Name "Reclaiming"

[Favoran]

Sub-based surnames might work out in some cases, but if you play largely on Order like myself, you don't necessarily want every single character you make to be related. I don't know that anyone on Chaos would care as much unless they didn't want two alts to be associated with each other.

Additionally, there's the fact that some people don't even bother to use surnames.

[Adwene]

I had a good think about this...

I personally think any character that has a /played of more than 1000 hours (approx 42 days) should never be subject to having its name reclaimed.

Reguardless of what other rules of reclaiming names occur.

1000 hours of IN game time is very significant amount of time to establish friends and build a reputation/idenity.

[Amerelium]

...after what, 3-4 years, I have STILL not seen the dragon that took the name Ancalagon the Black...

[awdz]

do name reclamation after one week for every hour they spent in istaria has passed since they last logged in?
that would keep my name safe for... let's see... about 124 years...

[Mysk]

No name should be protected FOREVER. That would be as wrong as releasing old names too early.

I remember very well the times when a new game came out and I rushed to get my nickname. And in half of the games someone else took my name. So why should someone get the right to keep a name forever (even when not playing anymore!!!) just because she/he was maybe an hour faster at beginning of the game or just lucky to be on the server that will be the main server that other server will be merged into? I can understand that if someone played for years in a game, it is alright to protect the name for a while. But when someone decided to stop playing, the right of the name should be released after a reasonable time. And especially when server are merged, players with the same nickname should have high rights to get a name back, when the name is still occupied by someone who hasn't played (and payed) for months or even years. So I am definitely for releasing old nicknames. Make it a waiting period of 6 months or so, and then noone can complain. Put a prefix or something to the old character and thats it.

[SkSlyr]

I believe the bulk of the names got locked, when the merge happend.
all the matching names between 6-8 servers, I forget, Locked. Never to be seen again..

[Landowyn]

This is long overdue. I am certain that some names are reserved by people who signed in the opening month, created 3 or 4 characters and played the characters for less than a month and in some cases, only a few hours. Anarchy Online used to do a name sweep every six months or so, deleting all level 1 characters.

This happened to me recently in Lord of the Rings Online, when I transfered my character named Bludgeon to a new server to play with some friends. He showed up at Bludgeon_1 when I logged in, so I renamed him. I then put "Bludgeon" on my friends list, and, lo and behold, he was level 1 and was created on launch day and hadn't played since. Now that's a crock.

Newcomers are more than welcome to use my old Everquest (the original) names if they so choose. I'm not going back.

[Theolaerynn]

So here is a question:

Why is it that a game with a very small player base is considering this, when games with much larger populations (to say the least) don't have an issue with it?

I think this is a poor idea.

As to the derailment concerning who owns the name, it is a matter of intellectual property. If it is an original work, meaning it wasn't copied from someone else, the player owns it. Pretty simple, pretty straight forward. Doesn't matter what the EULA says.

[Landowyn]

So here is a question:

Why is it that a game with a very small player base is considering this, when games with much larger populations (to say the least) don't have an issue with it?

I think this is a poor idea.

As to the derailment concerning who owns the name, it is a matter of intellectual property. If it is an original work, meaning it wasn't copied from someone else, the player owns it. Pretty simple, pretty straight forward. Doesn't matter what the EULA says.

The game may have a small player base at the moment, but that wasn't always the case. There were thousands of people at launch, all with the opportunity to tie up 5 or 6 names.

As far as "owning" your original unique name ... balderdash. The company that owns the game owns the whole shebang. And, as I said previously, some games do reclaim names.

[Hrough]

Well, if you want to get technical about it, you own the name, Virtrium owns the right to use any names in game that a character has been registered with, down to and including removing it from your character and allowing another to have it. If you don't like that, then don't put your super-special names into games. Other people may have already come up with the same name themselves - and they have, that is the current problem. It's not so much who owns what name, it's who is currently using that name, and someone who is not playing nor paying and hasn't been for a good deal of time is not using that name.

Honestly, it could be worse. We're lucky games like Istaria allow us to come back to our accounts after we cancel. I just canceled my FFXI sub as I haven't been playing it (not enough time), and lost my character because of it (good thing she was only level 5, but that's what I mean...)

[Takora Drakan]

Yep in some games, after a time, they even delete your account if you don't use it, friends told me even Age of Conan does that.

[Mysk]

As to the derailment concerning who owns the name, it is a matter of intellectual property. If it is an original work, meaning it wasn't copied from someone else, the player owns it. Pretty simple, pretty straight forward. Doesn't matter what the EULA says.

No offense, but your argument might backfire. Who determines if a nickname was original? I just read your good-bye message in this forum. If your name is really so original, why two other players also wanted to claim that name after server merge? Were you not the lucky one just because you were quicker? Couldn't it be that they also thought of that nickname on their own? Maybe they even had that nickname longer than you. What about their rights then? Maybe you should be thankful that you were able to keep playing with your nickname while 2 others were probably extremely frustrated.

I understand of course that if you played a game for such a long time, that it feels wrong that maybe someone else might run around with your name in the future. That's an argument that I really can understand and that's why I say that if a reclaimation ever happens that there has to be a long waiting period after someone left. But I don't buy the argument that a nickname is a property. There are probably hundreds of millions of players out there in the world. You can bet that most of the nicknames are not unique.

That's why I still think this is the way to go: if someone decides to leave this game and won't pay any longer, then it should be possible to reclaim that name (not right away but after an appropriate waiting period).

[Teto Frum]

This has no bearing on me at all, doubt my name would ever be used by anyone else, plus this gnomekindle will be my last visit. That being said while so many that want to play are on sidelines due too vista issues, name reclaiming seems a bad idea to me, after a vista fix if there is ever one, than im for it.

Lets get everyone back ingame that wants too play before we start stealing names, we held of plots until unity got here, bad enough vista users lost their plots, leave them their names till developers say vista users will never play our game or they have a fix.

[Hrough]

This has no bearing on me at all, doubt my name would ever be used by anyone else, plus this gnomekindle will be my last visit. That being said while so many that want to play are on sidelines due too vista issues, name reclaiming seems a bad idea to me, after a vista fix if there is ever one, than im for it.

Lets get everyone back ingame that wants too play before we start stealing names, we held of plots until unity got here, bad enough vista users lost their plots, leave them their names till developers say vista users will never play our game or they have a fix.

Vista users didn't have to lose their plots. They got the same warning email as the rest of us, and they could have kicked their subscription back in if it meant enough to them. Cruel, I know, to have to pay for a game you cannot play due to the terrible beast that is Vista, but they had the option to protect their in-game assets.

[LaughingOtter]

Theo, you can't own (trademark or copyright) a name. You can trademark an identity (Nike, the shoe company) and you can copyright a character (Bugs Bunny or Darth Vader), because those are specific representations which include identifying elements that are unique to each.

Virtrium owns all the data that comprises the game, including everything connected to your character's biote number. If you decide to create an original work which has a character that shares a name with your in-game character, then you own by copyright the character in your original work. Virtrium still owns your in-game character; however, as long as your original work has nothing to do with Istaria, Virtrium has no claim on any aspect of it, including the character name.