Policy Makers need to discuss new naming policy, IMO

Thank You, you are my chivalry solider.

I solute you good Sir.

Thank You.

I can't speak for others, but I've been approaching this subject from the perspective of "if they did decide to change the existing system, what should be the standards applied to that change?" not from the perspective of "should this change occur?"

With F2P, someone could literally create enough free accounts to reserve that name on all servers without spending any SC. (Literally literally, not figuratively literally.)

You used to be able to see this information, it has since been removed from eq2players. So there is no way to really know if someone only played for 5 mins 8 years ago.

then all the complaints of someone not using a name recently and having only used it for a few minutes 5 or 8 years ago are nul. that makes it even more important that devs be very careful when instituting any policies regarding names. people are talking of the top of their hats. they really don't know if the names are being used today by those players or not. a lot of people returned when ftp came in,

http://u.eq2wire.com will show you creation date and played time so long as the person is sharing data with census:

For example here's my Wizard on Freeport:

Birthdate: 2010-10-15
Played:49d 5h 31m 29s
Server:Freeport

Don't mention it. My pleasure.

Good luck!

I'd like to know what is wrong with the name Rimti Ckiller. Mine for changed, I thought that Rimti was a nice dwarven sounding name, and Ckiller was a good last name. Nevermind though it got changed to something else

I sent you a PM with one possible explanation.

You're right!! I forgot about f2p (I always sub to games I seriously play) --doh!

That only works for characters that have been logged in since eq2players was changed to it's most recent incarnation. My son has a character on one of my old accounts which he hasn't played in a very long time (he started his own account and plays toons on there) and I can't find it using eq2u, unless I look up my alt guild, where he shows on the roster, but doesn't have a link to his character because there's no data.

And also, they have to actually choose to share the information, half my characters aren't sharing.....

I could be mistaken, but that is probably what TechUp meant by the phrase, "so long as the person is sharing data with census".
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Regardless, if they did decide to change the policy, it should consider account activity rather than character activity. I'm not for or against a change in policy, but It probably wouldn't hurt for the dev team to sit down and discuss (among themselves) whether or not any changes should be made at this point.

http://www.u.eq2wire.com/

If you pull up a character's page and scroll all the way to the bottom of the info pane on the left, you'll find the character's creation date, played time, current zone, last data update time (roughly last activity on the character that would've changed anything about it), where it's bound (where Call Home takes them) and a whole bunch of other stuff. It gives you a very good idea of whether the character's actually active now or was active in the past.

There's a lot more interesting information in the raw data feed that EQ2U bases it's information on. Getting it, however, isn't always easy or quick (I'm hesitant for instance to issue a no-limit query for the name and server of all characters with a last updated time prior to 26 Jun 2008, that gets you panicked e-mails from the DBAs going "Who killed the database server?!").

Again, that only works if, and only if, that character has been logged in since the data feed was created. So you would get a null list if you tried to find anyone who hasn't updated since 26 JUN 2008 since they haven't logged in since the data feed was created. Any character who hasn't logged in in 18 months wouldn't show up (not account, CHARACTER).

thanks much- i forgot about those features on one of my favorite sites

sounds like a great name to me- wonder why it got rejected?

if you haven't changed your computer- like re-installed it completely, the old names of all toons deleted or otherwise will be in your eq2 file on your computer

yes because like with me, my toons go through phases. I will play one or two toons for awhile, then go back and play another one. for me, since the only toons who repeat the class are actually mules, most of my toons are learning experiences so i like to really get involved with one at a time. the others mainly work on their tradeskilling from time to time but if they are not a tradeskiller, they may lay dormant for months before i bring one out and play her again.

which would mean they haven't been active in that long. still, if you are going back several years for inactivity it wouldn't help much. however, gms and devs have a way of checking such things

It would be usefull to see the last login date. A guild roster can tell you the last time that a character logged in, so the data stream is available somewhere.

Eg.
Birthdate: 2004-12-23
Played:4d 6h 30m 29
Last played: 2005-02-14

If someone hasn't played for more than 5 years;

• They will either have died
• Forgotten that they ever played the game and had a character (in which case they'll create a new account)
• or lost their user name & PW and create a new account anyway.

If you aren't a recurring Gold Sub, then you should have no expectation of anything being retained for 5 years. Ever see what happens on "Storage Wars' when you forget about a storage locker or cease to maintain the monthly payments? Exactly.