Any naming conflict is a conflict Bioware is creating themselves.

Yes, because players have asked for server merges for a long time, it's a conflict sure, but their system to solve it with subscribers and players who have invested time into their characters getting priority is both a fair and reasonable system to use to solve these conflicts. Sadly, some will lose their names but it's impossible to make everyone happy, at least with this solution, the vast majority of people are happy.

I agree they should have a record of a paid name change and if a player who paid for a name change is required to change their name cartel coins should be refunded.

 

100% in agreement. If someone has paid to change their name (or even legacy name / guild name) then anyone impacted by the name changes in that instance should be refunded cartel coins spent on those name changes.

I lost some names when Corellian Run became Shadowlands. It was tough. I think at that time however, players on the shadowlands got preference over us since we merged into them. This merge will be different, so that is a plus.

 

My main question is: If we both have the same name on different servers that are about to merge. We both initially subbed the same day. You made the character a day before me then took a 2 year break before re-subbing. Do you get the name because you made him first? Or do I since i've been a sub a longer total time?

 

Oy, the headaches!

 

I suppose I could always re-name <character_name> (space) <legacy name> and just turn "display legacy name" off...

My main question is: If we both have the same name on different servers that are about to merge. We both initially subbed the same day. You made the character a day before me then took a 2 year break before re-subbing. Do you get the name because you made him first? Or do I since i've been a sub a longer total time?

 

They are talking about time spend on the character, not level or who created it first.

They are talking about time spend on the character, not level or who created it first.

 

Actually this came up in the livestream and they are rather secretive about how they're doing it exactly. Time played is a factor but I wouldn't take that as straightforward as you make it sound. They definitely indicated that they weren't going to explain exactly how it was done to avoid people abusing that knowledge.

100% in agreement. If someone has paid to change their name (or even legacy name / guild name) then anyone impacted by the name changes in that instance should be refunded cartel coins spent on those name changes.

 

I think you will find that in the legal discussion about refunds that the service you buy with a name change is not the new name but the ability to change the name.

 

Names are governed by the same principles, meaning there can be only of the same name on a server. After server merges you'll get a free name change to make up for losing your name if you lose it. But you never owned that name in the first place.

 

It's not nice when you're the one losing the name. I get that. I fear it also. But don't think that name changes buy you a name. They buy you a name change. And that is something different.

Yes, because players have asked for server merges for a long time, it's a conflict sure, but their system to solve it with subscribers and players who have invested time into their characters getting priority is both a fair and reasonable system to use to solve these conflicts. Sadly, some will lose their names but it's impossible to make everyone happy, at least with this solution, the vast majority of people are happy.

 

Personally, I think name retention should be ranked based on how long you have continuously subbed for the game. It rewards the players that have stuck with the game through thick and thin. It also penalizes those who have been back for a short period and then left again who have little invested in the game. There are probably very few who have been around since launch but that is a huge investment and they should get something more for it than a decoration to put in their strongholds.

 

I really don't think someone who subs the day before the merger should have any advantage over someone who is F2P or preferred, especially since in all likelihood those people would cancel their subscription shortly after getting their "name"

 

I would rank it like this (after whatever name purge criteria is set, but anyone currently subbed should not be purged regardless of whether they have played in the last 3 months or the level of their character):

 

1) longest continuous sub

2) longest total sub (non-continuous)

3) most accumulated play time (by character) regardless of status

I think you will find that in the legal discussion about refunds that the service you buy with a name change is not the new name but the ability to change the name.

 

Names are governed by the same principles, meaning there can be only of the same name on a server. After server merges you'll get a free name change to make up for losing your name if you lose it. But you never owned that name in the first place.

 

It's not nice when you're the one losing the name. I get that. I fear it also. But don't think that name changes buy you a name. They buy you a name change. And that is something different.

 

It also starts a slippery slope. What about the people who paid for legacy perks with CCs on different servers and have duplicates in their legacies? Should they get refunds too. What about recent server transfers, should they be refunded? Bioware has to draw the line somewhere.

I think you will find that in the legal discussion about refunds that the service you buy with a name change is not the new name but the ability to change the name.

 

Names are governed by the same principles, meaning there can be only of the same name on a server. After server merges you'll get a free name change to make up for losing your name if you lose it. But you never owned that name in the first place.

 

It's not nice when you're the one losing the name. I get that. I fear it also. But don't think that name changes buy you a name. They buy you a name change. And that is something different.

 

I'm no legal expert, so I'll defer to legal experts

 

I may well find out about the name change thing myself, I specifically moved some characters over to one of the other servers being merged into Darth Malgus, purely to take advantage of the forced rename. Prior to doing this I created a level 1 character on the destination server to force that rename, sadly one of the characters I was going to move over is already on the destination server. It'll be interesting to see who loses the name, considering it was made during DvL on that very server, and moved to my origin server with various loot (like the DvL armour set). I also use that character frequently for GTN sales, so it is active.

 

I'm actually hoping I lose the name, I want to rename it without paying the insanely stupid Cartel Coin prices BioWare charge. I'm convinced the Cartel Market team are worse than credit sellers with their pricing models.

So you're saying if you bought a suit of armor on the Cartel and they just decided to remove it from the game you'd be cool? It's the same thing. You paid for it specifically. I don't recall any stipulation in the CM about, "You're just buying this for the time being. We can take it back anytime after tomorrow".

 

Any naming conflict is a conflict Bioware is creating themselves.

Your name as an entity is not removed it's changed. Pretty sure they have made changes to cartel armours before and not everybody liked them, but people didn't get their money back for that either.

 

You will find that once the game shuts down eventually, you do not get to keep anything. A single player game, you keep on your PC with everything you got on it. Even if the company stops with it. I have for example a game called Sacred 2. The company who made it doesn't even exist anymore. I still own the game though and I can still play it with the expansions I bought.

 

With this game, as soon as it stops you have nothing, because you don't own any of it.

Your name as an entity is not removed it's changed. Pretty sure they have made changes to cartel armours before and not everybody liked them, but people didn't get their money back for that either.

 

You will find that once the game shuts down eventually, you do not get to keep anything. A single player game, you keep on your PC with everything you got on it. Even if the company stops with it. I have for example a game called Sacred 2. The company who made it doesn't even exist anymore. I still own the game though and I can still play it with the expansions I bought.

 

With this game, as soon as it stops you have nothing, because you don't own any of it.

 

They keep forgetting that this is a game based on servers online.

Personally, I think name retention should be ranked based on how long you have continuously subbed for the game. It rewards the players that have stuck with the game through thick and thin. It also penalizes those who have been back for a short period and then left again who have little invested in the game. There are probably very few who have been around since launch but that is a huge investment and they should get something more for it than a decoration to put in their strongholds.

 

I really don't think someone who subs the day before the merger should have any advantage over someone who is F2P or preferred, especially since in all likelihood those people would cancel their subscription shortly after getting their "name"

 

I would rank it like this (after whatever name purge criteria is set, but anyone currently subbed should not be purged regardless of whether they have played in the last 3 months or the level of their character):

 

1) longest continuous sub

2) longest total sub (non-continuous)

3) most accumulated play time (by character) regardless of status

 

I have to disagree, sure it's not optimal that the person who subs one day before the merge gets priority over someone who has played for several years, but yet this is a game that people are paying to play, regardless when they subscribed, they should be treated better than people who are not. Giving priority to people who are not currently subscribed makes no sense, a game should always favour its subscribers.

I disagree that a person who subs the day before can have a chance to bump someone who has been a paying subscriber for years. It isn't fair to those who have been paying all this time. Because if I was F2P and wanted to keep my name then yes I would sub temporarily to do that then un sub. I read somewhere that it goes by days played on a character. But if someone subs at the last minute then they could possibly have more days played.

 

When the game first launched I created my first character and her name was Cenedra. It is based on a character in David Eddings books. It is my favorite name and one I have used in multiple games. When they decided to merge servers before, we were told that the ones coming to our server would be prompted to change their name if there was a duplicate. My name ended up being prompted to change. I wasnt happy about it and customer service woildnt do anything about it. I had to just deal with it. They screwed up because I was originally on the server and other person coming over should have had to change their name not me. But it's okay. I just rewrote the name differently. Still wasn't thrilled but life goes on... I am concerned that this upcoming merge is going to cause a real cluster f*** because I don't think they have thought through all the possible issues. But again if I have to change names then I will just have to deal with it like before.

Subscribers should be given priority over non subscribers. The total time subscribed should be given priority over that. Then, if there is a tie, it should be /played. Of course, this system works in my favor so it is incredibly bias! But i'm going to stand by it.

So if you ever paid for a name change are they going to refund you?

 

I paid for one AFTER they lied and told us this would not happen, that they were working on a solution.

 

Clearly their word is worthless.

I paid for one AFTER they lied and told us this would not happen, that they were working on a solution.

 

Clearly their word is worthless.

 

They made CM pack contents worthless when they started handing them out like candy to non-paying customers during DvL and even hinting at bringing said event back, and now they go back on their word here making any future purchase of name changes worthless until there's one single world megaserver.

 

They're doing everything in their power to destroy the cartel market against their own interest, and it's nothing new.

I did some research tonight regarding my toon names and found some interesting results. (I am a casual player that has been subbed continuously since launch)

I have 18 characters currently on my main server, which is about to be merged with 2 others. I looked at the other servers and found out of my 18 characters,

 

*8 were completely unique names

*2 had names on 1 other server

*8 had names on all servers

 

Out of those servers that also shared a name with my server,

*7 have characters below my current character level

*3 have characters at or above my current character level

 

There was only one case where I had a level 70 character that will merge with another level 70 character. My new mission? Log on to that character all day and all night to boost /played time. Good luck....other dude.

Edited October 6, 2017 by Tmanarl

I did some research tonight regarding my toon names and found some interesting results. (I am a casual player that has been subbed continuously since launch)

I have 18 characters currently on my main server, which is about to be merged with 2 others. I looked at the other servers and found out of my 18 characters,

 

*8 were completely unique names

*2 had names on 1 other server

*8 had names on all servers

 

Out of those servers that also shared a name with my server,

*7 have characters below my current character level

*3 have characters at or above my current character level

 

There was only one case where I had a level 70 character that will merge with another level 70 character. My new mission? Log on to that character all day and all night to boost /played time. Good luck....other dude.

 

I don't think level has anything to do with it, they said "Highly Played" which indicates to me that it will be based on time played. That probably does lightly correspond to level.

I don't think level has anything to do with it, they said "Highly Played" which indicates to me that it will be based on time played. That probably does lightly correspond to level.

 

I've been working under the assumption that any character under level 70 most likely has a lower number in /played time than a character that's level cap. There's exceptions of course, like if the person were an avid RPer who rarely did questing or in the case of a GTN mule, but overall I think it's a likely assumption.

Regarding /played and level, it can be tricky, crafting and GTN alts aside. The level cap was at 50 for about 18 mos before RotHC, and then at 55 another 20 mos until SoR. KotFE is almost 2 years, and KotET is less than one. I know I played hours upon hours of PvP on my max level characters in vanilla. And as the game released expansions you had all these ways to level up faster: tokens, double xp rewards, xp buffs. So its quite reasonable that a max level 70 toon has less /played than a lvl 50/55. For these older players, who allowed their sub to expire, the possibility of losing their name or maybe just curiosity as to the new server pops could make them resub. So is /played still a fair way to decide who should keep their name in this scenario? In my opinion, no, but in past server mergers name resolution seemed arbitrary. So I'll take this least worse solution.

I have a few character names i'm fond of keeping and others I'm not. I am subbed and my characters are all lvl 70 and will be when this server merger happens. I have checked the other servers my characters are being merged into and I see that those other players characters with the same names are lvl 60 or lower. Will I lose my names and be forced to rename?

Regarding /played and level, it can be tricky, crafting and GTN alts aside. The level cap was at 50 for about 18 mos before RotHC, and then at 55 another 20 mos until SoR. KotFE is almost 2 years, and KotET is less than one. I know I played hours upon hours of PvP on my max level characters in vanilla. And as the game released expansions you had all these ways to level up faster: tokens, double xp rewards, xp buffs. So its quite reasonable that a max level 70 toon has less /played than a lvl 50/55. For these older players, who allowed their sub to expire, the possibility of losing their name or maybe just curiosity as to the new server pops could make them resub. So is /played still a fair way to decide who should keep their name in this scenario? In my opinion, no, but in past server mergers name resolution seemed arbitrary. So I'll take this least worse solution.

 

It seems like the most fair solution to me. Subscription status + /played will, for the most part, keep the most active players their names. I can't honestly think of a solution beyond this that will not cause more longtime players to lose their names.

I should've mentioned I have had these toons since launch.

I should've mentioned I have had these toons since launch.

 

You should be fine unless you just haven't played the characters. And if they are 70 clearly you have played them.

I've read in other forum threads, folks suggesting reset/release of long inactive accounts of 2+ or 3+ years. I selfishly am all for that idea. I believe the last and only previous name purge was in 2013, maybe early 2014. They set the level cap then to be 30 or under for 120 days of inactivity. They can set a new cap to be 50 or 55 for 3+ years of inactivity. Subs would still be immune. That would release a ton of names for sure, ease the pain of forced name changes. Additionally, BW should get rid of "invalid" names or at least review and revise that list. So many don't make sense. Edited November 1, 2017 by veritas_prime