This is absolutely related to server mergers and transfers. I still wonder how they will deal with merging legacies on transfer, but this seems to be the first step. I wonder if the next will be making legacy account wide instead of server specific?

 

Anyway, I too would have preferred unique legacy names and repeatable first names, but I can see the problem they had with this. Since legacy names aren't specified until you finish chapter one, you would not be able to distinguish between two characters with the same first name until they reached legacy level. Without legacy names at character creation, the opposite (unique legacy/repeat able names) is not possible.

 

This is correct. This is a change made exactly for the preparation of server mergers.

This is correct. This is a change made exactly for the preparation of server mergers.

 

Well then where is the offer for free first name changes? Far more of us lost far more first names (and I'm pretty sure far more of us were far more upset about losing those than a unique Legacy name). The very least you could do is allow us to reorganize our first names to fit the legacy name scheme we want. Even if first names are still not unique (which is beyond me since Legacy denotes some sort of importance we no longer have), this would be a much easier pill to swallow if we could at least attempt to have our first names go along with our "free" Legacy name change.

Edited September 5, 2012 by InnerPieces

At very least I feel like they should have polled the community on this one first to see if the majority really wanted this or not. I don't like that they make decisions like this on their own without taking our input.

Bioware made a mistake by not allowing Legacy names to be non-unique. They are correcting their mistake. ?

 

Yes but in real life you dont make people, design what they look like, customize them. If bioware want to let other people use legacy names already in use then they should never have introduced it. You will always get people standing by Bioware even if they **** up like they have now. As I said before if you have a founders title and have been with the game since early release you should be protected. Its sickning a new player who has never payed a fee for the game can come in and take a name from a person whos been here since the games release. Sickning.

Bioware made a mistake by not allowing Legacy names to be non-unique. They are correcting their mistake. ?

 

Yes but in real life you dont make people, design what they look like, customize them. If bioware want to let other people use legacy names already in use then they should never have introduced it. You will always get people standing by Bioware even if they **** up like they have now. As I said before if you have a founders title and have been with the game since early release you should be protected. Its sickning a new player who has never payed a fee for the game can come in and take a name from a person whos been here since the games release. Sickning.

 

It's not the name they are taking since you can retain that. It's the reputation you have spent so long building they can potentially destroy.

 

Do you (generally speaking, not you directly) really want someone to associate your character with some ninja griefing moron because you share the same Legacy name? That is the biggest issue here, in my opinion.

 

That is what I mean by personal identifier. I am not so shallow or elitist in my thinking that I am the only one deemed worthy or clever enough to have a name combination no one else can have ever. It's bad enough they took our first names with forced server merges and all the reputation we built with those names up to that point. Now, some random jerk can further ruin in-game reputation that you have already rebuilt now that BioWare has removed the single most solid character identifying concept in the game and allow anyone to share it.

Edited September 5, 2012 by InnerPieces

No MMO has ever made a "Global Name" usable by all players. Bioware really screwed up this time.

 

Cryptic does. You can have 50 people named "Revan Skywalker" because their @forum handle is what differentiates them.

So you are saying there should only be one surname per person on planet earth too? Silly, IMO.

Legacy name can be used as surname, but it doesn't have to be; it can also be a title. Strawman argument debunked. I hope you didn't have any others.

 

A person having a particular legacy name shows others that those characters are united. They have one player (unless the account is shared, but I'd reckon that's quite unusual), who is the same person in terms of maturity, fairness, approach to the game, etc. Maybe someone groups with one of a player's characters and likes them. Then they see another character with that legacy name and know automatically that they can trust that person.

 

It can also unite characters in terms of theme. Once, I overheard a jedi RPing in a cantina, mentioning how his son was taken from him and forced to become sith... Later, when I saw a sith with the same legacy name, I knew who that was right away and some of the forces that shaped his life. That added to my roleplaying experience.

 

In terms of my own legacy, characters with my legacy name have a twofold reputation as crafters and RPers. People who've bought crafted items from one of my characters may encounter another and know automatically that she knows a huge range of schematics and sells crafted items at very fair prices. As for the RP element, my characters are united by an oath they made and the purpose of their legacy is to fulfil that vow. As I said before: legacy isn't always a surname. It can be RP'd as many things. If I ever see someone with my legacy, who I know has nothing to do with the promise my characters made to each other, it will instantly break my immersion and lessen my enjoyment of the game. I don't necessarily think anyone will actually copy it, but frankly it shouldn't even be possible. My legacy is my reputation as a player, and my RPing intention, across all my characters. No one should be able to affect that.

 

Maybe choose a more unique surname for your Legacy if you want uniqueness.

I have never had any problems with my legacy name being taken, thanks very much - and I did have to transfer from my original server to another. My legacy name is based on a character I had in a tabletop Star Wars game, and it's not of the Noun-verber or Advective-noun variety, so it's no surprise that others wouldn't think of it. But consider: when people see an interesting legacy name, even if they wouldn't have thought of it themselves, they may then decide that they want to have it. Why should that be allowed? It seems wrong to me that someone who was the first to come up with a cool legacy name (and I've seen many that I've admired, thinking to myself: that person did well to secure such an awesome name) should then suffer disproportionately from a loss of uniqueness as more people copy their superior name.

 

If I'd had to choose another legacy name when I switched server, I would have been upset, but I would have dealt with it. I would have quickly been able to re-establish my reputation, and the RP vow that my characters had made would have remained unchanged. Making legacies non-unique means that no one will ever be able to securely establish a reputation or unifying theme by legacy again. Frankly, I think it would be disastrous for the game - a company that released a major content update entitled "legacy" and touted the feature as a major selling-point should not consider it.

 

This is correct. This is a change made exactly for the preparation of server mergers.

I hope this means that, contrary to my fears posted above, legacy names will remain unique to a person's account. I can imagine that a person might have established the same legacy on two servers, one of which is due to be merged with another. If this means that the characters on the origin server would effectively have a "different" legacy with the same name, but no one else with a different account would be able to name their legacy the same, then this makes sense and I'm fine with it. Hopefully that's all it is. Anything more severe, as I said above, I would continue to advise against.

Edited September 5, 2012 by Estelindis

Its the bigger picture im looking at. Bioware tell us they value our continued support, we are paying for the game monthly. Then they go and do this and will pee off half the community they wish to keep? hows that anything other then stupid. They should scrap this or as I said before make the names numbered. like jorun 2, or smith 2 would show that the name is not original.

I feel like you are just standing by their side no matter what they do wrong.

 

Feel however you like. They are afterall, your feelings, not mine.

 

Some people complain about everything. I don't. Now, if you think I never complain, you simply are selectively reading, which is not my problem. I'm quite critical of PvP in this game for example, though I don't cry about it, I present comment about it, much like this topic. I also understand it's a PvE game and that it's lacking in PvP is to be expected.

 

My approach to changes in the game is to look at what they did, and analyze why they may have done it. Not whine and cry and complain about it. In most cases, simple and thoughtful analysis easily uncovers why they make changes OR don't make changes. Their change to Legacy names here is self-evident to me. It was a huge sore point on the forums at server transfers, and they are getting ready now to force people off of locked servers. This change is both logical and appropriate, regardless if a minority don't like it for one reason or another.

Edited September 5, 2012 by Andryah

It's not the name they are taking since you can retain that. It's the reputation you have spent so long building they can potentially destroy.

 

Do you (generally speaking, not you directly) really want someone to associate your character with some ninja griefing moron because you share the same Legacy name? That is the biggest issue here, in my opinion.

 

That is what I mean by personal identifier. I am not so shallow or elitist in my thinking that I am the only one deemed worthy or clever enough to have a name combination no one else can have ever.

 

Two points I would make on that:

1. That ship has already sailed... using the font that is in the game there is little difference between say "little" and "lïttle" especially at a glance. There is nothing stopping me from making someone with your almost exact name and legacy name, character appearance/etc and wandering around being a troll.

 

2. With the elimination of the illusion of Legacy names as unique descriptors and hence the source of reputation spreading, this should become less of a problem because people won't expect the legacy to be unique. The choice to have no unique identifier across multiple characters on the same account can be debated but in some ways the problem is moot as if one character annoys you enough to have a negative reputation, you will quickly learn the new character names and add them to your /ignore list as they annoy you. Having a unique identifier is a time saver but lets be honest, right now it is too easy to manipulate.

Two points I would make on that:

1. That ship has already sailed... using the font that is in the game there is little difference between say "little" and "lïttle" especially at a glance. There is nothing stopping me from making someone with your almost exact name and legacy name, character appearance/etc and wandering around being a troll.

 

2. With the elimination of the illusion of Legacy names as unique descriptors and hence the source of reputation spreading, this should become less of a problem because people won't expect the legacy to be unique. The choice to have no unique identifier across multiple characters on the same account can be debated but in some ways the problem is moot as if one character annoys you enough to have a negative reputation, you will quickly learn the new character names and add them to your /ignore list as they annoy you. Having a unique identifier is a time saver but lets be honest, right now it is too easy to manipulate.

 

Aptly said. I agree with you.

Bioware made a mistake by not allowing Legacy names to be non-unique. They are correcting their mistake. ?

 

Yes but in real life you dont make people, design what they look like, customize them. If bioware want to let other people use legacy names already in use then they should never have introduced it. You will always get people standing by Bioware even if they **** up like they have now. As I said before if you have a founders title and have been with the game since early release you should be protected. Its sickning a new player who has never payed a fee for the game can come in and take a name from a person whos been here since the games release. Sickning.

 

This...

 

 

It's not the name they are taking since you can retain that. It's the reputation you have spent so long building they can potentially destroy.

 

Do you (generally speaking, not you directly) really want someone to associate your character with some ninja griefing moron because you share the same Legacy name? That is the biggest issue here, in my opinion.

 

That is what I mean by personal identifier. I am not so shallow or elitist in my thinking that I am the only one deemed worthy or clever enough to have a name combination no one else can have ever. It's bad enough they took our first names with forced server merges and all the reputation we built with those names up to that point. Now, some random jerk can further ruin in-game reputation that you have already rebuilt now that BioWare has removed the single most solid character identifying concept in the game and allow anyone to share it.

 

And this...

 

 

 

This has really ticked me off.

 

When I transferred from Naddist Rebels to Prophecy of the Five, I had to go from the Legacy Name of Wraiven to Soulstalker.

 

I hated switching to begin with, but it was understood because I knew the importance of having an original Legacy Name. I got over it and grown to love my new Legacy Name.

 

Now, anybody can have that name. Anybody. I am not happy about this one single bit. Bioware screwed up royally here. A HUGE NO NO!!!! Whoever makes the decisions to do these things at Bioware has obviously never even played an MMO.

Edited September 5, 2012 by Wraiven

BOGUS!! anyone can now claim the name i"ve had since January - really great way to treat your veterans - if someone was forced to transfer there are about a hundred different ways to spell your name so you may not get back exactly what you had but we won't have 7000 kinobi's or starwalkers runnning around - so much for feeling special - WTG guys!!

At very least I feel like they should have polled the community on this one first to see if the majority really wanted this or not. I don't like that they make decisions like this on their own without taking our input.

 

This can't be a serious post

This is correct. This is a change made exactly for the preparation of server mergers.

 

Right, so when we transfered voluntarily to another server, I had to change my legacy name but now you're going to merge servers you're gonna screw me over and say, too bad for you, you can't have your old legacy name but every idiot that creates a new account gets to use your old name or any of them.

 

How about a solution for that one....well, no. I don't do threats, so consider this the final straw that broke the camel's back and I will unsub right now. This just is such poor judgment. Instead of rewarding loyal customers you are now penalising them? No thanks. This just ticks me off.

I get it , but it should't have come to this in the first place. All the server merges and legacy names should have been planned better. I realise that out of the 1.7 mil people who have played the game there are going to be a lot of them inactive accounts been forced moved clogging up some form of data storage devices , so this is a quick fix of those such accounts. No need to store a million unnamed legacy's. Mind you having said that surely they could have just given the option to change your legacy name after you come back to the game? Ofcourse in phase 1 of the server transfers we had to basically type in a new legacy name , so they hadn't sorted the option of moving your legacy name , but obviously it's in effect now ( or soon ).

 

Another problem might be if someone has 8-16 characters obviously they have 2 legacy names ( or more ) , what if those people don't want all their characters onto one server ? Maybe they don't want to have one legacy name ? This is going to cause a lot of problems. What if someone has more than 16 characters , that's going to be even worse.

 

Well Bioware didn't look into the possibility of server transfers from the start and that is the problem ;/ .

 

Cheers,

 

BadOrb.

Lagacy names are FAR more important than first names. This is why there are still people named Adolph, Kim, Ivan and Josef. The last names of people carry infamy, not first names. The same goes for famous, or important historical figures.

You know, that guy named John right? The famous one? No the other one. Not not him, but they were in that one movie together, you know, the sequel to part 1. I think it was called Part 2 something.

 

This was clearly done without thinking things through at all.

 

The Dev quote a few posts up is just them thinking: "Ohh Crap, now we have to talk to that guy who suggested it and fire him. What was his name again? Ohh yeah, we all have the same last name here, so just fire everyone named Bob."

 

They took a nice touch added to character uniqueness, account Identity, player recognition and destroyed any future use of it. Except for greifers, they will get lots of content from it.

This is correct. This is a change made exactly for the preparation of server mergers.

I imagine thats the auto merge of the old servers and not another merging round of the current servers, dont do the SoE error of having 2 servers and getting world down issue once F2p start, for 4 weeks..

 

Also not giving free gametime for all those weeks i couldnt play wasnt a great move on their part, but thats another story.

Edited September 5, 2012 by ElitehunterDS

This change is both logical and appropriate, regardless if a minority don't like it for one reason or another.

 

If bioware help a poll them maybe we would know if it is a minority, seeing as they didnt we will never know. How do you know its a minority? Have you polled?

Feel however you like. They are afterall, your feelings, not mine.

 

Some people complain about everything. I don't. Now, if you think I never complain, you simply are selectively reading, which is not my problem. I'm quite critical of PvP in this game for example, though I don't cry about it, I present comment about it, much like this topic. I also understand it's a PvE game and that it's lacking in PvP is to be expected.

 

My approach to changes in the game is to look at what they did, and analyze why they may have done it. Not whine and cry and complain about it. In most cases, simple and thoughtful analysis easily uncovers why they make changes OR don't make changes. Their change to Legacy names here is self-evident to me. It was a huge sore point on the forums at server transfers, and they are getting ready now to force people off of locked servers. This change is both logical and appropriate, regardless if a minority don't like it for one reason or another.

 

 

The minority? Just who exactly is in the minority? I have analyzed this...in depth. Just because I am being vocal about it, does not mean I have not sat and thought things through. For as many reasons you can justify this change, I can double them in reasons not to justify this change. I challenge you to try.

 

No matter how many times you want to flip this to hide the burn spot, it's still burnt and the smell of the burn is still there. Bioware screwed up with this, whether you chose to see it or not.

This is correct. This is a change made exactly for the preparation of server mergers.

 

That's unacceptable. You are continually punishing the community at large for your mistakes and it's getting ridiculous. I was ready to leave when you royally screwed anyone not lucky enough to have chosen a destination server, but I decided to hold out a bit of hope that you guys could turn it around.

 

Now we're going on 4 months with no mention of new content actually being released, you keep screwing up the simplest things, and I find myself asking the same thing everyone else in my guild is. "Why am I still playing?"

Edited September 5, 2012 by conundrumx

This whole thing is further proof that MMO players literally cannot be satisfied. It's irrelevant to them that it's a practical decision made to allow for the merging of servers. They lose the name and it's the WORST THING EVARZOMG!!!111!!

 

I like this game a lot and have been critical in many instances (like the incredibly slow pace of development and release of new content and the laughable fact that they claim there will be monthly updates after F2P--it's never ever ever going to happen).

 

But seriously? All this sturm and drang over legacy names? Really? Grow the heck up, people!

Right, so when we transfered voluntarily to another server, I had to change my legacy name but now you're going to merge servers you're gonna screw me over and say, too bad for you, you can't have your old legacy name but every idiot that creates a new account gets to use your old name or any of them.

 

How about a solution for that one....well, no. I don't do threats, so consider this the final straw that broke the camel's back and I will unsub right now. This just is such poor judgment. Instead of rewarding loyal customers you are now penalising them? No thanks. This just ticks me off.

 

All players will be able to rename their Legacies once, at no cost, in a future update.

 

http://www.swtor.com/patchnotes

This is ******** they keep messing with sound ideas and making this game less desirable, the legacy system even though still newish and in its infant stage could still have some potential for where it can go and now they are taking a step back by allowing there to be a way everyone could have the same name is just not right. How about focusing on ways to make the game better not taking a bunch of things out making the game worse. How about those expansions and new content suppose to be out already? or that f2p system

Now we're going on 4 months with no mention of new content, you keep screwing up the simplest things, and I find myself asking the same thing everyone else in my guild is. "Why am I still playing?"

 

Hyperbole.

 

There has been plenty of mention of new content. It's all over the place, if you take time to read it.