?

[lemming]

Since I posted, there hasn't been any code updates, so I would not be surprised to see it still happening.

[RikOz]

19 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

on Everlasting?

Yes.

[Number Six]

If anyone reproduces this, can you try exiting back to the shard list and then immediately coming back to the character select screen? Don't log into any other characters, just hit "Back" and pick the shard again, and see if the icon is still there.

 

I think this is a display glitch. I've triple checked the code but it doesn't make a lot of sense how this could happen, since the name release status is calculated in real-time based on the last active timestamp, which is clearly sometime today because the (also calculated) time offline is displayed as '0' on the same screen.

 

The only thing that comes to mind is maybe a timestamp very slightly in the future by a few seconds is getting stored in the database, perhaps as the result of clock drift on one of the mapservers. That could possibly result in the math underflowing and looking like a very large number, but would resolve itself after a second or two. If that's the case, leaving and coming back should show the status correctly.

 

I'm going to go ahead and add a check for that particular edge case. I may suspect that it's a display glitch, but haven't spent a lot of time looking into it yet and want to make absolutely sure that there isn't some other issue.

[Number Six]

After some local testing I'm about 99% sure that the future timestamp hypothesis is correct and it's ending up like 1 second ahead of the dbserver clock. Haven't managed to reproduce those circumstances occurring spontaneously but have been able to reproduce a phantom name warning with "0 days offline" showing by artificially manipulating the timestamp.

 

Not a cause for concern as the name is actually no longer available 1-2 seconds later, but you don't see it until you exit the character select screen and come back to refresh the status. Easy enough to fix the display issue though.

[EmperorSteele]

So, basically what you're saying is that it's Mender Silos' fault.

 

Lot of that going around.

Edited February 22, 2023 by EmperorSteele