Policy Makers need to discuss new naming policy, IMO

Gotta be creative.

1. Create a script that e-mails all accounts of characters not logged in within 3 years notifying them that they are welcome to return, but if they do not log in within 30 days, their toons may be available for name changes.
2. Only release names through the name change process versus new character names "to ensure that no names are improperly released"
3. Sell name change potions
4. Collect profits.

So the logging in must occur once per account or once per character within that 30 day window?

Anything should be based on ACCOUNT activity, not character activity IMO.
If an account hasn't been logged in since Dec 2004, pretty safe to assume they won't be coming back.
Meanwhile, some very active players have some characters that collect dust for months/years at a time, but if they are actively logging into their account still, all of their characters should be safe.

That was the point that I was trying to get at in a round-about manner. I log on to each of my accounts on at least a monthly basis (I have three paid accounts), with my main account seeing daily use, but even on my main account there are some toons that are collecting dust.

This used to work, until people become persistent, annoying, and clogged out true petitions trying to steal names from other players. It was extremely uneven on whether or not a GM would release the name for you, and finally SOE stopped giving away names that were already taken, no matter the circumstances. I think this is part of the reason why eq2players no longer shows things like play time and last time logged in for other players.

I would say yes, if you decide to take a 2 year break than after 6 months you forfeit your right to reserve a name. The game is F2P and it would be based on account activity. Thus log in once every few months and your name is entirely secure. There are ancient names held by characters that haven't been logged in since Sept 8th, 2006... I highly doubt those players are going to return.

If it can be abused or used for causing grief... players will do it. If there is one thing playing games for 15+ years has taught me, it's that the 10-15% of players or internet goers derive pleasure from intentionally causing pain or unrest for others. Name theft is one such method and indeed it was abused. Hence they were forced to change the policy. To quote some movie or person... "See, this is why we can't have nice things"

I know of a couple of instances but would not like to see this change for purely personal reasons. They are favorite toons of 2 dear friends who are no longer with us and we still have them the guild roster to remember them by. although I have been naming our guild amenities after them it wouldn't be the same. seeing their names on the Roster of the Guild they founded helps me keep the spirit of our guild as it is.

You will have to let go eventually. May as well do it now, and allow someone else to have some fun.

If you've been gone for a few years, it's unlikely that you can remember your account name, password or both. Either way, I don't think you have a leg to stand on. It's like putting your towel on a public sunbed in the morning and expecting me not to throw it in the pool before you arrive at 4:00pm in the afternoon.

Expecting you to leave the towel on the sunbed: not reasonable.

Expecting you not to throw the towel into the trash: borderline - but I'd probably throw it into the trash myself, so I can't judge against anyone else for doing so.

Expecting you not to throw the towel into the pool: reasonable - and if I was in the pool and near to the spot where the towel entered the water, I'd probably have some choice words for you that I won't bother putting here because they wouldn't make it past the profanity filter.

+1 To changing the naming policy.

If your character isn't logged in for over 1 year (A reasonable amount of time to assume you are gone), you should forefit the name automatically, and be awarded a free name change when you return.
If your character has over 100D /played time, it should be your name forever. (Serves old Veterans well)
If your character is below level 10 and Isn't logged in atleast once a month, it will be renamed when you next log in with a free name change.

^
New players get chances at names, without having to make them stupidly long or unique.
Old veteran players are rewarded for the time spent on their character. You earnt the name, congrats.
Allows people to reserve names if they are active. Stops the people who reserved names 3 years ago.

I can get behind that idea. It protects long standing players while ensuring more freedom of names for new players. I may lower the requirement of 100D though, some of us prioritize mains (usually up to 2) so for those lesser played characters we would fall into the grey area, I have an alt that's name serves a Lore purpose in relation to my main, she however has about 80-95 days on her I think, so I would lower it to 50D which is still a sizable time to log on a singular character.

Just for math purposes.
100 Days = 2400 hours = ~3.5 months
50 Days = 1200 hours = ~1.5 months

Now that is pure logged game time, 1.5 months of playtime is long enough to ensure that a player most likely will stay with the game and should have their name reserved. I also would base the loss of a name on Account Activity, if your EQ2-Account has not been logged into-game for over a year, you automatically have the X added and a free name-change added to inventory in case you return.

If your name is not taken, you get it back for free. Yes there will be very rare cases of players coming back 2 years later to find their name gone. It's hit or miss and always will be. While I may support the idea, I doubt it will change. As a company the current policy SOE follows is the "safe" policy.

1 year away is nowhere near long enough, especially if you're talking about the name automatically being removed. There is not a single game out there that automatically removes names from players who haven't logged in for a year.

Nobody has put out the very strong possibility of retaliation naming. Tick a person or persons off enough and they will go to every server and create a character with your name. Happened a few years ago to a perfect jerk who was once in our guild. Eventually the person changed the character name to something completely different and, amazingly, lightened up quite a bit.

This sort of goes along with whoever mentioned name reputation. Sometimes a name is so bad on server and/or cross server it is best left to moulder in the SOE name bank forever. People insisting on a certain name will get a name reputation soon enough on any name they select.

Personally I think adding code to monitor the play time and adding "x" to names would be a total waste of dev time. I'd much rather see them fixing things that actually ARE problems in the game.

Double lag post.

See that's why I can support the idea, but honestly. The way SOE does it now is probably the "fairest" and even "safest" method. It would be nice if senior accounts had naming priority but that is about all I can reasonably say wouldn't require too much time/work to implement.

Couldn't agree more with the OP.

Another reasonable solution imo is to do deletion sweeps. Any toon game-wide under a certain level (lvl20? or lvl30?) that hasn't been logged in in say.. a year, will be deleted on X date. X date can be 2-3 months away, with regular reminders, so any active player can simply log in their toons once and be safe from the deletion. EQ1 has done this in the past, with virtually no repercussions, and very little outcry from the community.

People will always come up with alarmist reasons to keep names for many many years with no chance of them being repurposed despite any number of possible precautions and more than reasonable rules.

Which is more customer friendly?

• Keeping character names forever on accounts which haven't played in 8 years?
• Freeing up some names for new players who don't want to have to choose between Mtrorewleq, Zelafrazro, and Ripofleax

Restictions on last names some times make no sense either. For example, back in EQ1 my cleric Marel was not allowed to have the last name of Lee. I thought that the 2 names together were totally appropriate, but SoE did not agree.