Screwed over by Bioware!

Look at the levels of those names. They are all placeholders. Even if Bioware did something fair like give the name rights to the highest /played then you would have still lost them. Just because you didn't sleep to quickly make a bunch of names doesn't give you rights. I lost the name Wedge in the merge and I could care less.

Names are a big deal. When you put effort into creating a name, it does make you feel more committed to the game and character.

OK, few things:

1. Let's be honest here, OP. Names like "Bane", "Titan", "Grace", "Doom" and "Reaper" do not really require any effort apart from being the first to use them. They are run-of-the-mill names that you see in many variations in every single game (or sci-fi book, or movie, or comic book, etc). They're neither super-rare nor particularly inventive. That said, you have every right to consider them amazing and want to use them for your characters.

2. You spent 2-3 paragraphs explaining to us something that 90% of us "veterans" had to go through as well. And, like you, many of us had picked out names we loved and had to change them (some of them twice) because of the transfers and server merges. It happened quite a long time ago to be mad about it still, tbh.

3. I also don't think they lied to you. I mean, seriously, sometimes you have to ask yourself what he person you think is lying to you has to gain. So what do you think the customer rep had to gain from you losing the name Bane?
Obviously, it was not a lie. It was a mistake.

However, we are paying customers and issues that are a direct result of a mistake by the Customer Support should be addressed properly by them with some sort of compensation. That is the ONLY thing in your post that I think merits compensation or (frankly) complaining about. Everything else has happened to a lot of people and we survived - you can too.

But, in most cases, if you actually put effort into creating a name, rather than picking something very common, or a name already existing in fiction, you are more likely to keep that name. I agree that names are important, so before launch I actually spent a good amount of time creating names, searching for them in Google and making sure I wasn't taking something that everyone and their mom would use and it paid off for me.

I think your definition of epic is different than everyone else's in the world. What you think means epic is what we take to mean ordinary.

This may be a topic that's lost in history to most active players today, but I will never forget!

My first experience playing this game was at the BETA stage. I played for two minutes as a Trooper and then I minimized the game to pre-order the Collector's Edition. I've played the game continuously since then, and I love it. But, the server-merges really screwed me over, as it did with a lot of people.

The reason I pre-ordered this game was to get in on the early-access so that I can get some really cool names for my characters. I didn't just get cool names. I got iconic, epic names. Here's a screenshot of my character selection screen way, way back... on a server named Bao-Dur: http://i1128.photobucket.com/albums/...Character7.jpg

With the first server merge, there was no system in place to allow people like myself to keep (some of) our names. You simply had the choice to leave your server, or get stuck on a damned tombstone! So, naturally, I left Bao-Dur as fast as I could... so that I might potentially get to keep my names or at the very least get something not completely terrible. I'm sure a lot of people were thinking the same during the days of the first merge.

When the second merge happened, there was finally some kind of system in place to ensure that if you were an active player and all that, you might get to keep your character name(s). But, at that point, my epic character names were all gone. Infact, the only name I had left was Bane (how?), and I lost Bane when Bioware customer service *ensured* me that the name would become available again after I rerolled the character with that name. I was told that the name would be up for grabs again as soon as I deleted my current character with that name. The reason I wanted to reroll was that I already had a level 50 Guardian at that point, and the character named Bane was a level 20 Sith Warrior. I was so worried about losing that name that I actually contacted customer service to doublecheck and verify that the name would still be available after I deleted my character. A valid concern after having tried to make a character named Bane on another server only to be told that the name was invalid (as in not allowed). I deleted Bane, and as I suspected... I was not allowed to create a new character with that name. Even though Bioware's very own customer service told me I could. Naturally, I contacted the customer service again, in a fit of rage (yet still very polite) asking why they lied to me. The response I got was that, after checking out the situation more carefully, the name "Bane" was on the prohibited list. If I hadn't decided to reroll my warrior as marauder after being lied to by Bioware customer service, I would have still had at least one of my original names.

My main character is my Commando. He used to be called Reaper. I've been actively playing the game ever since the early access, raiding, raid-leading and then becoming a GM of a very active raiding guild that's still active to this day, and will remain active in the coming expansion. I've done a lot of good work for the community in this game, and I will never forget how Bioware repaid the favor. I lost all my character names in the first merge. I might have let that matter rest, but then Bioware's customer service outright lied to my face... making me lose the last name that meant anything to me. The pathetic excuses offered by the customer service people after realizing how badly they screwed me over still makes me chuckle madly to this day.

I'm sure I'm not the only one that's been screwed over like this. Bioware should have had all the rules about who gets to keep their names in place for the first merge, but no... they didn't.

These days, all I see ingame are screwed up names like "PõÙltrymân" etc. It takes me 15 minutes to figure out how to invite certain people to my groups! At the very least, Bioware should have adopted the Guild Wars 2 way of naming characters, as in allowing long names with spaces so that we could make names like "Bender the Offender" or "Grim Reaper" and so forth... instead of the Legacy crap. Whatever surname you choose for one of the characters won't fit the next one, or character of the opposite faction. With this superserver lagfest crap they're peddling, there's too many people with too many character on the servers for anyone to get a good name for their character.

As you say, why would they lie about it? They have nothing to have by giving me misinformation that would lead me to lose the last name I cared about. But, their stupidity made it happen nontheless, and they couldn't even restore my character with the original name because their "tools" wouldn't allow it.