Can We Talk About Name Availability For A Minute

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

I don't know. When I search the internet for MMOs that purge names, the top results are all different MMO forums where players are asking for their MMO to do name purges, and using the reason: "All the other MMOs do it". Seems kind of funny.

[Teratus.2859]

@tinymurder.5791 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@tinymurder.5791 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

Nobody's presuming the names we want are sitting on long inactive accounts but it is a fact that there are a lot of dead Gw2 accounts which will never be used again and some of them may have claimed good names that someone else who does play the game regularly would get more use out of.

@Lunia.2736 has been presuming exactly that throughout this thread. In fact, given how consistent they've been with the specific details of their argument, I'm inclined to believe that they personally know somebody who:

1. Made a character at launch.
2. Leveled up once.
3. Stopped playing immediately afterward.And worst of all,
4. Locked up a name that @Lunia.2736 wanted for one of their characters.

I may be way off base, but it really does sound like sour grapes, instead of a reasoned argument.

I can't speak for Lunia only myself but I can understand their frustration if that is indeed their reason for their opinion on this subject.

Do you see how this weakens their argument, however? This is the linchpin of the entire argument that @Lunia.2736 has put forth, yet they are arguing from one to infinity. They have no proof that the names they want are locked up in the manner that they claim. They can't even prove that the people they claim have they names are inactive or even still have the names in question. No argument has been put forward that justifies the removal of names on inactive accounts that don't boil down to, "I want it more."

Everything

else is attempts to justify that argument.

Lastly, if @Lunia.2736 is putting forth their argument as a result of an interaction with someone they know personally holding a name "hostage," then their argument isn't just weak, it's irrelevant. Essentially they are saying, "someone I know has been a dirt bag to me. Please make extensive changes to your game, so that they don't win." I can sympathize with the sentiment, but I cannot support the position. Furthermore, it cuts that foundation argument right out, leaving all of the follow-on argument flapping in the wind.

As I understand it names no longer in use on an account expire after a certain period of time so if they don't have the names and nobody else does they would be available.I don't recall Luna saying they want to take a name from someone they dislike, pretty sure they said it was an old friend who quit the game and doesn't want to come back.I can't recall word for word every comment they made though so forgive me if I overlooked something.

I know people who've done that too though, good friend of mine stopped playing 6 years ago and i've been trying to get him back ever since, he just doesn't care about Gw2 and if I asked him about his character names I know he wouldn't care if they were taken away or his whole account was deleted, he will never play this game again.There's plenty of people like that who used to play the game so Luna does have a point in those specific circumstances.

Before I go, I'm sure lots of people will disagree with my statement that revoking character names is an extensive change. I would invite you to contemplate how much of this game uses your name. All of those functions would need to be tested to make sure that they still reference the correct name and assign a placeholder to the character that has had their name revoked. This would need to be automated system-wide, and be a priority update for newly returning accounts. None of this is impossible, but neither is it trivial. What would you rather have programmer time spent on? A feature that is requested by a clear minority(if this thread may be taken as being at all representative) or popularly requested QoL updates? Perhaps even new content?

The game has name change contracts so I doubt it would be that difficult for someone to make a system like that if they knew what they were doing.. but i'm no programer so I wouldn't presume to know that for a fact.It would probably be more difficult to do what I suggested and create a system that works around players account names instead like these forums do and allows all players to use any name they wish taken or not.But the benefit of never having to deal with taken names would be worth it from a QoL standpoint if you ask me, each player having access to every name they want.That was always what I was arguing for in this thread.

[Holykitten.3064]

Just adding in to the WoW/Gw2 comparison, World of Warcraft was a solid 10 years old when Blizzard decided to name purge accounts. (Released 2004, name purge announced to happen 2014 when WoD dropped that November, with the notion that affected accounts would be ones that hadn’t logged in since December 2010 or before, would be released.). Given that World of Warcraft has less flexibility by not allowing spaces, that’s still a long time.I think, we’ve got many many years before Anet would even contemplate a name purge of inactive accounts, if they ever would. Which I doubt they will.

[kharmin.7683]

@Teratus.2859 said:

I don't recall Luna saying they want to take a name from someone they dislike, pretty sure they said it was an old friend who quit the game and doesn't want to come back.If that's the case, then invite the friend over and have them log in and delete the character. Seems easy enough, no?

[Bloodstealer.5978]

@"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:I don't know. When I search the internet for MMOs that purge names, the top results are all different MMO forums where players are asking for their MMO to do name purges, and using the reason: "All the other MMOs do it". Seems kind of funny.

Yeah I just tried your idea and came to the same conclusion.What I have found from experience is some MMO's that utilise a F2P model place such naming restrictions even some with alternate model options.. that said it's not even remotely about what other MMO's do, in fact there is no "MMO Standard" to be considered here especially as the key note is ANET made clear that was NOT their way of playing it, that in itself is good enough reason to just forget about taken names and start thinking outside the little box those players lock themselves into.

[Lunia.2736]

@kharmin.7683 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

I don't recall Luna saying they want to take a name from someone they dislike, pretty sure they said it was an old friend who quit the game and doesn't want to come back.If that's the case, then invite the friend over and have them log in and delete the character. Seems easy enough, no?

I've never said anything of the sort as Teratus claims.

[Teratus.2859]

@Lunia.2736 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

I don't recall Luna saying they want to take a name from someone they dislike, pretty sure they said it was an old friend who quit the game and doesn't want to come back.If that's the case, then invite the friend over and have them log in and delete the character. Seems easy enough, no?

I've never said anything of the sort as Teratus claims.

My mistake, a lot of this is started to get blurred together.

[wasss.1208]

The argument that "WoW has namepurging" is stupid. When I tried to create a character there, I spent a hour trying to name my character something without accents, then another 10-20 minutes copypasting random names from generators.Here, I can give a character a different title if the one I want is already taken. I only had this problem once, out of my 14 characters (9 asuras), thus I have a character named "Lulu The Fearsome", instead "Lulu The Brave". Here as long as you have something original, you can easily pass without accents.

[Moira Shalaar.5620]

@"Lunia.2736" said:I believe people are overreacting (acting as if they'd lose their names themselves, even tho they're posting here so they wouldn't be flagged inactive to begin with) and underestimating the amount of dormant launch accounts every game has. There's a lot of people who buy a game, try it out, don't like the core of it and quit forever. What purpose is there to let them hold on to short/cool names simply because they were there early on if they are never gonna get any use. Yes, some might return to the game after 7-8 years, but that percentage is generally rather small. If you've ever done any database work on any MMO game servers you'll see a massive amount of accounts that have a creation date of 10th March and last activity 10th or 11th March.

I’ve been following this from the start and keep meaning to throw in my own 2coppers worth, this tipped me over the edge of inertia. My wife hasn’t played for 3 years now. She loves the game, she spent literally hours searching for just the right name for each of her characters and each one is meaningful for her and integral to her vision of that character. (My own naming convention is WAY different, using a combination of ancient languages transliterated into English) She will be back in game just as soon as our circumstances permit. Many would consider her “inactive” and she has had most of those names since shortly after launch. If you come in and take her names, not only will she never come back, she would be shattered. I share this to try and inject some humanity back into the flat representation of inactive players. None of us know why they are inactive, whatever the standard may be for the use of that term. Huge assumptions are made that these unidentified masses of inactive players aren’t coming back and they won’t care. Each of them is a person who at some point played this game, and whatever decisions are made ought to be from the perspective of treating them like people, not hooks upon which a name has been hung growing dusty with misuse.

Names, especially short and memorable ones, carry a value to most people, besides those who name themselves Xzhsdhagdsuj and are okay with that of course. However, those short and memorable names are a limited resource and most companies see the value in them. Hence why they'd rather satisfy an active player with a nice name and make them pay for a name change than letting it rot on a dormant account. Letting it stay there is untapped potential and revenue.

Yes, names carry value to most people, which is why taking the from someone else is being identified as theft by some here. You are proposing to remove something of value from someone else. That “inactive” player is far more than a rotting dormant account, and to be honest, if you called my wife that IRL, you & I would have issues very quickly. I would hope that you are the kind of person with the common decency not to say that to any human. Distancing ourselves by simply referring to the inanimate, intangible "dormant accounts" is dehumanizing which makes it easier to simply ignore the human on the other end of this discussion.

Increased support queues? I mean, that assumes that the people who quit the game on a day 1 to actually return and care about the name and/or character. From personal experience on database work on game servers this percentage is rather minuscule. Sure, Guild Wars 2 might be a rare exception somehow, but I kinda doubt it. Especially with all the problems this game had at launch and with the amount of Guild Wars 1 players who wanted it this game to be like Guild Wars 1, tried it out, saw it wasn't anything like it and never touched it again since. That might even cause the game to have even more dead and dormant accounts than fresh IPs would.

There is simply a lack of data here. You operate on the assumption gamers will not return after a longer period of time. Anecdotal evidence here in this thread indicates that they do, but we do not have the data to determine whether this is exception or rule. Should decisions that impact millions of gamers be made on the basis of assumption or fact?

Personally if I quit a game right away and came back after over 7 years and lost my name "Bob" due to inactivity I'd only blame myself. But considering a lot of people's stance on this matter they'd rather blame the company and the person who took the name. Which I find odd, since I'm used to this system from almost every other MMORPG ever. Any game I might return to in the future I just log on once every year or two to keep my name. Not a big deal. Generally the inactive name wipes are also announced quite a bit beforehand and have a large buffer on what's considered inactive. Hell, sometimes that announcement brings me back to games I forgot about and I end up enjoying the patches and changes made to it. It could do the same for this game.

While it is refreshing to see that in your own case you are not/would not be hypocritical, I think it is a mistake to project that same lack of interest across the entire spectrum of other gamers who are not presently logging in.

---

Ultimately this is a matter of low stakes ethics. I say low stakes because either way in this setting nobody dies, no populations are devastated. It is what makes both sci-fi as a genre and gaming as a modality interesting: they become ethics laboratories.

earlier on 4/10 you commented:

It's actually quite intriguing how opposed this community is to this common practice compared to any other game community. It's generally seen very favorably there. While some even become really toxic about the mere notion of it here.

It is the ethics of this issue that has many of us who disagree with you and the OP adamant about our position. I find it interesting that you consider those who hold to an ethical view that differs from your own to be "toxic". I am assuming here, and feel free to correct the assumption, but i would guess that the comment in view is where this idea of purging names is identified as theft. That is an ethical, moral valuation, clearly one that you disagree with, but an ethical, moral valuation nonetheless, not toxicity. I am not calling you unethical either, so please do not read that into my statement. I'm simply saying that there are multiple standards of ethics involved here.

Here are some ethical questions involved in this matter:

1. What are the "rights" of players who have not logged in for a length of time?
2. What are the "rights" of active players?
3. What is/should be the deciding factor(s) when the "rights" of two parties come into conflict? Active status? Significance/Severity of "needs"?
4. What is the hierarchy of priorities? (i.e. Is active status most important? is temporal precedence most important? is current possession {of a name in this case} most important? Is there potential for developer profit?)
5. What role should profitability and its potential play in policy decision making in a for profit company? Should profit and its potential supersede player "rights"?
6. Is ArenaNet obligated to keep its word given at launch and since with regards to leaving accounts/names untouched?

Clearly different parties in this thread have different answers to these questions. These questions ought to be answered in an unbiased manner, meaning answering them in one's favor simply because they are in one's favor WOULD be unethical. I'm sure there are other ethical considerations involved, those are just the ones I could pick out off the top of my head.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@Lunia.2736 said:tl;dr Lunia appears to be arguing for a very narrow release of names, restricted to accounts with single digit hours of playtime and haven't logged on since the first day (or maybe first week). That's a very different kettle of fish from what some have argued (in this thread and in the past), to wit: frequent purging of names, the kind which WoW started doing some time ago.

Further their intensity on the topic is in part due to their claimed familiarity with numbers from similar games. If I understand correctly, the suggestion is that there might be hundreds of thousands such accounts, nearly 7 years old with less than 7 hours of playtime. And (so the theory goes), only a tiny, tiny fraction of accounts that went 5 years with only 7 hours ended up returning, so few that (according to @Lunia.2736) it's unlikely to add to the support queue in any notable way.

I'm not sure I agree that it's worth doing. It sets an uncomfortable precedent, it sounds like it refutes one of the few promises ANet has ever made, it's definitely a big policy switch. And without some actual numbers, it's hard to tell just how many coveted names would be freed compared to how many players would be affected.

That said... It's worth giving some additional thought.

---

(My on-point responses below.)

! > I'm more confused as to why people are so defensive for someone who quit on day 1 over 7 years ago to keep their names on their level 1/2 placeholder characters that will never see the light of the day.! So is it your suggestion to only purge the names of people who played the first week and never returned since? The impression I've gotten from your strong advocacy on the topic is that you had in mind a release of names after 2-3 years of activity. Those are very different proposals.!! > I believe people are overreacting (acting as if they'd lose their names themselves, even tho they're posting here so they wouldn't be flagged inactive to begin with)! You seem to be equally underreacting: everyone knows people who have left & returned. Nearly everyone can imagine a situation in which they wouldn't be able to play for long periods of time, including (for just one example) folks who are on standby in their national military.!! > and underestimating the amount of dormant launch accounts every game has. There's a lot of people who buy a game, try it out, don't like the core of it and quit forever.! That's likely to be true. The problem is that we can't tell the difference between those who "don't like it and won't ever return" from those who "don't like it and end up returning anyhow, because they finally saw the light." (Both of which happen.)!! > What purpose is there to let them hold on to short/cool names simply because they were there early on if they are never gonna get any use. Yes, some might return to the game after 7-8 years, but that percentage is generally rather small.! If you have numbers you can put on that, I'd love to see them. Is it 100 accounts? 1000 accounts? 1000000 accounts? How many people would be too many in your opinion? If the "percentage is rather small," how much difference would it make to release those names? How many of those reserved names are coveted by others in the first place?!! > If you've ever done any database work on any MMO game servers you'll see a massive amount of accounts that have a creation date of 10th March and last activity 10th or 11th March.! I haven't done any db work on MMO game servers. I have done social science stats and it wouldn't surprise me to see some interesting curves, with steep drop offs. However, without the numbers for this game, I'm not inclined to speculate.!! >! > Names, especially short and memorable ones, carry a value to most people, besides those who name themselves Xzhsdhagdsuj and are okay with that of course. However, those short and memorable names are a limited resource and most companies see the value in them. Hence why they'd rather satisfy an active player with a nice name and make them pay for a name change than letting it rot on a dormant account. Letting it stay there is untapped potential and revenue.! Again, I ask: are you only recommending a purge of names created day 1? (or let's say from Launch-3 = Headstart to Launch+5, about a week)!! > > Do you agree this would require considerable effort on ANet's part? (e.g. choose parameters, write script, test script, run script, deal with increased support queues, take a hit in public relations for changing their mind). By your own admission, the benefits are limited to a narrow subset of the community.! >! > The script itself could be made by any decent developer in no time, that wouldn't be an issue.! Writing scripts is easy; any decent developer can do those, true.! Validating scripts is not; any decent developer knows that, too. (I can't tell you how many times I've seen people good, even excellent, at writing code, made one tiny mistake that led to a script doing way too much or way too little.)! My position, therefore, is that if "the script itself" is not an issue in terms of planning, then it will end up being an issue in the long term.!! (There's a case in point for the API changes made this month, plus the Scholar Atli script that ensures people don't get GW1 titles in GW2 unless they are confirmed to earn them. Both involved relatively straightforward situations in which a small miscalculation has led to notable impacts requiring clean up.)!! > Increased support queues? I mean, that assumes that the people who quit the game on a day 1 to actually return and care about the name and/or character.! Again, I point out the impression left is that you advocating purging the way other games do. You mentioned "other MMOs," and the obvious one that has been mentioned here is WoW, which purges names from accounts without activity through just two expansions (roughly 4-5 years).!! > From personal experience on database work on game servers this percentage is rather minuscule.! I think it would have helped a lot if you had anchored your original idea with (a) your experience and (b) with actual numbers rather than the handwaving that is typical of forum discussions. (To be fair, it's also typical of political discussions that take place even in national legislatures, so it's not as if there's no precedent.)!! > Sure, Guild Wars 2 might be a rare exception somehow, but I kinda doubt it. Especially with all the problems this game had at launch and with the amount of Guild Wars 1 players who wanted it this game to be like Guild Wars 1, tried it out, saw it wasn't anything like it and never touched it again since. That might even cause the game to have even more dead and dormant accounts than fresh IPs would.! That's plausible.! (Should I again mention that the impression given was a bigger purge than just day 1 accounts?)!! > Personally if I quit a game right away and came back after over 7 years and lost my name "Bob" due to inactivity I'd only blame myself.! Sure. Probably same for me. On the other hand, you don't seem like most people and I'd hesitate to set policies based on your choices (or mine).!! > My argument is less about the shortage of names (since surnames and spaces easily solve that problem) and more about the accidental camping of valuable names on dormant accounts as explained above. I don't think this game is gonna run out of names for quite a while, at least if you use your space bar.! I so wish you had started out your first post with this comment. I know I can only speak for myself (and that I've said this half a dozen times)... I was 100% sure you were talking about biennial purging of names, not a one-time release.!!

[Moira Shalaar.5620]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:(My on-point responses below.)I'd swear I posted about this but my post seems to have not gone through so apologies if this ends up being a duplicate. I absolutely love the creative use here of the formatting tools available. Well done. I will try to remember this in the future so forum readers will not have my philosophical musings thrust upon them in a wall of text without the option to skip to the next post.

Edit for typos.

[robertthebard.8150]

@kharmin.7683 said:

@Lunia.2736 said:I merely support a common practice in MMORPGs.Is it really? Is it a common practice across the entire genre of MMORPGs? Not trying to be trollish -- I just don't know and am curious as to how you came to this conclusion.

There are games that do it, this is a fact, but, it's not as common as we're being led to believe. I didn't play swtor for over a year, and while I had to do some shuffling due to a merge, my names were still intact. I've kept the same names on characters in DDO, largely because Turbine, and then Standing Stone Games refuses to go down this path, at least so far, and in Rappelz, my names have been intact despite an 8 year absence. The last time I logged into Aion, which was at some point last year, despite a long absence, my character names were intact, although I did have to reclaim my legion name, because the server merges there merged two servers where we had established the legion.

[robertthebard.8150]

@Teratus.2859 said:

@tinymurder.5791 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

It's specifically been said by the person who started this thread that what we need is a some kind of new system to handle names better and that this is a discussion worth having.Which is something I definitely agree with.

Honestly, I feel the person who started this thread was trolling, since they literally haven't posted in here since making the original post.

I don't think they were trolling, there's fair reason to want a better system for names and both good and bad ways to go about it.I can understand why they've not posted again though considering what i've had to deal with.

Taking old unused names from inactive accounts is only one of the options people have suggested and that seems to be the only one people are even talking about here.And some like yourself are even stripping that down to "give me your character name" which is a really unfair way to look at it not to mention it doesn't add anything constructive or positive to the discussion.Not everyone is arguing for what you say they are.. I've already put forward my alternative solution to the problem, yet I keep getting replies like yours when i've made it clear i'm not for that solution myself either.

I feel like the people who keep saying, "YOU DON'T TOUCH OTHER PLAYERS ACCOUNTS!!!" could stand to add a little nuance to their position. While it does make it seem as if they are saying that you(specifically) want to take their(personal) character names away, I really don't think this is the intended meaning. I understand where they're coming from. They don't like the idea being put forth, i.e. that Anet should revoke character names from inactive accounts. After all, what's an inactive account? Where is the definition in the TOS? Will the names that are freed, actually be the names people are looking for? What if the reason you can't have that name is because it belongs to a gold scammer who was banned four years ago? Perhaps it's a bad word in Czechoslovakian?

As far as not adding anything to the discussion, this hasn't been a discussion on either side. Both sides have simply restated their positions, while deconstructing their opponent's arguments. I believe this is because this is merely the latest in a series of threads over the years about this subject. Honestly, this argument was played out years ago and no one has anything constructive to add. Those in favor trot out the same arguments, and those opposed trot out the same counterarguments. Eventually some one gets tired of not having their point ignored(no offense, usually by the name-revokers) and they keep posting in all-caps, bold font,

"DON'T TOUCH OTHER PLAYER'S ACCOUNTS!"

At this point, someone may as well invoke Godwin's Law and call it a night.

Pretty much where I'm at now, nobody even mentioned my solution, discussed it or argued a sigle point against it.This whole thread has disolved into pointlessness and few here seem to want to discuss the problem at all and keep posting the same things which pretty much boil down to what you said.. don't touch peoples names etc.

What do you mean by "things you've had to deal with"? Is it "I didn't expect that people would disagree with the premise of the thread"? Neverwinter uses a system similar to what you've suggested, and while I'm not wholeheartedly against it, I'm really not all that much in favor of it either. It puts your contact information out there, since email is used as account ID, and there are some that may wish to keep that information private. It's fine as an option, for people that don't care one way or the other, but for others, it's better to just not go there.

Maybe it's devolved into pointlessness because it is, overall, pointless. People that are obsessed with a particular name are salty that they can't get it because someone else has it. When this is called out, it's "but those names are valuable, and shouldn't be left to rot on an account that's been inactive since launch". I see this as pointless because it's really nobody's business but the account holder's what's happening with that account. If it's been around since launch, that means the owner of the name bought the game, and should be, at the very least, provided protection from those that want to take names from it.

[Etria.3642]

Anecdotal evidence, not enough to form any kind of percentage assumption.All four friends of mine.First: played one month with us. Didn't care for it. Returned to eso after giving away everything. Has not returned.Second: played one DAY with us. Didn't care for it. Has not returned.Third: began play at release. Didn't care for it. Told us no thanks when we started playing about three years ago. Logged in three weeks ago. Been playing ever since, bought both expansions.Fourth: began play at release. Didn't care for it. Returned when we did. Didn't care for it. Tried again a year later. Didn't care for it. Someone GAVE him a hot/pof code for free. Plays every weekend now. Apparently movement(or just frustration with swtor?) had something to do with it.

So. I don't know.

Also. Those who began at launch are PAID core game owners. What of those who have, once free to play began, started and left. To me, emphasis on me, those are who names might someday be removed from.

I tried, btw, inviting 'Etria' to my guild but all the information is blank. I do not know if they are active or not. Just out of curiosity. ?

[kharmin.7683]

@Etria.3642 said:

Also. Those who began at launch are PAID core game owners. What of those who have, once free to play began, started and left. To me, emphasis on me, those are who names might someday be removed from.Why make this distinction?

[Etria.3642]

@kharmin.7683 said:

@Etria.3642 said:

Also. Those who began at launch are PAID core game owners. What of those who have, once free to play began, started and left. To me, emphasis on me, those are who names might someday be removed from.Why make this distinction?

Because I can easily hop on and create 100 accounts for free if I wanted. I use nothing but my own time and I give nothing to anet. A paid account has actually purchased something; a promise by anet not to take names is included in that purchase.

That said I forgot to mention something else. Of the two friends who absolutely no longer play--I have not given up on changing their minds. Of how many abandoned accounts, have friends who feel likewise?

Just like a few of my friends are trying to get me to return to swtor.

[ShiningSquirrel.3751]

@Etria.3642 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:

@Etria.3642 said:

Also. Those who began at launch are PAID core game owners. What of those who have, once free to play began, started and left. To me, emphasis on me, those are who names might someday be removed from.Why make this distinction?

Because I can easily hop on and create 100 accounts for free if I wanted. I use nothing but my own time and I give nothing to anet. A paid account has actually purchased something; a promise by anet not to take names is included in that purchase.

That said I forgot to mention something else. Of the two friends who absolutely no longer play--I have not given up on changing their minds. Of how many abandoned accounts, have friends who feel likewise?

Just like a few of my friends are trying to get me to return to swtor.

I have 2 friends in my guild who stopped playing very shortly after launch. After telling them what I was upto in game and showing some screen shots, both came back last month. If their names where stolen, (And yes, I am purposely using that word as no other word fits) they would not have come back.

[mercury ranique.2170]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Lunia.2736 said:tl;dr Lunia appears to be arguing for a very narrow release of names, restricted to accounts with single digit hours of playtime and haven't logged on since the first day (or maybe first week). That's a very different kettle of fish from what some have argued (in this thread and in the past), to wit: frequent purging of names, the kind which WoW started doing some time ago.

Further their intensity on the topic is in part due to their claimed familiarity with numbers from similar games. If I understand correctly, the suggestion is that there might be hundreds of thousands such accounts, nearly 7 years old with less than 7 hours of playtime. And (so the theory goes), only a tiny, tiny fraction of accounts that went 5 years with only 7 hours ended up returning, so few that (according to @Lunia.2736) it's unlikely to add to the support queue in any notable way.

I'm not sure I agree that it's worth doing. It sets an uncomfortable precedent, it

sounds

like it refutes one of the few promises ANet has ever made, it's definitely a big policy switch. And without some actual numbers, it's hard to tell just how many coveted names would be freed compared to how many players would be affected.

That said... It's worth giving some additional thought.

---

(My on-point responses below.)

! > I'm more confused as to why people are so defensive for someone who quit on day 1 over 7 years ago to keep their names on their level 1/2 placeholder characters that will never see the light of the day.! So is it your suggestion to only purge the names of people who played the first week and never returned since? The impression I've gotten from your strong advocacy on the topic is that you had in mind a release of names after 2-3 years of activity. Those are very different proposals.!! > I believe people are overreacting (acting as if they'd lose their names themselves, even tho they're posting here so they wouldn't be flagged inactive to begin with)! You seem to be equally underreacting: everyone knows people who have left & returned. Nearly everyone can imagine a situation in which they wouldn't be able to play for long periods of time, including (for just one example) folks who are on standby in their national military.!! > and underestimating the amount of dormant launch accounts every game has. There's a lot of people who buy a game, try it out, don't like the core of it and quit forever.! That's likely to be true. The problem is that we can't tell the difference between those who "don't like it and won't ever return" from those who "don't like it and end up returning anyhow, because they finally saw the light." (Both of which happen.)!! > What purpose is there to let them hold on to short/cool names simply because they were there early on if they are never gonna get any use. Yes, some might return to the game after 7-8 years, but that percentage is generally rather small.! If you have numbers you can put on that, I'd love to see them. Is it 100 accounts? 1000 accounts? 1000000 accounts? How many people would be too many in your opinion? If the "percentage is rather small," how much difference would it make to release those names? How many of those reserved names are coveted by others in the first place?!! > If you've ever done any database work on any MMO game servers you'll see a massive amount of accounts that have a creation date of 10th March and last activity 10th or 11th March.! I haven't done any db work on MMO game servers. I have done social science stats and it wouldn't surprise me to see some interesting curves, with steep drop offs. However, without the numbers for

this

game, I'm not inclined to speculate.!! >! > Names, especially short and memorable ones, carry a value to most people, besides those who name themselves Xzhsdhagdsuj and are okay with that of course. However, those short and memorable names are a limited resource and most companies see the value in them. Hence why they'd rather satisfy an active player with a nice name and make them pay for a name change than letting it rot on a dormant account. Letting it stay there is untapped potential and revenue.! Again, I ask: are you only recommending a purge of names created day 1? (or let's say from Launch-3 = Headstart to Launch+5, about a week)!! > > Do you agree this would require considerable effort on ANet's part? (e.g. choose parameters, write script, test script, run script, deal with increased support queues, take a hit in public relations for changing their mind). By your own admission, the benefits are limited to a narrow subset of the community.! >! > The script itself could be made by any decent developer in no time, that wouldn't be an issue.! Writing scripts is easy; any decent developer can do those, true.! Validating scripts is not; any decent developer knows that, too. (I can't tell you how many times I've seen people good, even excellent, at writing code, made one tiny mistake that led to a script doing way too much or way too little.)! My position, therefore, is that if "the script itself" is not an issue in terms of planning, then it will end up being an issue in the long term.!! (There's a case in point for the API changes made this month, plus the Scholar Atli script that ensures people don't get GW1 titles in GW2 unless they are confirmed to earn them. Both involved relatively straightforward situations in which a small miscalculation has led to notable impacts requiring clean up.)!! > Increased support queues? I mean, that assumes that the people who quit the game on a day 1 to actually return and care about the name and/or character.! Again, I point out the impression left is that you advocating purging the way other games do. You mentioned "other MMOs," and the obvious one that has been mentioned here is WoW, which purges names from accounts without activity through just two expansions (roughly 4-5 years).!! > From personal experience on database work on game servers this percentage is rather minuscule.! I think it would have helped a lot if you had anchored your original idea with (a) your experience and (b) with actual numbers rather than the handwaving that is typical of forum discussions. (To be fair, it's also typical of political discussions that take place even in national legislatures, so it's not as if there's no precedent.)!! > Sure, Guild Wars 2 might be a rare exception somehow, but I kinda doubt it. Especially with all the problems this game had at launch and with the amount of Guild Wars 1 players who wanted it this game to be like Guild Wars 1, tried it out, saw it wasn't anything like it and never touched it again since. That might even cause the game to have even more dead and dormant accounts than fresh IPs would.! That's plausible.! (Should I again mention that the impression given was a bigger purge than just day 1 accounts?)!! > Personally if I quit a game right away and came back after over 7 years and lost my name "Bob" due to inactivity I'd only blame myself.! Sure. Probably same for me. On the other hand, you don't seem like most people and I'd hesitate to set policies based on your choices (or mine).!! > My argument is less about the shortage of names (since surnames and spaces easily solve that problem) and more about the accidental camping of valuable names on dormant accounts as explained above. I don't think this game is gonna run out of names for quite a while, at least if you use your space bar.! I so wish you had started out your first post with this comment. I know I can only speak for myself (and that I've said this half a dozen times)... I was 100% sure you were talking about biennial purging of names, not a one-time release.!!

I know this thread is tl;dr and arguments for any kind of name change is buried in those against, but that is an omen as well about how the community feels

[Mewcifer.5198]

@"wasss.1208" said:The argument that "WoW has namepurging" is stupid. When I tried to create a character there, I spent a hour trying to name my character something without accents, then another 10-20 minutes copypasting random names from generators.Here, I can give a character a different title if the one I want is already taken. I only had this problem once, out of my 14 characters (9 asuras), thus I have a character named "Lulu The Fearsome", instead "Lulu The Brave". Here as long as you have something original, you can easily pass without accents.

Hello there, might I interest you in a guild. It is called The Citadel of Lulus and I believe you would feel right at home.

And to remain on topic, I want to bring up again. That I am part of a guild where everyone has at least one character with the name Lulu with just a different title in front (usually relating to their class). Names aren't that hard. Being allowed spaces makes it pretty easy to just slightly adjust a name with a title or surname.

I highly doubt that names in GW2 have become scarce to the point that a name purge is necessary.

[Bloodstealer.5978]

@robertthebard.8150 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:

@Lunia.2736 said:I merely support a common practice in MMORPGs.Is it really? Is it a common practice across the entire genre of MMORPGs? Not trying to be trollish -- I just don't know and am curious as to how you came to this conclusion.

There are games that do it, this is a fact, but, it's not as common as we're being led to believe. I didn't play swtor for over a year, and while I had to do some shuffling due to a merge, my names were still intact. I've kept the same names on characters in DDO, largely because Turbine, and then Standing Stone Games refuses to go down this path, at least so far, and in Rappelz, my names have been intact despite an 8 year absence. The last time I logged into Aion, which was at some point last year, despite a long absence, my character names were intact, although I did have to reclaim my legion name, because the server merges there merged two servers where we had established the legion.

I have played through both those MMO's.. SWTOR name changes were due to forced server merges where name duplication became an issue, so BW enforced policy as to who got to keep and not.The result of the server merge + naming policy + guild naming issues was one of the biggest messes I have come across tbh, but noting the band aid approach that was taking in the year leading up to the mergers I was not all that surprised.DDO fared much better even when the DDO:EU closed down I was able to port all my characters (lots - former DDO@EU beta player+10) without a single hitch, even got inventory and guild bank stuff ported, it was a modern day MMO miracle and there were zero issues that I knew of and I knew many players from that game, I loved it... still occasionally pop back to catch up with things).. so this idea that name reallocation is a common place or and MMO standard, is simply garbage imo and those that have taken that path maybe decided to in line with F2P policy rather than name shortages to encourage players to keep concurrent logins as high as possible for as long as possible.

[Bloodstealer.5978]

@Mewcifer.5198 said:

@"wasss.1208" said:The argument that "WoW has namepurging" is stupid. When I tried to create a character there, I spent a hour trying to name my character something without accents, then another 10-20 minutes copypasting random names from generators.Here, I can give a character a different title if the one I want is already taken. I only had this problem once, out of my 14 characters (9 asuras), thus I have a character named "Lulu The Fearsome", instead "Lulu The Brave". Here as long as you have something original, you can easily pass without accents.

Hello there, might I interest you in a guild. It is called The Citadel of Lulus and I believe you would feel right at home.

And to remain on topic, I want to bring up again. That I am part of a guild where everyone has at least one character with the name Lulu with just a different title in front (usually relating to their class). Names aren't that hard. Being allowed spaces makes it pretty easy to just slightly adjust a name with a title or surname.

I highly doubt that names in GW2 have become scarce to the point that a name purge is necessary.

But, but.. I want BoB.. I don't want B o B or Sir BoB.. just BoB.. so ANET must reallocate it NAOW! :d

[Astralporing.1957]

@Lunia.2736 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Lunia.2736 wroteAll the names I'm interested in are on what are considered active accounts by the parameters I've given. I would not get any of the names I'm interested in.I don't mean to seem argumentative. I'm just having trouble understanding the passion for removing names from anyone's account.

I don't know if I'd call it passion. I'd call it confusion. I'm more confused as to why people are so defensive (going as far as risking their forum account by being toxic on a game they love) for someone who quit on day 1 over 7 years ago to keep their names on their level 1/2 placeholder characters that will never see the light of the day.Because we all know it wouldn't end with only such characters. There'd simply no point, as there's very few accounts matching this description. And of course once we started taking names away, people would start saying that 7 years and level 2 aren't enough. Surely 6 years of absence and characters no higher than level 5 should qualify as well. What about 5 years and level 10? 3 years and level 30? One year and level 50? What would be a reasonable boundary?

Yes, some might return to the game after 7-8 years, but that percentage is generally rather small.So is the percentage of people that would be satisfied if we were to strip those names from inactives. You're talking as if it's some big, widespread problem, when it isn't. Most players are perfectly fine with the system as it is now.

Increased support queues? I mean, that assumes that the people who quit the game on a day 1 to actually return and care about the name and/or character. From personal experience on database work on game servers this percentage is rather minuscule.The game has now over 11 million acounts. Most of them inactive. Even a tiny percentage of that number still results in significant absolute numbers. Seriously, you're practically guaranteeing that way that anyone returning to the game will end up mailing support.

Personally if I quit a game right away and came back after over 7 years and lost my name "Bob" due to inactivity I'd only blame myself.What about 3 years (see my first answer) and a name that would more resonate with you than "Bob"?

My argument is less about the shortage of names (since surnames and spaces easily solve that problem) and more about the accidental camping of valuable names on dormant accounts as explained above.Personally, i don't think it is as big of a problem as some people try to make out of it. Certainly not big enough to warrant changing an old-standing (and generally liked) policy.

[Etria.3642]

I would like to know how many accounts it would be, to be honest. I have seen people make guesses(including the poster above me) but unless they work for Arenanet I can't see how they would know.

I'm neither for nor against the practice, btw, just curious. Sure there are names I'd like but I'm also happy with the names I currently have.

[Graymalkyn.8076]

If you're going for a common name (especially some type of honorific of a well known person, character, etc,) then yes, it's going to be quite difficult to do (unless you want something like XXXJacksparrowXXX...which I personally think shows ZERO creativity). But if you're willing to take a little time to look into it, then there's plenty of good names left. I tend to go with RL norse names for my Norns and some combination of RL historical names for my humans, and have very little trouble getting names I like. Admittedly, if you want to follow strict naming conventions for Asura, it can get tricky, but even those, with a little creativity, can be done. For the Sylvari...use an online elven name generator. A lot of those names are taken, but a lot aren't.

[Fremtid.3528]

I had to see...so i added OP ingame to see what the name of the char OP was on ingame to see the type of names OP wants. OP was on a char named "Dj Backtrack". For what it's worth.