Character Name Purge with Folks not Playing Anymore

I guess if the audience is over 30...

Also, think of it from Bioware's perspective. Either way someoone's gonna get pissed off. If they don't allow renames to get idle names lost in merges, then those people will be pissed. If they do allow idle names to be repurposed then when those people come back they might be pissed. Who would you rather piss off, the people that have been playing since the merges that were like what a year ago now, or people that haven't played for 6 months and might not ever come back. A bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush. Don't bit the hand that feeds you.

There is absolutely NO flexibility in naming in this game, how could you possibly think that there is?

If there was ANY flexibility in naming, half of us wouldn't have had to rename all of our characters TWICE.

If there was ANY flexibility, we wouldn't have names so filled with accented characters it's next to impossible to whisper someone, /ginvite, etc.....

"Work with it" is your answer to everything, you know Bioware ASKS for our feedback. They started asking for it AFTER they lost literally 1-million customers when the game first launched. They learned the hard way what the "they'll work with it" attitude gets them. If you want this game to survive, that's the attitude that needs to change.

I think you're overestimating the number of names that you want that would actually be purged. I mean really, they could do this and your name of choice could still be unavailable and you would still be pissed.

If someone beat me to a name that I wanted and they're still active or have recently been active, good on them! They can keep the name and I'll be all the happier that a player is still active.

No i wouldn't. I fully recognize that's a possibility and if the devs allowed reclaiming name, but mine old one was still active then I would be disappointed, but glad that the devs tried to make it right. The issue isn't that I'm mad someone has my name, I'm mad that it's possible (if not likely) that the name is completely unused by anyone when I'm dying to use it. That's wasteful and stupid.

Since the introduction of FTP, there is no hope of character names ever being "freed up" for reuse.
There are too many problems to tame in that circus. I know a US Marine deployed to Afghanistan that plays SWTOR. "Um, sorry you have not been playing the last few months, so we are taking your name." I don't think so.

I took the day off a launch. Rolled two characters and named them. Then server merges caused me to loose the
names of 5 of my 6 level 50's. I was well above "ANGRY." I later found that someone took the name of one of my
toons to roll a mule (to forever remain at level 2.)

But, it's just a game. I got over it. There are more important issues to put one's attention towards.

There are way too many players with a level one placeholder keeping names from being used. It's annoying that so many of the these level 1 placeholders exist.

I think every level 1-9 character that hasn't be logged in the last 2 months should be fair game.

And that every level 10-55 character that hasn't been logged in the last 6 months should be fair game as well. Let's put an end to the placeholders!

But how would you know? You can't just assume a player is inactive because you haven't seen that character name online. What if that player doesn't play during the same hours as you? What if that character name is taken by someone's alt? You can't assume that because you added a name to your friend's list and you have never seen them log in when you were online that that player is inactive and therefor his name should be purged.

Really, with what you guys are saying, BioWare could do this and you would all be happy regardless of whether you actually got your name back or not? Sorry, but I have to call BS on that. Nothing will make you happy short of them specifically freeing up the names you want and and you getting them before anyone else, which would be unlikely even if they did do a name purge.

maybe but let's face it if the guy is level 12 and hasn't logged in since launch he's proably not coming back