Name "Reclaiming"

[Steelclaw]

There are two major issues that I can think of, both of which have been mentioned already.

- Confusion over a 'new' character having an 'old' character's name.
- Reclaiming a character's name will make the owner not want to come back.

The first one is kind of difficult to address. How do you tell everyone that cares? How do you not tell the ones that don't? How do you know who to tell? The best I can think of right now in my groggy state is to create a log that's accessible to current players. This log lists the date of the reclaim, the name reclaimed and how long the name was associated with its previous biote. I don't expect this to be a very large list, so it's probably fair to say that it's perpetual.

Now, reclaiming a character name would probably make the owner not want to come back. It's like coming in to work and seeing someone else working at your desk -- the message is "you're not wanted". Thus, the reclaim process should be limited to not /inactive/ accounts, but accounts that /are not returning/. In other words, a fixed period of inactivity isn't sufficient. Let me suggest an alternative way of determining eligiblity for a reclaim. (This takes place after the 'new' player makes the request.)

0) If the account has an active sub, the process stops here.

1a) Ask the 'old' player what they want to do. If they say they're not coming back, the reclaim can begin immediately. While waiting for a reply, proceed.

1b) See when the /player/ (not the character) has last 'accessed' an account. By this, I mean the last time they used the forum (as an authenticated user), logged into the support site, submitted a ticket, logged into the login site, or logged into the ga%me (remember, it was "free to play" for a little over a year).

2) If the most recent access was less than 2 months ago, the reclaim process stops here. Inform the 'new' player that they can try again, but not before <2 months after last known access>. ... UNLESS the player is being abusive of this mechanism and is logging in just to keep their character name. In that case, the reclaim can proceed.

3) Examine all of the characters associated with the 'old' player. For each character, calculate the play time : character age ratio. If any character has a ratio of 0.02 or higher (about 1h of play per 2 days average), the reclaim process stops here. Extrapolate how long it would take for the highest ratio to drop below this threshold, and inform the 'new' player that they can try again when that happens.

4) At this point, wait for the NART to expire.


As an aside, providing a list of possibly inactive names to choose from does give hints about your overall player population. It's probably better if the 'new' player submits a list of 1-5 names per character that they wish to initiate a reclaim on.

There's a third issue: dead players.
I know that there are at least two dedicated players who have passed away. I don't know if reclaiming their character names is a good idea. Even if it's made into policy, that's not going to stop ill feelings for the 'new' player if they take the name of a friend who passed away.

[Sigi]

I think it's a good idea, if you want to keep your name, you have to pay your subscription, just like with a plot.

About the confusion, it would be a real miracle if the one who wants the name also looks exactly the same as the original "owner".

Dead players, yes I can see that might be a touchy subject, but like in real life I don't blame someone for having the same name as my father who died.

[rizo/nawkia]

what if we started getting like a sudden rush of new players, we might have to resort to numbers or somethin like that???????

i am up for this idea just tryin to help iron out some details:P

-6-12month inactivate id say do the nart thing(steelclaw pretty much said the rest)

[Silverblaze]

I never thought about the dead player thing....

I can see ill will towards someone who took up a namesake.

Can also see th point that it is just a name...

Lots of work involved just to change or reclaim a name eh? I think, steelclaw said it pretty well and I trust it will be handled delicately and well.

[aine]

I think that character names, like plots, should be reserved only for paying customers (and military personnel who have noticed the company regarding their status).

Several months is a more than generous amount of time to give people to pay for a product if they wish to do so at all. Few other products (and let's face it, an MMORPG is a product sold to consumers), would be held in reserve for any length of time, let alone indefinitely, for a non-paying "customer".

As Sigi pointed out, the odds of a new char being exactly like the one who used that name are slim, and I think that most of us would not automatically assume without asking that an old player had awakened after (possibly) years, particularly as we will all know that name reclamations had taken place.

As for dead players...if I were to pass away (As indeed, I will do some day), I would be delighted to know (not that I would know, of course) that someone was using the name Aine. I would like to think that my friends would take no offense and would offer the same kindness to the new "Aine" as they did to me (and that is a LOT of kindness). Perhaps even seeing my name float by over someone else's head would keep me alive in their memories!

[Arcat]

Excellent idea.

[Amecha]

I think that character names, like plots, should be reserved only for paying customers (and military personnel who have noticed the company regarding their status).

Several months is a more than generous amount of time to give people to pay for a product if they wish to do so at all. Few other products (and let's face it, an MMORPG is a product sold to consumers), would be held in reserve for any length of time, let alone indefinitely, for a non-paying "customer".

I agree with that. There are few things I find harder than naming new characters because someone else who hasn't had an active subscription for months has the name in a file lost somewhere in a sea of dead characters. It's a lot like the plot reclamation; if someone who isn't paying for it has it, but someone who will pay for it wants it, it only makes sense to give it to the one who will pay for and use it.

Yes it will be difficult at first to get used to these new players having the names of our old friends, but in the long run it will be worth it.

How long is considered abandonment? A few months, a year? After a few months without any subscription or interest in renewing the subscription, I would consider the game forgotten. E-mailing those who hold the subscription with a warning to resubscribe or lose their name and plot ownership should be more than enough effort. Some players have just moved on.

[velveeta]

i agree with amecha and aine - i have belonged to many online games (little free browser games, not mmo) and one way i know i am done with it is when i get reminder emails and totally ignore them.
whether plots or names, if every reasonable effort has been made and no contact/plans have been made regarding, then i consider that name or plot to be free game for a paying user.

if i ain't playing velveeta, what right do i have to stop someone else from doing so?

[Vahrokh]

"Changing their name, will make returning players feel not wanted".

Everything in life is a balance and a compromise.

For one that returns, sees his name taken and quits, there'll be 10 that did not leave and payed all the time and will be even more enticed to stay, seeing their name can be restored.

The name is very important, just read any of many novels about the power of the True Name etc. I would have 1/10 of the willingness to play if I'd lose my identity to someone who quit anyway.

[Cerjar]

I think there is another problem, that has to do with the name reclamation: Every character that once had been created on the servers needs space in the database. As bigger the database itself, as slower it get, the maintenance needs more time, updates as well. I believe you should not only consider to reclaim names, you should also think about deleting characters after at least 2 or 3 years inactivity.

I know that behind every once created character is a potential coming-back-costumer, but as youself said finding a name for a new character is getting harder. I do know that every character has a huge amount of data, i do not know if this is a real problem, but i would believe that it can help making the database faster again.

A compromise could be: Delete only characters on accounts with any rating below 20 over all characters, or on never paid trial accounts.

Another technical solution, with quite some additional coding and maintenance: Do not delete the characters, just move them into a external database (as similar to the Unity-Database now) that keeps characters until they got "called" back by someone who is coming back. But this database would of course need also its own updates. Some of this technique should be already there: Blight Character Copy.

[Garfonso]

Maybe it would be a good idea to start thinking about deleting "old" (meaning being not paid for X Months, I'd say X = 48 would be a good start, because of the EI desaster and so on, maybe reduce that a bit in future) accounts?

Yes, there are people out there, that won't come back, because they found a new home somewhere else or what ever. (Yes there are people that died. Of course we should keep them in memory... but won't you use their RL names again? Will you let their house stand empty? Never use their room for something different? Live has to go one sometime, what will stay is the memory. We could, again, try to persuade VI to create them keepsake somewhere, for example create a gravestone somewhere with the name on it, do that on all shards as world item. In my opinion that would be even better than keeping the character and name for all time.)

Of course you could lose customers, when deleting their chars, they worked so long on... (question stays why they are not playing anymore, if they still care for their chars). A compromise would be just to delete "old" trial accounts that never had any paid subscription in it (of course, write them some e-mail before you delete them and so on..). They are very likely never to return...

That would solve at least part of the naming issue in my eyes.

Deleting old accounts & chars is not uncommon for MMORPGs and none of those that do delete old accounts died because of it... even Games Network, the former EU host of HZ, had something in their policy about deletion of inactive accounts & characters... it was never activated but they allowed this course of action for themselves.

Maybe a little clean up of the database could be very healthy for the servers?

Yes, I know, many of you won't like that idea. But I thought, I just throw it in here. Just my 2cent.

[awdz]

Although there are some names that I think should be archived - Roxi being one of them, for Order shard, for example - I do support the names reclamation idea. If someone has not played since launch, certainly I think most have forgotten them. Perhaps the developers could use the original shards merge as the cut off, since that was the first time name conflicts had to be dealt with?

[Theros Ironfeld]

clap clap clap
by all means reclaim the names of the fallen
by all means allow newbies to take ol sweats handles

i can just see a new ' illyist ' or ' Ivor Forkbeard ' or ' Flsssssh ' or even dare i say it ' Huillam DeAverc '

lets see a new ' Theros Ironfeld '

oh i can see the faces of the Conclave & the Brotherhood when they read this gem

absolutely brilliant idea

[C`gan]

Garfonso, take a stroll around the coastline of Back Bay sometime, if you will. There you will find a little dwarven statue looking out towards the sea.

After reading this far, I'm inclined to agree that characters belonging to accounts that were not kept active before merger should be considered up for grabs. I also think that by warehousing the data of those accounts somewhere in a separate, "inactive" database may very well be helpful for database management.

Another thought I had while reading this. How do you handle a return? I know this is an extremum example. Player 1 cancels account sometime in distant past. Player 2 puts in request for name. Request goes through. What happens if Player 1 returns some months or years after that?

Or how about this? Same two players as first example, only both decide to cancel accounts. Some months later, Player 3 puts in request for the same name. Since you can't have two characters with Name_Shard, how do things move along? Does Player 1 get Name_Shard_Shard?

[Zexoin]

Or how about this? Same two players as first example, only both decide to cancel accounts. Some months later, Player 3 puts in request for the same name. Since you can't have two characters with Name_Shard, how do things move along? Does Player 1 get Name_Shard_Shard?

I have multiple copies of Zex on Blight, the last one is Zexoin_order_4. So I think it'll be the same if the name reclaiming is done.

[Galilee]

Yes, a number can easily solve that potential issue.
As to loosing names... they wouldn't... they keep their name, they just have the shard (and possibly number) behind their still-existing-as-always name.

Now that won't be fun, if they would ever return, that _shard. But it would nót be as if their name was taken away; they would just have to accept to 'share' their name with someone else. That would be the price to pay for not paying a subscription for a very long time (I wóuld be in favour of the abandonment being at least 1 year; maybe 2 even).

[Garfonso]

Hm.. maybe implement some option into the client, that the _shard (and ggf. _shard_X) won't be shown in your own floating name on your client. For me that was always the most important location where I had to like my name and I couldn't stand a _shard there, although I could live with it while chatting or something else...

[Pharcellus]

OK. I have read the thread, and I have gone in opinion to both extremes.

Personally, I feel that my names are *mine*. I don't want a freakin' _Order appended to them on my HOME shard. I don't mind it being appended for things like my Blight copies. That's fair for the Blight players. They were there first.

That said, I understand that the Unity players don't have a Home shard anymore. However, that's not the fault of the players on the remaining shards. A part of me says you should be grateful that you can play at all, and the _Unity thing is a pretty petty thing to start making demands of your new shardmates over. Another part of me understands that a character name is an important thing to a lot of people, as mine is to me.

I also don't want to see people abusing this by requesting names of old characters who are well-known by active players and come in trying to masquerade as them. Yes, I know it is against the rules, as it comes under harassment, but I don't want to enable it in the first place. Ounce of prevention and all that rot.

It is also one of my long-standing pet peeves that only FIRST names are unique in Horizons err... I mean "Istaria". Surnames are merely decorative. Might as well not have them at all. Has the dev team thought about fixing that oversight themselves? Probably would eliminate this whole issue with some fairly minor fixes.

It is no less offensive, even moreso, for someone who has lived their lives on a shard to have _Shard added, than it is for you Unity players to have _Unity added.

However, if you are bound and determined to strip players of their names, there should be some REALLY REALLY strict rules in place.

1) Try to contact the original player and get PERMISSION to release the name. If permission is given, then no issue. This should ideally be done with multiple requests over a period of months. DO NOT phrase it in the context of returning being a requirement to keep the name. That will surely guarantee they won't ever come back.

2) If you don't get a response to the permission requests, then any character which has an active playtime more than some LOW number of hours (like 100) or is on a non-converted trial account is subject to "name reclamation". This gets takes care of the trialees who never converted.

3) If the account has been used recently (within 6 months), or has ANY character on it over 500 hours (or 1000), then all the characters on it are NOT eligible for reclamation.

I also find it a tad silly people not being able to create unique names (except here in Istaria, because of the first-name-only issue ). I have 21 characters in Guild Wars. NOT ONCE have I ever had a name collision. They have over FIVE MILLION ACCOUNTS active, there is only one namespace, and each account can have from 4 to any number of characters on it. Yeah, some of the more popular names are taken. Big deal. You don't need to be known as "Gandalf the Grey", OK?

[Sigi]

That said, I understand that the Unity players don't have a Home shard anymore. However, that's not the fault of the players on the remaining shards. A part of me says you should be grateful that you can play at all, and the _Unity thing is a pretty petty thing to start making demands of your new shardmates over. Another part of me understands that a character name is an important thing to a lot of people, as mine is to me.

Duh. Excuse me but this isn't a Unity thing. Don't know why you are so offensive, must be some personel thing but the name reclaiming is a general suggestion. Not a demand of any kind.

[Arietna]

Personally, I feel that my names are *mine*. I don't want a freakin' _Order appended to them on my HOME shard.

easy fix then. Keep subscribing.

The name change is clearly aimed at those who have LONG left Istaria. Those people WILL be contacted. If they can't be bothered to check email, check into the forums, or otherwise contact anyone in Istaria, then it's highly likely they'll never be back!

I thought about my own gaming history. I played EQ1 for over 5 years. I certainly clocked up over 1000 hours of playing. Would I ever go back? Not a chance! Anyone would be welcome to my character names, I'm certainly not going to need them again. So some of Pharcellus's comments about what "should" be considered I don't think are that valid. Even if a player clocked up 1000 hours 3 years ago and hasn't been back since, why should their feelings be considered if all reasonable contact has been made (and I would say a month is ample). They are not being given the ultimatum "if you don't resubscribe we'll delete your characters", they are being told "we're assuming you're not coming back at the moment, if you don't respond, we'll make a small adjustment to your character name". It's not that big a deal.

I don't want this turning into another "Unity vs the other shards" thread. Yes, this has been brought to the front I'd imagine because of some name conflicts with Unity (myself being one of them) but the issue still remains, whether the "Unity" situation had happened or not.

I started characters on Chaos LONG before Unity stopped. I tried to get Ariadne on Chaos - but it was taken. I have NEVER seen the "original" Ariadne in game, so I do actually resent the fact that because of someone who may well have only even taken a 7 day trial, I can never be "me".

What people seem to be getting so upset by is the fact that long time inactive players, who'll probably never return, are going to lose their identities? Bluntly, so WHAT? If they never return (and they will get quite a bit of time to respond) then what on earth is the point of reserving their name? If someone returns 2 years down the line, they should be grateful their characters still exist, and having _(shardname) appended seems like a very small price to pay for not bothering to pay or log in for 2 years (plus whatever time they have already gone).

For those who are worried about "famous" characters being taken over - for goodness sake, Virtrium have SAID they'll publish a list of names that are available. If you feel that strongly about any of them TELL VIRTRIUM!! They are decent people, and if you have a good case, I'm sure they'll take the names off the "available" list.

If I was a new player and tried all of my favourite "identity" names, and found they were all taken, I'd be miffed, but probably adopt a new one. If I was having an off day I might get extremely grumpy and decide never to play the game (not at all like me, but quite possibly like some of the overreactions shown on this thread so far).

Are we trying to move on? Are we trying to attract new players, and get Istaria growing again, or do we really want it to stagnate, hoping against all odds that players who are long gone might for some bizarre reason change their mind?