Having read a LOT lately about people's opinions regarding the Name Change paid service and the Server Merges which involved duplicate names, the little wheels in my head started turning and I got to wondering; will we ever be able to recycle some old names to increase the availabilty of new ones?
Sorry if I am being unclear. What I mean to say is; some characters are gone forever, such as those from banned accounts, and obviously those characters are not going ot be logging in any more. So why are those characters not deleted so their names can be made available for new players who may have wanted to use that name?
For instance, I may have wanted to name my character Bob. But if Bob is taken on my server I am just SOL. Recycling names is a big issue for me...
I am not big into RP and don't realy care about people being into their characters that much... but I still think characters should have names. Real names... not TheK1ll3r, or Sup3rB0t. People get creative (a little too creative sometimes) with their name choices becouse their first, second, third, and forth chocies are all always taken. Maybe if we started deleting toons from banned accounts it would halp to dissolve that a little?
Also, if a farmer makes a cahracter named 12345 and that gets banned/deleted and becomes available again... wouldn't it be pretty easy to tell if 12345 showed up again? that would make bot detection even more simple than it already is?
Obviously this wouldn't work for innactive accounts becosue there is always the off chance that some player who quit 4 years ago may want to come back... but how about a rule... not logging in at least once a year means no toon for you?
Its not a perfect idea, but IMO it merrits some discussion at least.
Lol, sorta agree with you. But, with Gracia coming I wanted to make a lvl 1 toon to pwrlvl thru the first 20. So started trying to think up a name and as usual all the "creative" ones I could come up with were taken.
Was sitting at my desk, stuck. Happened to look up and an Iron Maiden CD was on a shelf above me, album's name was Powerslave.
Typed it in and Walla Walla Washington it worked. This is on the Bartz server mind you. So now I have a hotty DE thats going AW named Powerslave. Try to be creative, as there are LOTS of names out there that have not been taken.
I made an Orc Tyrant named Guns, less than 6 months ago. I was sure that both of these names would be taken as they are not obscure by any means.
There actually was action taken by NC during the merge to delete any toons under lvl 10 which had not been used recently. I didn't hear a single complaint from it, and it opened a ton of new names up.
Under regular circumstances however I would not take names from inactive customers, as NC has been working hard to get those players back. Taking the names would discourage a return.
Banned players also can be un-banned depending on circumstances. Sometimes NC finds that they made a mistake in banning or a player might onlt be on a suspension.
Even those which are banned for botting never to return should not be allowed to be used right away, as you yourself pointed out that it would be assumed by NC (and the other players) that the tune is still the same bot.
I live in Seattle, lol. There is a movie called Volunteers with Tom Hanks and John Candy(RIP). Candy's character was named Tom Tuttle he was from Walla Walla Wa. Just kinda makes me laugh when I saw/write it. And is less [censored]/French than Viola'.
And tho Run to the Hills is an excellent song, I have always been partial to Number of the Beast....Bruce Dickinsin IS god!
IMO, they should delete all characters made in OB that never went retail. I have RL friends who played during OB w/ me and got their characters up to around level 15 or 20 so they weren't affected by the merge. But I know 100% those friends are never going to purchase the game.
They could even say they were going to delete all characters under level 20 that hadn't been logged in for at least 3 years - that would free up a whole lotta names. Most people who come back to the game after that long just make a new PlayNC account anyway cuz they can't remember their original one. And it's so fast to hit level 20 in Gracia, that it won't at all hurt them to have to do it over again if they do come back.
IMO, they should delete all characters made in OB that never went retail. I have RL friends who played during OB w/ me and got their characters up to around level 15 or 20 so they weren't affected by the merge. But I know 100% those friends are never going to purchase the game.
They could even say they were going to delete all characters under level 20 that hadn't been logged in for at least 3 years - that would free up a whole lotta names. Most people who come back to the game after that long just make a new PlayNC account anyway cuz they can't remember their original one. And it's so fast to hit level 20 in Gracia, that it won't at all hurt them to have to do it over again if they do come back.
they did this on the merged servers. everything that hadnt been played in more than 1 year was deleted regardless of level.
No, it was everything under level 10 that hadn't been logged in for more than 1 year.
Dormant Character Deletion
* In order to minimize duplicate character names, all characters that are level 10 or lower and have not logged in for more than one year will be deleted.
* To prevent the character deletion, that character simply needs to be logged in once prior to the server merge.
Don't use words you can't even spell, be them your native tongue or not. They don't give you a cosmopolitan sounding "air", but make you sound like a Freedom Fool at best.
Hug my nuts "NoldorMight"(cool name), it was less a spelling error as it was a keyboard/fat finger error. And if you bother to read my original "Walla Walla" post, you will see that I didn't use the word. The subsequent posting was about why.
And if you couldn't detect the sarcasm in my last post, hopefully you can detect it now.
(Edited for spelling and content cuz Noldor gets upset with gramatical errors. They make you seem less "cosmopolitan", lol. Which I'm sure is what we all strive to be.)
GM's won't do this, i know that a friend of mine asked a gm to change a name on an account that he got banned so that another friend of his could use it on a new character, the gm said he couldnt because of "scamming" issues, that his "friend" might use the name and act as the guy with the original name,
I can understand the potential dangers of name changes. But on that note, what's to stop anyone from purchasing a name change service with the name of a character that was deleted by a player?
Also, deleting some inactive toons on the servers that didn't get merged would help in more ways than one. Helping to tidy up the database would ease some of the log in time issues and free up yet more names for the people who do purchase name change services.
Potential scamming asside seems like a sorry reason to limit the freedom of name choices. NCsoft has allways had a "take it or leave it" approach to player scams. People selling D gemstones instead of SOPs. Or people doing the craft scam for millions of adena at a time. They've allways said that players have the freedom to do whatever they want in game so long as it doesn't violate the EULA, and that people should just be cautious about what they buy and who they trade with. Hell they have a warning system messege on login that says these things.
All that being said. Why go to such lengths to protect us from name scams? To me it doesn't seem worth while to have no more choices in names so that the characters that aren't being played and havin't been played in 3 years can be "safe".
i used all my family members (we are 5) names as toons and only one of them was taken (couldn't use my own since "i'm a NPC" (**** NCS use swedish names on their NPC)
The one that was taken started with a O so i just used 0 on that .. and voila my whole family is now toons in L2 including my old Dog :)
I would be very ****** if my characters had been deleted. I have hundreds of million adenas worth of stuff on level 1 character, and I haven't logged in for over a 2 years on most of mine. Deleting characters is BAD. At least send an email first with a link you have to follow to prevent the deletion.
I agree that it would be best to have some warning before a toon is deleted. Sending an email sounds like a nice method. Also, if NC was to set a change like this in motion, they could just post a link from the update page and amke it news. If its posted on the site as a rule that characters who have not logged in in one year or longer are deleted, than all a player would have to do is log in once to save their toons... how hard can that be?
Maybe they could even add a nice little counter in the character selection screens so that when you select a character it will display something like "last loggin date 01/01/2010".
You guys get the idea...
I know it sounds like I am being a bit irrational about this but I tried to make a female kamael a few weeks back and went through what must have been a hundred names OR MORE. all of them were taken. Its rediculous.