Freeing up old unused names

Interesting points have developed since I logged off.

First of all, I would like to say that there is certainly no need to know if a player is gone for good - WoW doesn't do that either. It would be enough to contact the player before he could lose his name to make him aware of it, so he has time to act and keep the name.

Second point, about in game identities, whatever you do with your own is your business, I was talking strictly about the identity of the other player. If he is really away for some time, his identity is close to nothing - taking the name won't hurt his character or reputation in any significant way (of course, there are some examples where name can be remembered for a long time, but this is not the case for SWTOR, but mainly EVE).

Majik, I have provided enough reasons why a player should lose their name, and why it would be fair. It would be fair because the rules would be the same for everyone - that is the definition of fairness. What we as players can do is bring this problem to BioWare and try to came up with the best rule set so we can all (or at least most of us) agree that it would be fair and reasonable.
You are also talking about people that "have a life", or "fight for your freedom" (certainly not mine, I am an European). Yeah, this is a problem. We cannot truly ensure that a person won't ever come back to the game, or know the exact date of deployments of every unit in the Army. What we can do is make a rule set that is generous to both parties. An email (or two), warning a user of his name (or account) being inactive for a long time would be enough for the group of players who don't play very actively - if they care about their name, they will login to save it for another time period. There is nothing hard about that, and it certainly is not about dictating to anyone how he should play his character, neither it is only about a single individual that has a name that someone else wants - the rules would be the same for everyone. The second group, the army, that is more problematic. What we could do is make the rules generous enough, so the time you have to "save" your characters name is long enough. I do not really know about how long the average troop deployment is in the US, but we would have to design it around that, most probably.

As I said before, this system wouldn't have to be automatic, but on demand - original names would still most likely stay with their creators, but of course that is a point to discuss.



At the very least, I think the system Darth_Victus proposed should be implemented. If a certain account is inactive for an extended period of time, any character that is below some threshold would lose his name. I think this would be very generous to most players, ensuring their mains and other high level characters would keep their name.

Ok, a) people who "have a life". If they don't log in for 60 days because they prefer to do other things, that's fine, but then they won't care about their name either. It takes 2 mins to log in - if they don't want to spare that in 2 months, they don't care.

b) I assume you mean the US army? If they care that much, they could just ask a friend to log in. Again, it takes 2 minutes every 2 months. Not hard if you care enough to do it yourself or ask someone else to do it for you. Much less effort than watering someone's plants or feeding their fish.

Wow, a thread filled with self entitled would-be name stealers....
I don't know how anyone can get off on trying to steal other peoples names, you would have to be a new level of low pond scum to even suggest it, I mean, you people are unbelievable.

ok just to interject, leave military personnel out if it. They can and do login from overseas deployments (have RL friends and guildies doing exactly that)

Thanks for the input.

It works in other games and there is no reason it shouldn't work here. There are logical reasons why it would be beneficial to the game as a whole as well. If you do not have anything to add to the discussion, please don't post. If you have some arguments, please, we would love to hear them.

Actually a lot of names are still being taken up by people who played for a few weeks when the game started, and then never played again. Very few people want to steal from people using names, a few do but they are a minority, most just want to get rid of characters that re never going to be played again, and are taking up names.

Personally I would prefer that the inactivity be for an account, not a character, and a year is about right for that, this allows people working abroad (soldiers, oil rig workers, scientists in Antartica) to maintain their characters, and still thin out dead characters hogging names.

No, they don't. Read the EULA.

And, this exact sentiment can be applied to the person hoarding the name with no evidence of ever having played it. Make up a new name and move on if you decide to start playing the toon.

"Name-stealers"???

Why don't you call the guy who has 10 character slots filled with level one toons he's never going to play a "Name-Hoarder"??

Simple, if you don't want your name taken, PLAY THE CHARACTER!! There's no sense in having the name or even the character at all if you're not intending to play it.

Other people don't want to wait around for your indecisive self to "get around to it".

The player who "owns" the name now did NOT throw it in the dumpster or donate it to good will. He did NOT choose to delete the character, meaning he did NOT throw the name away.

To use your analogy, he put that item on a shelf, Maybe he'll go back and get it off the shelf and maybe he won't. He did choose to hold onto it, and put it on a shelf. That shelf is in his home.

You are asking BW to go into his home, take that item off the shelf and give it to you because you happen to want it.

That is all there is to it.

You first mention level 20 as the level needed to ensure a player does not have a name taken from them. You then mention that you lost your name to a character of level 25. Unsurprisingly, you then suggest level 30 as the required level to protect your name. Gee, there is NO selfish reasoning there, at all.