Guild Wars 2

With 4-5 million accounts, each having up to 5+ names, there are likely well over 20 million character names registered in GW2.

How many of you had a name for a character in mind to only find it’s taken? Then how many of you have friended that name only to see that it NEVER comes online (or the account for that matter). There are a LOT of dormant names in the system.

So what can be done? ArenaNet could deactivate unused names / force renaming upon reactivation (doesn’t the old republic do this?). If your name is unique enough, it may still be available. In no way would I suggest the Diablo II route, have character’s expire. But at the same time, I think it’s a waste to have so many names just left on dormant accounts doing nothing. Especially because of players who leave, probably half come back at all.

I would suggest is that accounts that lie dormant for six months should have their names freed up into the system. It would help curb all the names with extended ascii characters, or the ones with Xx prefixes xX suffixes, and the like. However, I feel there will be lots of complaints with such an addition.

But something I think everyone would agree with would be a name exchange service. Think of an item that the BLTC could add to the supplement the name change contract. A name exchange contract. Have it cost about twice that of a name change, but you can use it to invite a player to swap names with you. The other player can take the name of your character, or enter a new name of their choice. You would of course have their name on your character. You can even make it so the invite comes with a gold incentive, a bribe if you will, to get the player to change names with you. The item would be used / contract accepted when the invited player enters in a new name.

This would take the risk out of say, messaging someone with a name you want, offer them a name contract and some gold, hope they use the contract on that character, wait 24hrs, then try to get the name for yourself (before some random person creates a character and just so happens to use it). That’s a lot of trust and risk just to get a name.

The only problem would be trying to use this on a dormant account. If they never check the game, they would never know… but then that leads to my other suggestion.

I’m neutral on the name-exchange idea, but I’m against the idea of your character name expiring because you haven’t played in half a year. Living Story does enough to…encourage…players to keep logging in that I really don’t want to see “And you might lose your name if you don’t log in” added to the list of things you lose out on if you go on an extended vacation. Imagine being a returning player who finds out his/her name has been taken away: Not a great welcome back, is it?

I don’t think dormant names are a major problem. If you want a particularly common name or famous name, you’re probably not going to get it, but it’s easy to come up with a good name without resorting to symbols, especially if you’re going the “first name+last name route.” Just takes some creativity and persistence.

(To your credit, you do seem to have thought it out more or less thoroughly. I just disagree with the concept.)