Policy Makers need to discuss new naming policy, IMO

It's been a few pages since I said it, so I'm gonna repeat it.

The only fair, unbiased way to determine who gets a name is first come, first served. Sorry that you came into a 9 year old game and your name was taken. Maybe you should have tried it earlier.

o snap

no trouble conjuring unique & inspiring names here

Prethicre Ala'Clessen
Kaladien Kuvrae
Brenau Suvrein
Xietsu Kirzou
Xurimier Vir'Daal
Veralagus Vethlaenis
Guroleil Du'Leir
Kurindor Mythecnea
Seliri Deuvleri
Bosconi Bendeini

biuriful =X

or a better option is if you haven't logged in to your account for 8 to 9 years then a name should be released to be used again.infact if that account hasn't been logged in for that many years the toons should be purged from the game servers all together.Hell WoW does that all the time i stopped subbing for 5 years cause I was going into the marines.Once I was out of the marines and came home I decided to re sub.And blizz completely wiped my toons and I couldnt even use the names on new toons cause someone else took them.It happens I didn't get mad mostly because I came back after all the cata nerfing and found the game had turned to crap.But for those that really want to hold on to a name forever for whatever reason make a cash shop item that locks a name permanently to an account.SOE gets another source of cash,players that don't want to see a name taken get to keep it and players that want names freed up will get the names of inactive accounts from years ago freed up.Is it a perfect way to sttle things?No,but it is far more of a comprimise then saying"If you didn't lock the name down years ago then your s.o.l."

give it up. i've brought this up enough times to rez this horse and beat it to death more than a dozen times, yet here we are, again.

just press the random name gen button and then "play", endure sony's lack of care for veteran players over the 'i will return when it turns free to play, play for a week, whine until i'm blue in the face that i can't play full content for free. but at least my level 5 character and hostage name was intact after 6 years of inactivity!"

some of the lack of sense on SoE's part is mind boggling. take care of the customers that take care of you.

Still going on I see - this reminds me of the fantasy version of Eminent domain - Hey I know it is yours, but I feel I can use it better so I am going to take it away from you. Who says gaming does not mimic real life to a T.

it's a game. not life and death. and there are far more important battles to choose than a name. it shouldn't be so very important to anyone that they would want to strip it from another player or quit because they can't.

how do you get special characters like ' or - in your name? is it a petition thing?

Only works on last names. Just type it in. All my toons have the last name Is'Mean

This thread has inspired me. When EQ Next comes out, should they use a FTP model, I will be making numerous accounts and locking down all the names like:
Merlin
Aurther
Thor
Loki
Elrond
Galadriel
Cirdan
Sauron
Morgoth
Strider
Aragorn
Gandalf
Drizz't
Eldritch
Conan
Raistlen
Krom
Rogue
Wolverine
You get the idea Then wait at least a year or more and start selling those names to Johny-come-lately who feel it is unfair they can't use their favorite uber fantasy name just for themselves because they are so special. I can see the plats rolling in already LAWL!

I expect all of those names will be blocked by the name filter. Pretty sure most were in EQ1 & 2 (they likely haven't caught up to names like Wolverine yet, though).

i don't know- i was able to name a toon i made about 8 months ago lancelot in eq1

I didn't try using names like that in EQ1, but their name filter did have enough holes to keep GMs busy. I remember a cleric named Advil. GM changed his name on him, and he HATED the new one. He transferred to a pvp server shortly after that so not sure if he got his name changed to something he liked more or not.

They also filtered last names on EQ1. I wanted Meryl Lee for one toon, but "Lee" was not allowed as a last name.

I have played another game (Champions Online) that uses this system... well, that game has you create an account name alias on account creation, so it's not the actual account name.

This seems to me to be the best solution. If Sony did this, then they could merge all the servers together with no naming issues.

That hearkens back to the /ignore account ability thread, and the fact that for various reasons some players don't want others to be able to find all their alts. Tying character names ingame to an account name or alias would allow that.

I did just that... admittedly, I found all my names as I had left them, but I was gone from the game for over 4 years.

I will also add that if I had come back to find any of my names gone, I would have metaphorically shaken the dust from my feet, never to have returned.

One solution would be to require the full Name@name added to the friends list. Rather than adding the account name/alias to the friends list. I suppose that it would still be possible to find all of someone's alts, but it would be a lot more work.

Edit: Also, possibly change how adding people to one's friends list works, so you send a request to that person and they have to approve that request.

I also like the suggestion of giving characters last names at creation and requiring the character's last name to be part of what is used to add a character to the friends list... or to send a /tell.

Of course, I personally have never had a problem with coming up with a name I liked. I even recently made a new character and the specific name I wanted for that character was fully available... in spite of the fact that I had figured that it would have been taken (as it has been in other games I have played).

I have a hard time believing if someone has been gone for more then 4 years and came back to a name change they would quit the game. The reason they came back wasn't because they just wanted to play a character with a certain name. They came back because of the content in the game.

I played Lord of the Rings Online a couple times, it seemed every time I came back, even being gone two weeks, my name had changed. It was a random name anyway so I wasn't invested in it or the game. I found the name changes more amusing then anything. But that is more of an anecdote and besides the point.

I think it does make sense if someone wants a name by an account that logged in for an hour 7 years ago they should be able to have it. I bet if someone even logged in after playing an account for an hour seven years ago, they wouldn't even remember the name they gave their character. Though, there is a problem if someone wants and gets a name then they stop playing...hmmm.

Scenario:

Someone has a name, they have used it on all their online accounts since UO...so, UO, EQ, EQ2, WOW, EVE, DAoC, whatever game they play. They are active in their games, but at some point, they stop playing one or two of them. Why do you expect them to give up their online gaming identity to some johnny come lately just because the new person can't think of a new name.

People get really touchy over names, and a lot of times, their reputation is based on the name.

Heck, I remember when a person in my guild asked me to give up my last name because it was the same as theirs...even though I had never met them when I was finally able to /sirname my toon.

I played EQ for a long time, was well known, and when I went back after several years of playing other games, my name was still recognized. The people I knew still knew it was me, not someone else they didn't know. Because of the SOE's (current) policy of first come first serve, no one even questioned it wasn't me. If they changed it, how do we know they are who they say they are?

When I was in Beta for TOR, others in beta recognized my name from EQ and specifically went out of their way to talk to me and say hi (people I had not seen in over 6 years at that point). I am sure others may have even gone out of their way to not talk to me. The thing is, why can't a new player create their own identity? I am sure that there is another name out there other than Melchor, Melkor, Melkkor etc. It's all based on a Tolkien character anyway...can't you think of something new?

If a person was the first to get the toon, and they were paying for the game at the time (subscription), why can't they hold on to it? (exception, server merge). Why should they change?

Unless you are a SERIOUS RPer, the name of a new toon isn't that big a deal. Yeah, sometimes it nice to have a certain name, but if someone else things of it first, is it really that cool anyway?

A name should say forever...First come, first served.

Just my 2 copper.

Server error, double post...sorry

Scenario:

Someone has a name, they have used it on all their online accounts since UO...so, UO, EQ, EQ2, WOW, EVE, DAoC, whatever game they play. They are active in their games, but happened to be a few years late playing one or two of them. Why do you expect them to give up their online gaming identity to some johnny come lately who hasn't logged into his account in 6 years and never got past level 10?

The door swings both ways, and no one is talking about remotely active accounts. There is a time you have to accept that people probably aren't coming back.