Devs name reclaim event idea!

A Name Purge is about regular game maintenance. It is a regular part of the most successful MMOs in operation (such as World of Warcraft, which holds regular name purges as a part of it's game maintenance). It's essentially just housekeeping. Any business that hopes to be profittable should prioritize the customers that they have currently as more important than customers that left years ago with no sign of returning.

It's not about getting the names you want. It's about freeing up names that are not being used.

Even if you have the name you want, the game will be better received and look less trashy to new players if there are more players with real names and fewer with XXXXXXXXXXXl33t5p34kXXXXXXXXXXXX for a name.

When flying through the Watchtower or the House of Legends, or joining in on a random queue, results in the vast majority of players we see having excessive extra characters added to their name but serving no purpose, it makes the game look tacky and of lower quality. It draws attention to an archaic naming system that was poorly implemented in the beginning and became dated very quickly. it's a big red flag of "this game is old and has not been well maintained."

We have tens of thousands of inactive accounts out there. We have hundreds of thousands of characters that have been abandoned. Cleaning up the mess after people leave is a normal part of maintenance. This is like bussing tables after people leave a restaurant, or facing product at the end of a day in a store, or clearing a cache on a web browser.

DCUO successfully implemented a name purge previously with very simple parameters. If the account was not subscribed, and if the account had not been logged into within the previous 18 months, then the character's names were tagged and the original names were released back into the wild to be used by new customers.

And it worked. Thousands of names were successfully freed up from long-dead accounts. Just because not everyone got the name that they wanted doesn't mean that the purge was not successful. The purge served it's purpose expertly; it freed up names from defuct accounts.

The only changes that I would make would be:

- The Name Purge should be ongoing, not a one-time event. Instead of doing it at a single day and time, it should constantly be happening. "This account has been inactive for 18 months. Time to purge these names."

- After a name is released to the wild, give a 7 day grace period where the name can only be claimed by use of a Namechange Token, not a new character. In doing so, anyone purged can use the gifted namechange token to take it back should they return soon after. Alternatively, people who want the name can prioritize them to actually use them, and people who just want to make new accounts to squat on names and try to sell them will have to pay $10 a pop or let the paying customers have first dibs.

Didn't the devs recently say it was never going to happen?

I thought I remembered them saying they had discussed it internally recently, but didn't reveal the specifics of that discussion.

From this thread:
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/dc...e-name-reclaim-now.318997/page-2#post-4454045

I agree with Brit on this one. If a periodic purge were done on a regular basis (like once a year or after a period of time) there wouldn't be the whole 'gold rush' scramble to grab up all the freed up names. It's only an issue because we don't do it as part of regular maintenance.

If you don't log into your account for say 365 days, or 2 years even, your names are up for grabs....not a 1 day event, but ongoing maintenance. No one is camping out at the toon creator every day checking and re-checking to see if 'tazerface' becomes available...maybe not today....maybe not tomorrow....but one of these days...


BTW...I've never changed a name, I've never sold a name and have no toons holding on to names for sale. I just don't see any issue with the practice going into effect. And in the end if it generates income for DBG thats another 'by choice' thing(like non-feat styles) vs something forced on us....yeah, I'm for it.

i support this idea and im bumping this thread

Why do you care if someone take your character name if you cant be bothered to login to your account once within 547 days?

On a free to play game that offers all of its content for free?

If you cannot be bothered to login at all, then you clearly don't care about it that much.

A similar idea... https://www.wordhippo.com

Why do you care if i request to take your name if you dont care enough to login?

Totally against this is immoral, under the pretext that you can't build your nickname you would have to steal ours and all that to probably take the name of an existing superhero? no, not ok for that!

Besides, I find that the names of the superheroes should never have been available for the players and to be preserved, moreover, the invisible characters on the nicks should not be tolerated any more, because that profits the speed hacker to be invisible...

Immoral? If you actually cared about your name youd use it. So if you decide to quit the game and never come back, you name should just be locked to the server and nobody else should be able to use it even if you don't want it yourself until the game shuts down?

You cant really defend why you think your name shouldnt be able to be taken if you decide not to use it outside of a selfish want for preservation even if you have no intention of using it yourself.

I've had friends come back to this game after a 2-3 year break, so what you're suggesting because you have no imagination of your own is to take their names because they haven't logged in, in a period acceptable to you. what a joke. I say if you can't think of a name for yourself on your own then you use a name generator. Why should people who have taken a break from the game lose their characters name because you don't have an imagination.

That wasn't a name purge. It was a server merge. There were inevitably going to be name collisions between PS and PC accounts, so that was a solution to that issue, not the issue of names being used by "inactive" accounts. Totally different animal.

If its no big deal, then why can't your friends who don't play for years at a time just "get creative" and make new names?

Get Ready For The DCUO Name Reclaim 2015! | DC Universe Online

You are incorrect. It was a name purge, not attached to any form of server merger. Accounts which had been inactive for over 18 months had the names purged. You can read about it on DCUO's main website.

They DID a name purge previously. It is already coded and ready. It can be turned on again, as simple as turning on bonus XP or bonus marks. It requires nothing additional to be added to it; it did exactly what it intended the first time.

We are talking about an investment of zero additional resources, to commit to an action that better services their current customers and makes Dimensional Ink money for literally just turning it on.

There is no reason to not have this be a regular part of the game's maintenance.

Because people shouldn't be punished for taking a break, or lose their name because some cry baby is mad they didn't get to to it first.
Personally I've been playing this game since day 1, I'm the owner of the name Goku ( a highly sought after and mimic'd name) and take breaks frequently so i don't get overly burnt out....sometimes a few months, to maybe a year...I've spent thousands of dollars over the years on this game....
So please validate how, if I decide I want to take a break (for how ever long I deem appropriate), my name should be stripped from me to appease someone who "just wants to be Goku"

Because it shouldn't JUST be about primacy, it should also be about consistency.

If you can't be bothered to log in once in a while to preserve your name, you get no sympathy from me if you lose it.

Just login in every couple months. It's not an overly difficult process unless you rarely have access to a computer capable of launching the game. That way, you'll most likely be protected by any future name purges.

Before another name purge, I wanna see more restrictions on the deletion of characters. Make it a 6 week wait until that name can be created by someone else, but still allow the person who deleted the character to recover it from their account like normal. No one will ever have to see "Selling/Buying OG names" in the /trade chat again.

If they couldnt be bothered to login for once in those 2 years then they clearly stopped caring, when they come back they can make up a new name.