I posted this on an external site a while ago. But I'm having a nostalgia moment, where I'm thinking that posting to the suggestion forum isn't a complete waste of time (it's been a while since I thought this way, no doubt my cynicism will return shortly)... but anyway...

My thoughts about freeing up "good" names, previously held by players who no longer play the game....

Pick a date, preferable after 1.2 went live, but before 1.4.

Mail everyone who has a character that hasn’t been played after that date telling them they may soon lose the character names they currently have. If someone logs in with that character (even as preferred) and play it for more than 1 hour, they get to keep that name. They get 1 month to do it.

1 month later, rename all the inactive characters in a similar way to the server merger naming convention “Simon” -> “Simon_0F2A”.

If records about names before each of the server mergers happened still exist that can be tied back to an account, perhaps mail people who lost a given name letting them know that their name has once again become available. First come, first served. For extra kudos, build a system that holds “freed” names for 2 weeks for people who previously lost that identical name in a server merge.

Do the same every 2 months, advancing the “cut off date” by only 1 month. Until such time as the gap between the current date and the cut off date is either 18 months or 2 years. After that, have a rolling 1 month purge.

My reasoning are based on these:

I assume most of the “good” names were reserved by early adopters. People who played pre-1.2. I also assume that is the biggest proportion of people who left and don’t intend to return.

I wouldn’t want someone who’s taken a short to medium term break from the game to lose their names. It’s disheartening for those who do return that they lost a cherished name.

But whilst my definition of “medium term” right now might be 6-8 months, once the game has been active longer, my definition of medium term would lengthen. For example, if the game had been active for 5 years, I don’t think it would be unreasonable for people to lose names after 2 inactive years. But right now, 2 years would be too much. Equally (in my opinion) in 5 years, 1 year would be too short. So start at 1 and gradually build to 2.

By restricting “keeping your name” to players who play for a minimum of 1 hour after being warned they may lose their name, you both get to avoid those people who peevishly log in for 30 seconds to keep a name they STILL don’t intend to use and at the same time, give that player 1 hour of playing again. Maybe that hour reignites a spark and they return to the game.

Personally I doubt a list of “lost” names exist from the server merges, but if you don’t ask, you don’t get.

btw, my choice of 1 year or 2 years rather than say, 30 or even 60 days is a reaction to the current limits applied to guild leaders.

I still hold GL title on our duplicate guild that resulted from two server mergers.

It’s not unknown for an ex-member who’s not played in a very long time to log in and suddenly find they’ve become the guild leader. The only way I can avoid it is to remember to log into that character every 29 days or so. It’s too frequent for an inactive guild.

I can see the logic for shorter times, but let’s do our best to try to make returning to the game a fun experience rather than a series of frustrations and disappointments. Because taking a short break (<4 months) and returning to the game only to find out you've lost your character name would probably make me just walk away again straight away, even if I'd read the emails reminding me to log in.

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bump.

I had to change my main's first name after the first server merger. and I'm quite certain that the guy who had my name no longer even plays, and he certainly isn't sub'd.