Producer's Letter: August 2015 Updates

there is already a bug where if you transfer servers your houses get lost and have to be rebuilt in the office. it takes months to get them restored as it is now. imagine if thousands are forced to a new server, thousands with lots of houses, and all of them lose their houses and everything in those houses, and in all of the dungeons, and all of the guild halls, if we still have a guild hall to claim when we get there. imagine that mess. the names are bad enough

I'm guessing that the first Suka to log in will get the name Suka. The next, Sukax and so on.
I'm good with losing name/names to someone that's had it longer. Don't get me wrong, I'd still be cranky but it's a lot fairer.
If however I lose names just because I do not play in American peak times, I shall be furious.

Surely there is a way to track by character creation date and have the person who has used the name the longest be the person who gets the name? First to log in is a terrible idea.

imagine the death of a game. if what they plan to do really happens, it won't just affect people on those servers, which we don't even know which servers those are. people on AB have toons on other servers as well. if they do decide to show such blatant disregard to their server base, they will deserve exactly what they will get. let's hope they care more about us than that

Long time players loosing their names will drive them away .... long time guilds loosing their names will drive their players away ... and we all loose .... just saying ... and we already lost tons of folks over some decisions/disasters of soe/daybreak over the last year or two.

They generally go by actual time played on each toon. That is even better than date created, I'd hate to lose a name to someone who'd created a toon in 2004 and never played it past level 1.

yeah but even then, to lose it because you didn't log into the server in time.

*nod*
The last time we had a merger, that was how it worked.

• In the event of duplicate character names as a result of this server merge, priority will be given to the character who has logged in to the game within the past sixty (60) days; if both characters have logged in within the past sixty (60) days, then the character which has accrued the most gameplay time overall will retain its name. Other characters will have an "x" added to their names until a unique name has been determined.

And while I freaking DESPISE that stupid x, this server consolidation free for all would be far far worse.

I think, and this is pure speculation, that roshen just worded it wrong or misunderstood the question. I find it hard to believe, that everyone has to pick their Name again like that. But lets see what he will say when he Wakes up.

i think they should consider a new naming policy. like in GW original, which is being carried on in GW2 - you choose two names. all toons must have a first and second name. that worked quite well for them. you could have 15 mari's but only one might be named mari aedilin

but the reason i am concerned for guilds is that some guilds put a copy on different servers. so now what happens to those guilds? do we all lose our guild names?

This 'who logs into the server first' is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. It's in no way at all a fair way to decide who gets to keep their names. They need to base it on a lot more than who is home and sitting at their pc when the server comes up.

As it is now I'll have to rename around a dozen toons because of the same name on different server thing I have going on.

Also I trust we each get a renaming potion. One per toon. I do not want to be stuck with ANY toons with an X on the end.

All I keep thinking about is the post about Guilds, and the reduction in Customer Service. They wouldn't want to take that approach if anyone loses a guild in the merge. If I lose MY level 100 guild I will be out for blood.

Ok it's been bugging me for months. Are you the same Ajjantis from Rat Pack? Can't remember if it was Darathar or Ven.

when they merged us in eq1, we had choices. we could choose to move to the new server or to another one. we were given choices of all of the servers we wanted to go to and didn't have to feel forced to move to any one. we were stromm and moved to luclin. luclin server had choices if they wanted to move too. we didn't lose anything. our guilds, banks, toons, etc. since i always had mostly original names, i had no problems with name changes except on one toon. her name was rather common and i had to change the spelling.

but i can say we didn't feel forced into anything. we had choices. and we were told what to do to prepare. this is not called a merger but a consolidation. they seem to think that changing the name to consolidation as they push people out of their homes to a "new" server will make everything they do be ok. i am not ok with it. sorry, i am worried about what this means to me, to my guild, and to my friends

I don't mind how the naming system is done, I'm just glad that these guys are still putting a lot of work into this game to make it fun and keep people coming back. I too have spent many a days playing since '04 and have some nicely named toons that fit my characters looks.. but alas if someone steals my name you best believe I'm getting a good one still, so to the rest of you, you better watch your backs! err.. names!

putting a lot of work into the game is one thing, but people who have had their names for many years on here don't want to give them up. how is hurting their long time membership base going to help the game? and how will losing part of that base help anyone? sometimes a company is only as stable as its customer base. if you destroy your relationship with them, you can't always recoup that loss. even if they stay, you have to wonder for how long before they say enough. or if maybe those who have been paying for subs for years will get frustrated and drop to silver. how will that help the game? are they really making enough off the f2p people to lose subs?

This is OK... most of the time. But what about someone who created a character six years ago, got it to, say, level 15, then stopped playing it at all? And if I created a character with the same name four years ago - yet mine is level 97 and has been played many, many days - do they keep the name?

They've had an algorithm in the past, which hasn't always worked. I was searching character names at EQ2U - there were toons on a server where one was higher level, and had been around longer and played for many days, yet had an x at the end of the name, and a level 11 that had a later creation date kept the name, even though that character had only been played about an hour. So even their previous algorithm had bugs, because that's just not right.

As one person said, someone who wants to grief a particular person can create a new character right now on a different server with that other person's main character name, and then make sure to log in to that character the minute the new server launches.

I'm personally going to TRY (assuming I am at home at the time with working internet) to log on as soon as the server launches, and log on to each character to make sure I keep the name. I'm betting everyone else intends to do the same thing. Can you imagine the hit the server is going to take if every single player simultaneously attempts to log on at exactly the same time? And yet, that's what this is certainly encouraging.

One person referred to this as PvP name claiming, and that's exactly what this is. I really hope that either we've completely misinterpreted what Roshen said, or that he worded it incorrectly, or that Daybreak rethinks this and doesn't dig their heels in and insist on doing this. It's going to be disastrous if they do this, both for them, and for us.

not to mention bottlenecking the login servers as surely as any dos attack. after all, that is what a dos attack does - it has a lot of computers logging in at the same time to bog a system down. if we all log in at once, how will that affect the system? can it handle all of us logging in and out repeatedly in just a few minutes? i have about 40 toons on 6 accounts to claim names on- i can log four in at a time

he said they got the new name of the server from some submissions. anyone know about that? i didn't see a poll on it

Maybe the polls for the naming of the TLE servers?

But that is if you start a new toon correct? If you are moving existing toons from different servers you will still have the chance of duplicate names.

Or is the additional name of your originating server supposed to keep that from being an issue. I.E. Moonpanther-Freeport?

Or will you be naming your existing toons when you first log into the new server.