Well thanks a lot Bioware.

Again, how would you know, unless they are online? If they're online, they're playing. And if it's someone's alt, who cares when they play? Get over yourself and pick an original name.

Agreed. Honestly I'd rather they make the legacy name unique and use that as your identifier, and then allow duplicate character names. It would be a lot easier to keep track of friends that way, rather than needing to know every one of their alts.

OP, I feel for you. I lost 5 of 6 character names in the first set of merges last year, names that I reserved during the first wave of early access invites on December 13. Most of them haven't been played in quite some time (or at least I haven't seen them on). But unfortunately there's nothing you can really do. If you need help coming up with new names, I've used http://www.seventhsanctum.com/index-name.php in the past and have been pretty pleased with the results.

If what you say is true, then they haven't been leveling in a year. Playing does not always mean leveling. Could be for RP purposes, or crafting, or maybe they got tired of the character and decided to level another alt for a while. The truth is, you simply don't know.

As others have said, most of us have had to change at least one character name before. It happens. Such is life. Get over it. Move on. Use an alternate spelling of the name, or use alternate characters in the name; there are solutions. Whining on the the forum will not give you your name back.

NO!

What servers did they get rid of?

If I lose my character name...that might be it for me.

I'm not like other people who can just name their character whatever.

The name is just as important as anything else about my character.

I picked a server specifically to have the name I wanted.

What servers did they get rid of?

First world problems.

Woah! Calm down a bit. Lol.

It was the APAC servers. If you don't know about this, it probably doesn't affect you.

First world problems.

You had to know server consolidation was coming. You also had to know which server you were going to go onto.

You could have created characters on that server to reserve names you wanted, assuming they were available. Or you could apply a bit of imagination if the names aren't available.

Maybe they're just really bad at it?

Seriously, though, I understand your feelings. Some of us pre-ordered the game so we could get early access, partly so we could be assured of getting the name we wanted. Maybe it was a carryover from another game we played. Or one we thought was really clever and we wanted to get there first. And then the server consolidations came. Suddenly a character that we have grown to know and love as a certain name is going to be forced to live with a name that looks like it was created by a 2-week-old noob to the game. And even adding "Founder" to the end of the name doesn't really help that.

Star Trek Online has a great way of dealing with this. You can have any number of Captain Jack's in the game, all with different global handles. Mail is sent to Jack@Harkness or whatever. No confusion.

This is yet another aspect of this game that detracts from the social side of it. I'm not really complaining as much as observing. STO has a much friendlier atmosphere. People group up and "fleet up" and actually become friends in-game. In SWTOR, it's much more mercenary, in my experience. People just group up because they're forced to. And when it's over, they go their separate ways to never be heard from again. It's just not much of a community compared to some other games.

File it under "missed opportunities," I guess. I'm not a developer, so I don't know what trade-offs were made. But it seems like things could have been better (meaning more inclusive to different playing styles) without really losing any of the features and functionality that make SWTOR good. Ultimately SWTOR will probably lose subscribers to the next IP game that comes along and does a better job of supporting that sense of community.

These are all just my opinions, of course. You are entitled to your own.

So? Maybe he/she doesn't like to level that particular char.
Also, if he/she has been L22 for a year we are assuming you have seen him/her constantly logging the char on? If such is the case... that person is active. So, he/she has every right to the name.

Good then you should have known what to expect and you shouldn't have been that attached to your names.