Freeing up old character names

AlnilamE

No

Tasear wrote: »

I want to...but is it a good idea probably not. I personally would liked moonlight goddess back deleted the character and then was no longer available. Do deleted names still get reserved?

No, names of deleted characters can be used immediately upon deletion. I have recreated characters in that way.

Turelus

No

Not a fan of this really.

People should be able to come back to the game in the future and not find their account of names wiped clean. Others should also branch out their names and stop trying to get "Shadow" before everyone else.

AlnilamE

No

Adernath wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

Adernath wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

and people paid for their accounts

... yes they payed, but why should that justify to have a name reservation for all eternity? ...

Why would a justification be needed with regards to the validity of names on valid, unbanned, accounts?
On what basis is their use of the name being called into question?

You have to ask the original person who argued that paying the game once justifies a name reserve for eternity, not my response I was asking this by myself: he argued that because of this fact we can not simply reuse inactive names.

We are talking about those cases in which they are not using the name anymore. These players are simply not playing the game anymore. At some point you have to declare someone's dead if you never ever get a life sign again. Doesn't matter if you never found the body...

Samadhi wrote: »

Adernath wrote: »

...All they have to do is log into the game once (or maybe click on a link, as suggested above) to confirm that they still care about their names. And if they do not provide this sort of feedback, then one has to assume they don't care anymore. ...

One may desire for them to not care anymore,
and try to introduce specific measures that he or she feels 'proves' that his or her desire for the name is stronger, thus more valid

but one must assume that new players are creative and capable enough individuals to comprise new names if the specific one they desire is taken
ESO has a lot of flexibility in terms of character creation

personally not even particularly creative, and did fine
when Sirona was taken, went with Sirona Stillwater
because people do have first and last names

(...)

Mhm, the people we are talking about includes some of my friends and guildmates going back to beta and early access

fond memories

Certainly, we can all be creative, but this not really touching the heart of the topic: To have some sort of name recycling. Memories live on in your heart... Life and death. ;-)

And to see someone running around with the name of a guildie that has passed away would be painful.

Nestor

Other

People who signed up for the Free Weekend, those names should not be protected if they have not come back. All others should be protected. For how long, I am not sure, but 5 years as mentioned above might be a good time period.

However, its easy to find a name to use.

Samadhi

No

Adernath wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

Adernath wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

and people paid for their accounts

... yes they payed, but why should that justify to have a name reservation for all eternity? ...

Why would a justification be needed with regards to the validity of names on valid, unbanned, accounts?
On what basis is their use of the name being called into question?

You have to ask the original person who argued that paying the game once justifies a name reserve for eternity, not my response I was asking this by myself: he argued that because of this fact we can not simply reuse inactive names.
...

Not sure who that person was, as that was not my argument
Simply made the point that f2p games routinely clean name databases and/or merge servers
in part because accounts are free, and one individual can create 50 accounts just for the sake of taking names if it is so wished

This was a problem with Tera when they opened a new server with implementation of the Gunner class
a bunch of people created accounts to 'reserve' names
then sold/traded the names to players in-game for a leg up on the new server

in contrast, accounts (at least on PC) in ESO are limited by purchase -- b2p mitigates concerns about name reservation spam

Personally feel no justification is needed to reserve a name on a valid, unbanned account
as there has been no sound reason provided to call their validity into question to begin with

Adernath wrote: »

...
We are talking about those cases in which they are not using the name anymore. These players are simply not playing the game anymore. At some point you have to declare someone's dead if you never ever get a life sign again. Doesn't matter if you never found the body...
...

Thanks for this,
it shows you hold a very polite and empathetic interpretation of the situation

one of my best friend's sisters ran away from home in high school,
nearly 20 years ago now
her (teenage) picture is still on the missing persons posters across the province,
and, in some instances, the country

Ironically, he also has not logged on to the game for several years now
am almost tempted to forward along your input to him,
but do not wish to stress him out in such a matter
he still misses her and hopes to hear word on her, even if it is simply finding a body,
every.single.day.

Adernath wrote: »

...
...
Certainly, we can all be creative, but this not really touching the heart of the topic: To have some sort of name recycling. Memories live on in your heart... Life and death. ;-)

Name recycling is only necessary if people lack creativity and instead seek to take names away from others
the real heart of the topic, such as what impacts f2p titles (especially those with 7-10 character limits on names), is whether or not there is a lack available names
given how robust ESO's naming system is, there is not

Tandor

No

What usually drives these requests is an absolute inability to come up with an original name - for which there is no shortage. It's the unoriginal names that have gone, and that shouldn't be a problem.

Danikat

No

Interesting question which came up in an identical discussion on another site: What makes you think the name/s you want are held by 'inactive' accounts?

For this request to make sense you have to be reasonably sure that a) there are a significant number of characters on accounts that have not been logged into for 2-3 years (or however long your deadline is) and b) that a significant number of those characters have names other players would want to use.

I'll grant that you can make an educated guess at a but I can't see how anyone could possibly know b. I can't find it now but I've seen an article before about City of Heroes (I think) doing a name purge and later announcing they wouldn't bother in future because a few months on less than 2% of the names freed up were in use and people were still complaining that it was impossible to get a good name.

As an alternative here's a list I recently posted on another forum for ways to find a good name (slightly modified for ESO). IMO it should be easier in ESO than in most MMOs because we have so many options for names, with accented characters, hyphens, apostrophes and spaces. (And I'm NOT talking about making names that look like a horrible mess.)

• Change the spelling - e.g. Thomas to Tomas.
• Use special (accented) characters. Anel to Anél.
• Use Punctuation. Thomas to T'omas.
• Add a last name eg. Thomas to Thomas Ash. (Or add a 2nd first name - Sarah to Sarah Jane/Sarah-Jane, split a made up name into 2 words etc.)
• Add a title - Sir Thomas. Uncia the Firesmith. Vanirar the Brave.
• If the name means something you could use different words that mean the same thing. E.G. Carlos Windwalker to Carlos Windstrider.
• Change the language. Maybe you like the German word for 'warrior' - Krieger but it's taken. You could try the Dutch 'Krijger' instead. (If you like the look/sound of the first choice it's best to pick a closely related language as it's likely to be similar.)
• Combine the above. Add a hyphenated title or last name. Put it into another language and then change the spelling to one you like etc.

(Disclaimer - I don't speak German or Dutch, I used google translate so I have no idea if it's a decent translation or not.)

I find it helps to have a good idea of who the character is - backstory and/or personality if you're a role-player, what you plan to use them for if not as it makes it easier to come up with appropriate names and to have a sense of what kind of changes would work if your first choice is taken.

Acrolas

No

"By creating an Account, You agree that You do not own the Account, any user names created on the Account, any Content stored or associated with an Account (such as digital and/or virtual assets, achievements, virtual currency, and other Downloadable Content), or related data associated with the Account."

Player inactivity is irrelevant, as they don't own those names or those characters. ZOS does.

NordSwordnBoard

No

Those "inactive" accounts are both keeping my free guild bank afloat and providing ZOS numbers to juke the stats over at HQ.

Having to be ever-creative with names is a trade-off I'm ok with.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Yes, please go ahead with that

I am still sad that someone has the character name Oreyn Bearclaw. I had to use a funny character for the B on my main way back, and I have had this @ name since beta. I am fairly certain that whoever has the name does not play. Never seen it on a leaderboard or anywhere in game. I have even sent in game mails offering serious gold. Nada.

Jayman1000

No

Even people who haven't played for years may one day come back. I had this happen on my five WoW accounts, after years I finally felt the urge again. In the meantime I had paid no attention to Blizzard mails and had my mailaccount sort them into a Blizzard folder that I never read. If my wonderful names had been deleted, even if they sent me a mail and even if it was my own fault that I didn't read it I would still be pieced about it or even lose my new found urge to play.

rhapsodious

No

They're character names, not resources. I mean, there's some cases where I'd like names to be free, but I've either gotten creative or just picked a different name (Felix -> Feliix, Najarala -> Najaral).

It's pretty easy to come up with names that are similar enough (the old capital i to substitute for a lowercase L trick comes to mind). Plus there's the potential case of mistaken identity that arises (it's still a problem, technically, but when the person's name is actually identical...), or if the person who originally had the name came back just to find that 'their' character wasn't there anymore.

Overall I don't think it's worth the effort.

IcyDeadPeople

Yes, please go ahead with that

Jayman1000 wrote: »

Even people who haven't played for years may one day come back. I had this happen on my five WoW accounts, after years I finally felt the urge again. In the meantime I had paid no attention to Blizzard mails and had my mailaccount sort them into a Blizzard folder that I never read. If my wonderful names had been deleted, even if they sent me a mail and even if it was my own fault that I didn't read it I would still be pieced about it or even lose my new found urge to play.

At some point, perhaps it's time to give up on those folks ever coming back. Five years seems pretty reasonable - lots of people made accounts at launch, then promptly quit. After numerous updates and improvements over the years, if they still have never logged on by say, end of 2019, seems unlikely they ever will.

Or maybe finding out they will lose their treasured character names xXx_360 No Scope MLG_xXx Legolas2000 or DrizztDo'Urden_420 etc might be what persuades some of those players to boot up ESO at least once.

EvilAutoTech

No

The only character I have that didn't require rework is the one I created on my account for my wife to use when she expressed interest in playing battlegrounds. I spelled it a little different from her gamertag and now wish I had tried her gamertag first as I am maxed on characters.

I usually go mononymic but was so attached to Djaevel that I had to give her a surname. She's a redhead DK Nord so she became Djaevel Fireheart. I actually think I prefer that to just Djaevel.

Slick_007

No

you dont have the right to take away someone elses character name. ever. for any reason.

i do however wish ZOS would implement a random name generator, because damnit, all the names i wanted are already taken and trying to think of a new one is hard. i bet this is why everyone wants this to happen.

Runs

No

I say no because I know I would want my names when I came back if I left for an extended period of time. Especially if I had no control in the situation that made me leave. It's kind of a do onto others thing...

PlagueSD

Other

If the change the way Character names are used, having unique names wouldn't matter. For instance. Everything revolves around the @ name. I send mail, I invite to group, I send tells using that name. Very rarely do I use the actual character name.

There's an easy way to handle character names like this. Get rid of unique character names. It's not needed. How many people named "John" do you know? probably quite a few. Now you may say, but wait aren't character names related to some database that's used? Ok, sure...Then just make the character name in the backend character@account. That way, it's linked to your account name (which WILL need to be unique) but allows you the freedom to choose any character name you'd like.

There. Problem solved.

Slick_007

No

PlagueSD wrote: »

If the change the way Character names are used, having unique names wouldn't matter. For instance. Everything revolves around the @ name. I send mail, I invite to group, I send tells using that name. Very rarely do I use the actual character name.

There's an easy way to handle character names like this. Get rid of unique character names. It's not needed. How many people named "John" do you know? probably quite a few. Now you may say, but wait aren't character names related to some database that's used? Ok, sure...Then just make the character name in the backend character@account. That way, it's linked to your account name (which WILL need to be unique) but allows you the freedom to choose any character name you'd like.

There. Problem solved.

given how many people prefer character name, id rather not see 50 'John's standing around in a single town.

QuebraRegra

No

idk wrote: »

For games that were purchased they should never be released. For characters started on free accounts during free weekends they should be released at some point.

I could support that. That's a very good idea actually.

SirAxen

Yes, please go ahead with that

I think the OP is saying people that haven't been on in years, not just ones that could be 'taking a break'. While I understand the arguments against, if a proper heads up email was extended before hand I don't see an issue with it.

Shakaya

No

I do not agree with this because this isn't just some free to play game you can just download and then leave if you decide you don't like it easily.

You have to pay at least $20 to get the game, and if you joined it before Tamriel Unlimited, you had to pay for a subscription for the time you were playing.

Anyone that pays money for a game should be able to come back to it, with their character exactly as they left it, ready to continue their adventure where they left off.

If this was some free-to-play game, I could understand inactive accounts getting deleted if the server capacity was struggling. But that's not the case here.

Sheezabeast

Yes, please go ahead with that

I think they should send out emails from Zos warning they are deleting names from accounts with 1 year + inactivity, and to log into your account within a time period so your names don't get purged.

SydneyGrey

No

PlagueSD wrote: »

Get rid of unique character names. It's not needed.

NOOOOOOOO

zaria

code65536 wrote: »

Tasear wrote: »

I want to...but is it a good idea probably not. I personally would liked moonlight goddess back deleted the character and then was no longer available. Do deleted names still get reserved?

@Tasear A name is released immediately upon the deletion of that character.

I had a bank mule character on an alt account that was reserving a name that I wanted to use in the future. When I wanted to finally use that name on my main account, I deleted the mule character and was able to immediately create a new character with that name. The deletion happened on my laptop, and as soon as I confirmed the deletion, I pressed the button to confirm the creation on my desktop, and it went through--the couple of seconds it took for me to turn to my desktop and hit the button was all the time there was between the deletion and reuse.

I thought it was some delay at least for others to use it, if you delete an character you can use the name at once.
However if you delete it so others can use it its an delay before its free, at least I read this on forum

Zypheran

I believe that nobody should have monopoly over a character name. Account names should be unique for sure but a character name in use should not make it impossible for somebody else to use it. It's just like real life. If my name is John Bloggs does that mean nobody else can be called John Bloggs also? To me this feature of character design makes no sense. If half the population want to call their toons SorcKiller or Gandalf.... Let em!

LiquidSchwartz

No

i left this game for a long time and I'd be really salty if i came back to something I payed for only to have my cool character names I picked out gone.

Adernath

Yes, please go ahead with that

LiquidSchwartz wrote: »

i left this game for a long time and I'd be really salty if i came back to something I payed for only to have my cool character names I picked out gone.

And what about if you get an e-mail where you just have to click on a link to confirm you are not dead yet, so to not gain a free character rename instead?

Inhuman003

No

Just No be creative come up with your own thoughts and ideas for your character names. I and everyone paid for the game so we should keep characters names on everyone account that have not played for a long period of time. JUST NO

Aebaradath

No

No. There's no way to accurately determine whether the account is truly "dead" or if that person is just taking a (long) break.

Besides, does it matter someone else beat you to getting that one name?

Nestor

Other

Use this to come up with a name you would like and be lore appropriate for the race

http://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/elder-scrolls.php


Although, this Breton Name would be hard to deal with....Wynshnainluin Dalonce