Hi, my name is.......

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Cicelee, Jul 20, 2020.

  1. Zamiam Augur


    How is not being able to go after someone with diplomatic immunity after they have committed murder or rap ing a woman "protecting everyone" ..
    Triconix likes this.
  2. Triconix Augur

    I'm going to say this for my closing argument because people on this thread apparently cannot give an actual sane comparsion. All they give are gross false equivalent comparisons and use that to try and justify why DPG should never purge anything. But since we are doing that, here's mine (even though it's going to highlight how ridiculous some of the justifications on here are):

    Did you know HIPAA doesn't require any retention period for medical records? I'll say that again in case people don't understand. Did you know HIPAA, the landmark act of 1996 enacted into federal law, creating the foundation for how all PII (personally identifiable information) is handled, maintained, and processed by all healthcare and health insurance companies DOES NOT have retention requirements for medical records? These requirements are delegated and set forth by state governments and differ greatly with some states being 5 years and some being above 10. Now knowing that, it's fully possible to walk into a doctor's office after 5 years to retrieve your medical records to find out your former doctor simply picked them up and shredded then after 5 years and 1 day. And now you want to argue "good business sense" with me? How about that for good business. "Oh you want your records about your previous cancer? Too bad, I shredded that 6 months ago."

    Now, please try to argue with a straight face and explain why if your medical records, arguably some of the most important documents of your person, are not protected by both Federal and state law for more than a dozen years that DPG should protect the name of a video game character indefinitely for a person who is no longer a customer? Not only that, but based on explanations that former customer is more entitled to that name simply because he, at some random point in time, created it first on that particular server. I'd love to hear this one.

    You know what? I'll give you an actual valid comparison to show you how ridiculous your claim of "good business sense" really is.

    Let's say you're a season ticket owner of the New York Giants. You've had these seats for 30 years, passed down from your grandfather, to your dad, to you. One year you decide they are not worth paying for and you give up the rights and cancel your ownership of the tickets.

    However, at the start of next season you arrive at the stadium, demand you receive tickets for those same seats because you realized they had incredible sentimental value to you because you used to go to every game with your dearly beloved grandpa whom just passed away and you'd like to have the tickets as a memoir to him.

    You know what the Giants are going to do? They are going to kindly tell you to F off in the nicest way possible because someone else purchased those tickets. They don't give a flying F how sentimental those seats are to you. They are going to offer you different seats, tell you to take or leave and if you leave they are going to wish you a good day and tell you not to let the door hit you on your way out. You know why? Because they care only about one thing: money. You know why? Because they are a business. They aren't your mommy saving your cute little pictures you drew when you were in kindergarten. You stopped paying for their services? They turned around and sold the tickets immediately to someone else because that's what they do. Based on what you expect them to do, they should've retained rights to those seats indefintely until you decided to come back or not. You know why that's bad? Because you'd have an empty F-ing stadium and the company wouldn't make any
    [IMG]
    Zamiam and Chopin.Xegony like this.
  3. Waring_McMarrin Augur


    How do you as a customer know if someone who has a name you want is an active customer of daybreak or not? The best you can do is make an assumption based on being able to find the character online or not.

    What you are asking is for Daybreak to take time away from other CS activities to investigate and determine if an account is active or inactive for the purpose of someone keeping a name after a voluntary name change.

    As for your comparison to medical records there is a difference in places where the retention policy is clearly defined and where it isn't and there is a longstanding history of not removing or changing old character names outside of server merges.
    Yinla likes this.
  4. Cicelee Augur

    I asked for an x to be placed at the end of names for characters on accounts that have been inactive for 10-15 years, or something similar to that like what Waring said WOW does with inactive accounts. Instead the thread has turned into medical records, HIPAA and the Geneva Act..

    Forum Quest. Never ever stop being you.
    Triconix likes this.
  5. Triconix Augur

    You're kidding right? Since DPG deals with credits cards I'm going to assume they are PCI compliant. That means they keep financial information securely retained. If an account belongs to a person and the subscription has been terminated for X time and the account has not been logged into for X time (which I'm sure they keep in a database because that's like logging 101) then how is it an assumption that the person is not an active customer? Do you seriously not know anything about any information security compliance? Do you think they just winging it and accepting all payments to a random debit account without knowing who the people are and what account belongs to them?

    Edit: Excuse me, misread your question. However, it's not up to the customer to change/purge the inactive character. It's DPG so your question is completely void. From an end user perspective, they either get the name or they don't.

    Cool, so you essentially confirmed that there's no valid justification not to outside of this arbitrary "history" of not doing so (which is not a valid reason in and of itself as I can list a plethora of things that were historically acceptable which are no longer). There's no legal or financial reason not to do so. Got it. Thank you for proving my point. Have a nice day.
  6. The real Sandaormo Augur

    I was going to say stop guild hopping but then I had to make a move myself not too long ago. Though I didn't have to leave the server like I figured originally I would. Township Rebellion has been great and they welcomed me right in. I went out to every server that was an option and reserved the name there.

    As you can see my game name is not in high demand, when i originally started playing EQ all the names I wanted had been taken so I took the first name generated and hopped in game. Never thinking the first character i made would be my main for the next 20 years lol.

    On at least 5 servers I have an alt named Sandaormo and on 3 servers I have Sand and Sanda ( nicknames ) also available. I would not change the name now though , I have a lot of people cross servers i talk to and would be a hassle at this point.

    What I am getting at mainly is it only took a little bit of time to preplan the move I didn't end up needing.
  7. Waring_McMarrin Augur



    What does PCI information have anything to do with a characters name?

    Again, please tell me how exactly you know as a player if a character is on an active or inactive account? The reason I keep asking this is because the simple fact is that every time a player would ask for this request it means that a customer support rep has to spend time to investigate the issue and determine if the account for the character in question is active or not. Now the important question here is how much time do you justify spent on tickets like this because a player transfers servers (or starts a new character on a server) and can't get the name they want? Is it worth them spending time on this instead of any other ticket they could be working on?

    We already hear plenty of complaints about the response time on customer service tickets so do we really need to add more work to the team so that someone can have the name they want when they voluntarily.

    In the end a characters name has nothing to do with any personal or sensitive data and they have a long history of not forcing name changes on people because someone else transferred (or wants to start) because someone else transferred to their server.

    You claim there is no valid justification of not doing it but what valid justification is there for doing it besides a claim that someone wants to keep their name after transferring servers? Can you say players even own the rights to their character names in the first place?
    Sokki and Nennius like this.
  8. Seor New Member

    I fully understand the desire to control and use your favorite and personally invested RP name. That being said, I heard there have been around 12 million characters created in the history of EQ (someone check me on that). Regardless the sheer numbers of names used by tens of thousands of players across millions of characters almost guarantees duplication and overlap across servers. More so the fewer letters you use. Even with uncommon names I’ve been surprised to run into already in use notifications many times when moving or adding on a different server. It’s a numbers game. Too many people with too few letters. I recall some old muds that periodically purged their inactive character databases back in the day but DPG makes too much money off of people leaving and returning for that to be viable. Sometimes ya just gotta learn to evolve I guess ‍♂️
  9. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    blah blah blah blah blah

    Go look up "whataboutism" and get back to me.
  10. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    If you don't understand, then you simply do not get the point of those agreements.

    They exist so that some fascist won't drag our people out of their consulate on trumped up charges.

    We have the ability to REQUEST the ability to prosecute for heinous crimes, and sometimes are given permission. Of course, our government refuses too (like that lady that killed that kid in the UK recently) even though they should.

    Yes, it protects scumbags. Just like the right to a lawyer and civil rights protect scumbags here.
  11. GoneFission Augur

    I know that naming threads pull all sorts of examples of special cases illustrating why each person’s preference is the only fair way to handle naming and renaming. Even the long bow versus crossbow debates don’t generate the same passion as a name retention thread.

    Even so, this thread has gone unusually far afield.
  12. Password1234 Augur

    *pulling up the text of the Geneva Convention in preparation of arguing that asking DPG to check if a character is active is comparable to war crimes* I'm not sure what you're talking about.
  13. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    All this comes down to is what DPG wants to make their policy. No moral arguments for either side. Really no logical arguments for either side. It is whatever DPG says it is.



    I like the idea of keeping name rights on inactive accounts but it is just my opinion. JUST MY OPINION.

    Because a returning player who still has their toon name might be a bit more likely to stick around then one who comes back to find their name has been changed on them. Someone already in the game is more likely to stick around when their name change was due to them changing servers.

    Also if changing servers why get stuck with the reputation of the previous player who had the name. You are new to the server your name existing name rep means far less.

    If a name is taken its taken. So when making a toon if a name isn't available keep thinking up other names. If you are transferring server it's easy to check to see if your name is taken then you make a choice to transfer anyway or not.