Character Name Purge with Folks not Playing Anymore

Exactly! Mules, and name placeholders (when someone creates a toon with a specific name on different servers in case of server transfers) are annoying as heck. I think we need to make mules and name placeholder toons up for grabs.

P.S: If someone is banned then their toons are deleted and we can use their name right? I'm just asking because it wouldn't surprise me if banned accounts still make certain names unavailable to the rest of us and it would be nice to get confirmation that this is not the case.

I'd support this.

Any account that has been inactive for 6 months should have the names purged. If people actually cared that much about keeping their names, then stay subscribed.

I disagree. I know of someone who can't play because of responsibilites right now and been gone since around jan but still continues to pay for his account. So no this should not happen.

Fully support the idea. I have LOST my original name, because of server merges. The only reason I pre-ordered the game was so I could reserve my name during early access. After server merges I lost my name and I have added the guy who got my name to my friend list. I have literally NEVER seen him online. NOT ONCE. And I play very often.

Paying for an account is still active, which would not apply in what i'm suggesting.

Basically, if a unsubscribed account hasn't been logged in for X many months, then the character names should be cleared and made available to the server, and require a re-name if that player ever re-subbed or logged back in again via free-to-play. It's that simple. Subbed players wouldn't worry, and free-to-play people could just log in to their characters if they care about not losing a name after several months of inactivity. I don't think this is very extreme as some have implied, and it's fairly standard for other MMO's.

What a surprise. You don't agree. You have the opposite/contrary opinion. Gee you are so intelligent and superior. Whatever.

If you don't pay. You don't play. You should forfeit your name. There has to be some kind of reasonable limit for this. I'm not saying that if you don't log in for two weeks then you should lose your name(s). But 12 months? 24 months?

IMEANREALLY

By "inactive" I meant... "no longer subbed" in the case of subs, or "hasn't logged on in 6 months" in the case of F2P.

On this point I actually side with the pay for features crowd. I think it's perfectly reasonable for a company to expect some payment for reserving names because it affects other players and other potential customers.

From what I've seen, 6 months appears to be standard for not logging into a toon. Would that number be for both Preferred players and F2P players or would the Preferred players get longer?

Something definitely needs to be done about character names, but I don't know that a purge is the right answer.

I think the simplest, most practical solution is to convert to player [Legacy] handles. More and more MMOs are using them. They do have their own share of issues, but the good definitely outweighs the bad. And with a few interface tweaks, keeping track of people wouldn't be difficult.

In turn, first names and surnames would be completely cosmetic.

People usually refer to others in their social circles--friends/guilds/etc--by a single name, anyway. So that really wouldn't change.

We now know server transfers are coming, so any reasons for keeping Legacies server-specific become moot. We also know they're going to give us a chance to change Legacy name. With these two changes on the way, it is the perfect time to convert to a system like this.

Have a UI option to display others' Legacy, character name, or both. And show all the information either in their character sheets or portrait mouse-over for easy access.

For mailing, implement full auto-completion like it does for guildies to include friends and party members. Add a account bank to eliminate the need to mail to self. And maybe add some kind of "save mail information" to the chatbox pull-down for crafters. Of course, if the handle becomes the main identifier for all things, this really isn't necessary as long as if you were to send something to someone else using his handle, he could open the mail on all characters.

To keep it fair, though, several weeks would have to be allotted to sign up for new Legacy names. I suppose priority would go Subs/Activation date, premiums/activation date, F2P/activation date.

So tl;dr:

Everyone gets a new Legacy that is essentially a second account name. All legacy XP and unlocks get merged into one. Character names become cosmetic. And now people can freely jump between servers (with cost) and not risk losing character names, their stuff, or their main identifiers.

I feel your pain. I had to rename one my characters during the merges as well. The character with the name I want is level 10 and hasn't done squat since I friended them last summer. I also made the foolish decision to use a special character in my name. It's made some recent cross faction mailing a bit of a pain, but that was my mistake.

I agree that if someone is paying a sub, they can squat on all the names they want. It's annoying to the poor slob who also want to use the name, but it's their $15 a month. But I don't think it's unreasonable to release name from accounts that have been inactive since last year or longer.