Clearing out of old names? Cz, Cosmik?

[____________stafford]

Before the next patch, how hard would it be for the FunCom DBAs to free up the names of characters that have been on accounts closed 6 months or more? Not that Rubi-Ka can handle another Snarf but some of the simpler names are locked on accounts that have not been played for quite some time.

[________________Fiix]

Good idea i would like to see the response and/or what can it be done

[____________stafford]

Just wondering if Cosmik or Cz have gotten themselves lost in Jobe or something....

[___________Halestorm]

Jobe (where they are lost) seems to have internet acess since I got a mail from Cz the other day where he told me that he didnt like my sig and nerfed it.

[Darkbane]

Well, Cosmik seems to be totally lost there, but Cz is simply taking a short holiday there and will be back on Monday...

[Xaielao]

*HUGE BUMP*

My 'net' name, Fion, has been sat on as a lvl1 character who has never been played since Day1 of AO. There were some during beta who did not like me, the trolls mostly ya know. And some troll decided to take my name. They did it before noon on the day of release, that I know, cause thats when I got in game and tried to create Fion the Fixer. I ended up creating Xaielao the fixer that day, and now I would not change that as I'm very well known on live (rk1, rk2) and test by that name.

However, the person who created this character and sat on it, has obviously not played the game in FOREVER, or he would probably have deleted the character to make space for another. I mean, I hope someone didn't hate me THAT bad.

So clean out the database, it would free up a lot of clutter, probly some lag and even allow poeple to create characters that didn't contain a 2 or a 3 at the end because every single name they can think of has been taken. (At least we aren't at the AOL stage yet, where veryone has 329052 at the end of there name).

And so help me god, if the DB gets cleaned out, and someone new sits on the name Fion, I will TRACK THEM DOWN AND BEAT THEM WITH A SHOVEL!

[____________Cyblade7]

B U M P!

I want to take out the '7' in my name but can;t because of some lvl1 engie that has not leveled in over a year has 'Cyblade'.

/angry

[Kirandar]

I foresee a problem with this......

I have a lvl1 char, named Mrstorage. He's only been around a couple of months or so. But here's the problem:

I keep ANYTHING on him, from spare nano's to suits of armour, and also weapons, ncu, belts and the occasionalt med suit+cushions.

Point being, FC look through their DB, spot my lvl 1 guy, think "there's another one", and outright delete him. Just imagine how upset I'm going to be. I'm sure there's many guilds who use a lvl 1 char for storing many backbacks of stuff, because org's have no "central banking" system in place yet (if ever, but that's another issue NOT to be discussed here, please).


Possible Solution:
----------------------

Before FC take servers down to purge "excess characters", they inform playerbase of date/day of intended cleanup. Players who have "guildbank/personalbank" chars, may bring their char to a predefined area on-planet, to register for non-deletion. Or they could inform FC by way of petition, or e-mail, which chars they have that are low lvl, but are used for storage, and therefore to be kept.


This is just a rough suggestion, but I think/hope you see my point of view here:- Not all lvl 1 characters are "excess baggage" so to speak.

[______________Nettie]

Diablo 2's Battlenet (bleh) used the system of regularly deleting characters that had not been accessed in the last 3 months. This seemed to work fine there, and personally this is what I would suggest for this case as well.

/me shrugs

[Coldstrike]

Originally posted by Nettie
Diablo 2's Battlenet (bleh) used the system of regularly deleting characters that had not been accessed in the last 3 months. This seemed to work fine there, and personally this is what I would suggest for this case as well.

/me shrugs

The difference here is that people pay $12.95 per mont for the right to have the names they want.

[Redhill]

Aye a level 4 soldier has been sitting on Redhill on RK1 for over a year now.

Perhaps a system that deletes any character under level 20 on an account that has been inactive for 3 months would be the best solution.

[Mercatura]

You don't have to delete the inactive chars.

Just RENAME them to Inactive00001 etc, since thats what they really are.

Besides, if you actually use your mule its not inactive.

That requires the least work for FC, the least work for players and theres no accidential deletions to worry about.

Names you can always get back. Hell, maybe you can give your active mules better names, since there will be so many more decent ones available.

[Sabar]

I created some chars when I made my account, gimped them badly, and had to delete them, and last I checked, one of the chars are still there, so I haven't been able to reuse the name on it. Don't know if it's a bug or not. I've got plans for the name

[Xaielao]

Yes there needs to be an Inactive character wipe. I wanna use my ancestral name in this game

[aaronb]

This would be a good thing. However, it needs to be based on inactive accounts, not inactive characters.

[Coldstrike]

Originally posted by aaronb
This would be a good thing. However, it needs to be based on inactive accounts, not inactive characters.

Yeah, that was the point I was trying to make as well.

As long as the person owning the characters is paying his monthly 12.95 then his characters should be safe.

[xyberviri]

Currently at this Time I have two Accounts and about 11 characters and 3 bots, the bots are level 1, but since i have two accounts the other day(3 days ago acutally) i wanted to move a bot from account A to account B, so i deleted the Character on aco**** A and went to create the Bot with the same name on Account B, the name shows up as being in use. if you log onto the chat client you will see all the names Tied to you account, I have about 25+ names there on account a and a whole bunch on account b(sorry to many to count)

but the point is the database is holding on to character names that have been deleted, you can even log onto them in chat. So the first problems is that when you delete a character the names are not being released back into the pool.

[De_Valos]

Well to answer your question directly. It would take less than 20 milli-seconds to purge names of characters on accounts not active for say 6 months and could be done requiring no downtime. However, we have discussed this to a great extent and have opted not to purge these names as in so doing we would have to purge these characters. Now everyone knows the problems that AO experienced with it's launch and certain patches who's name shall not be uttered... Long story short, we currently maintain all accounts and characters indefinitly so as to allow individuals to return to Rubi-ka and pick up where they left off. (*Disclaimer - Funcom also reserves the right to delete all account and character data after a three month window, at our discression*) Now some say, well what about just deleting the level 1 characters and freeing their names. Sorry no can do as even those characters may have been used as mules for additional storage and should be available if one were to reactivate their account.

On a more posative note, we are and have been deleting characters and freeing names from abandoned trial accounts after a specific period of time. Characters on these accounts are maintained for a duration to allow us to retroactivly search for potential exploits vs losing the data when a trial account is inactivated.

Hope this helps explain our stance on the freeing of character names.

As for the previous posters statement that the database is holding names of deleted characters, well yes and no. There are two seperate systems in place, one holds character data and a deleted character is indeed deleted and the name is freed. However, the chat system will continue to reference a characters name to the orriginal account until that name is reused by another account. At which time, if you query the chat client the deleted character will no longer show as being associated with your account.

One last statement, as for renaming a character on an inactive account. We've opted not to do so as a returning player would want to reclaim their orriginal identity but would be unable to do so if someone else had their handle. All of this may change, but for now we opt to preserve characters and their names on inactive accounts in stasis awaiting reactivation.

[Deskclerk]

in short they dont wanna decrease thier database of so called players by half or more

[Mercatura]

Bleh. Its very clear, just don't understand why FC chooses that stance.

"Forget the paying customers, we gotta keep the non-paying ones who might come back happy."

Like they would all even remember their old account name a year later, let alone a level 3 NT they made

BTW, if I was someone coming back after quitting due to all the launch troubles...I'm not so sure I would want to be reminded of the original experience