Character Name Purge with Folks not Playing Anymore

And what makes those other "day 1" guys more important than us who are also here from day 1? Oh you mean because they quit the game they "deserve" to keep it more than we, who actually play it? We pre-ordered the game to name out characters whatever we want and we lost our names because of flawed priority system. When servers were merged it was inevitable that some people would lose their names. IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE ONES WHO QUIT to lose their names, not the ones who never stopped paying.

In the end it's all because OF A HORRIBLE NAMING DESIGN. NO NAME SHOULD EVER BE UNIQUE! Names are not unique in real world, why should they be unique IN A GALAXY FULL OF PLANETS WITH BILLIONS OF DIFFERENT PEOPLE? All whispers and stuff should be made by using some sort of ID codes, just like we have in real world, and just like some other MMOs started doing, so that the visual display name could be whatever we chose.
And no crazy fanboy will ever convince me that unique names are not a horrible design.

I also walk my own talk.

I don't complain about things.. I deal with them. It is afterall, a game, not real life.

As for the name Andryah being lost by someone else... nope. I did however lose it to myself when two of my servers were merged together in SWTOR. And you know what.. I did not complain about it in the forum, I dealt with it.... I simply renamed to one of my other unique character names that I keep in a list that only I seem to ever collide with when I end up with two characters of the same name for a server. Interestingly enough.. the name from my list was free after the merger.. because it is a simple yet unique name that I have used (and therefore identify with in MMOs) for years now that I not only like.. but nobody else seems to ever want the name.

Cultivate unique names over time that you like and that are unlikely to ever be taken by someone else and it's a non-issue in most cases. You innoculate yourself from the constraints of names and naming in MMOs by doing so. There will always be naming constraints in MMOs.

Now your just arguing semantics for the sake of it. Yes they could have implemented a system similar to what GW2 has but, unfortunately they didn't. Is it something that they can change? Probably not. Not with out a massive code re-write, and probably and engine change. To be honest, they shouldn't have merged the servers and had it set to "random" as to who kept what name. But what choice did they have when people were logging on to 1 person on the fleet? This topic needs to be closed. It is a part of this game, it cannot be changed, so get over it.

Absolultely. If you want to keep your name, subscribe.

That same serviceman also had about an 80% chance of losing his name in the server merges as well, so he likely doesn't have it still anyway.

You know that you are cherry picking for the perfect reason somebody may be gone. Why not just say "what if someone lapsed into a coma out of excitement the day they first logged in and just now recovered... what about them?"

Engine change? For naming re-design? That's completely unrelated. Sure they would have to change a lot of code, but they'd never have to change an engine (even if I'd really like to, cause this one is just terrible).
And I know they're not gona change it. But what they should do is add a name-wipe after being offline for 1 year (At least for character's created before the server merge).

Yes, but your name isn't a name. It has no meaning to the outside world. A few of your closest associates may recognize those random letters, but to the rest of us, you're either Andrea or nothing pronouncable at all.

I just asked my younger brother, who serves in the army AND plays TOR, how he felt about it. He says:

"If I wanted to keep my character's name while not playing for 9 months, I would ask you to log in periodically to keep it alive. Otherwise, tough s**t my loss"

No, you are not asking for the same thing. In the merger two or more characters who's names were identical one of those characters was able to keep the name, and the rest had to choose new names. What you are asking for is for a character which does NOT have the same name as any other character on their server be forced to loose that name solely so that you can have that name either for one of your current characters or for a future character.

I don't believe you. There isn't a game out there that will take your character name off you if you aren't playing for an extended period of time. SWTOR is the only one that made "Forced" changes like this because of their server merge. honestly, be thankful they didn't charge you for a paid character transfer like every other game would have.

Lol.
Anyway, forced transfer being free is not really a charity...