Character Name Purge with Folks not Playing Anymore

So if I had a level 10 mule or banker character with a name you want, I should lose that name just because I use that character for storage and not OPS?

Nobody's coming for the name arlon_nabarlly though since it's another gibberish name.

If someone really wants my bank alt "Tehvault" they can have the name.

Seriously though, resetting old character names is never going to be the answer, because they will never do it. So essentially, if you are affected, you need to come up with different ideas, as opposed to bashing your head against a plate steel door, because the door ain't giving.

Eh? Arlon is the name of a poster in this thread. Did you think I was talking about an in-game name?

NO criteria? Let's go back in time and see what we can find.

Oh, look:


Those seem like criteria to me. You might not like or agree with those criteria, but there were criteria used to determine who got to keep their names in the second sever merge.

The "you" was a generic term and not directed at any individual, but maybe I should have said :

That person who took a break for 2 weeks, 6 months, or even a year forfeited nothing, not his in game credits, or any of the items in his bank or inventory and not his name. The fact that another player wants the name his character has does NOT entitle that other player to it, no matter how long it has been since he logged in.

This is a fair statement.

But let me ask you this.

The player that created an account 13 months ago, played a toon to level 6-7, then stopped playing the game completely and hasn't returned since. Is he entitled to keep his name? And if so, why?

That can't possibly be true. My guild was ravaged by the 1st merge and the 2nd merge and we are our server's #1 guild. Personally I was at least top 5% of legacy XP on the merged server and only kept 2 of my most random names. They may have considered that to be a possible method for the merge, but it did not get implemented.

It's more selfish for a player to come back after a year and expect to still have his name intact when they haven't put a dime into the game to keep it afloat. Outstanding conditions or not, they didn't keep the servers running ... people that paid in the worst of times of this game, did. If a name is too much to ask for, I don't know what to tell you, but you'd probably argue anything I write here regardless.

The subs that stayed and kept this game in business should have rights over names they've lost a long the way. The people that kept paying for this game after the mass exodus in 1.2 last April, should get some recognition, and the highest recognition that anyone can receive (good or bad) in an MMO is a Namesake.
There are countless players who lost names to inactive accounts during the server merges. I tested this by trying to make names (that could never be duplicated) of my guildmates that had long left the game and you could NOT make them because they were "in use". The naming system was completely broken when they merged servers... Guild names were also proof of this. It was yet another broken system that did NOT work.

The more appropriate thing to do on Bioware's behalf is to rework their naming system. If they can unlock Legacy titles to be not unique, they probably can do it for a combination of the Main Character name and the Legacy name or have it based off the login name just like they have on these forums.

Until that happens though, I don't see why anyone would ever spend any money on character re-names. Majority of names that don't involve the little dots or ascii codes or putting ' after every name you want to use are gone. If bioware wants to make money of renames, they need to completely overhaul the first name of a character system they have failing for them.

In my case I lost my names due to characters on destination server having the names already. I guarantee I beat anyone on playtime on my merc main. I'm kind of famous on my server for my insane /played.