Guild Wars 2

I think if players truly want to quit they delete their characters thus freeing up their names. If they don’t, even if they’re really salty and swear they will never play again, I think a small part of them is keeping it JIC.

I potentially would’ve tried SWTOR again, but after server merges my characters names were deleted so I didn’t even bother attempting. I’d imagine the situation wouldn’t be too different if that happened for GW2 as well.

Charrbeque.8729:

Personally I don’t create names that reference pop culture of any kind because it makes me feel unoriginal. I also don’t make my characters look like something from pop culture, like a particular character from an anime. (“Cosplay” creeps me out actually)

Hi.

Swagger.1459:

I would like to suggest that a name purge happen so we can free up names from inactive accounts.

Thoughts?

100% no. As Gaile “Someone may step away and return to the game later, so the names must stay in place.”

Also I love how people fail to think about this solution. Even if this would happen (Which it probably won’t) do you honestly think you would be the one to get that pop cultural reference name you want? Odds are good it would be announced so you wand every other person that wants to be “legolas”, “cloud”, “etc etc”, would be trying to get it.

Yes some original names would open up, but the odds that you want the same original idea name as someone else and can’t come up with some other way to use it are low. Just be creative and use a title, use spaces, you can even use special characters in GW2.

Not everyone can bear the burden of a name as cool as this:

Character names are meant to be reflections of your own personality and original, why would you want to copy someone else anyway? Just take a few minutes and as others have said try using a different spelling style.

I have 24 different names most using Blaq in the title. Blaq Widow, Blaq Oak, etc…. Find something you like and run with it. Be an individual in the sea of clones (Oh yeah I love my Mesmers lol)

Swagger.1459:

So we could say that anyone who bought GW2 has a valid account, but at what point are they no longer considered valid around here?

Let’s look at some “things”…

Player A bought GW2, plays regularly or semi regularly or every even every few months… I would consider that valid, no real argument here.

Player B bought GW2, hasn’t played in 1 year or 2 years or 3 years and may or may not come back right? Is that player really valid enough to lock up a name game wide? Is it not enough of a b2p perk that player B can log back in anytime?

Ok so now we have p4f… Player C makes free accounts because that’s valid. They played for a week and haven’t logged in for 6+ months, or eventually 1 year or 2 years and on… Is that account valid enough to lock a name or names game wide?

So technically I could make a bunch of free accounts, locked up names and never logged in again and still be considered valid?

So let’s look at anets end on this now…

Let’s say there were 8 million copies of GW2 sold… There are also X number of p4f accounts…

Does Anet say “We have 8 million valid b2p players and X million valid p4f players currently”? No they don’t. They say units sold and registered users when touting stats, but all those factors are judged internally by monthly concurrent users. The last speculated monthly concurrency rate was 3 million back in October 2015.

We all know that there are registered accounts with names used that have not logged in for a long long long time, so are those players truly valid enough to prevent current players or new players from using those names?

Valid has to be better defined here I think…

ANet already has a definition. They’ve even shared it. When ANet takes the servers down. There is no statute of limitations. They don’t even purge names from banned accounts.

The potential cost for purging names is that an old player returns, rages that “his” name is gone and decides not to stick around after all. Also, a free player might get some cash and decide to buy, but won’t if he sees “his” name gone. It doesn’t take much to cheese some people off. Also, Anet will once again be perceived to have broken promises, this time accurately. Anyone whose names are lost and who returns might be angry.

The potential benefit is that for every name purged, one player who might want it will get it. The others will still be left begging. Not all of the names purged will be reused. There’s no way to say that the potential benefit would be larger than the potential cost. This is especially true when this game has many ways to easily get unique names.

Swagger.1459:

Valid has to be better defined here I think…

If the player has an account and it’s not banned, then yes it’s valid… If they log into it for 10 mins a month or 5 hours a day it’s still a valid account. It’s been very clear on what constitutes a valid account, just because you disagree doesn’t make it any less defined.

Think about it for a minute, why should a player lose the name they got just because you want to be able to use it? Example: I havent been able to log on for the last few months, (going on 6ish and I probably won’t be able to for a few more or longer) does that mean I should lose my name? My account is in good standing, I have been playing since betas/headstart, no matter how little I can log in now there’s no justification to take the names I got for my characters away.

Get more creative, use spaces, you can use special characters as well. It’s really not that tricky to get a name you like (unless you want a pop culture reference, though my brother did get the name “Cammy White” mid way through year 2…) So even some known names may still be available.

No. Just be creative.

Anet should never have come up with this idiotic idea of limiting character names to the servers to begin with…

With this dumb decision they instantly setted the huge problem of getting the names that you want to get forever into stone, because just due to this nonsense can exist every single name just only ONCE per server, what makes no sense at all, because in real life there exists also not every name just once only in the whole world.

The names that we have, do exist on hundreds of thousands to millinios of other people, even to the point of sharign the same surnames and idiotically ironicalyl surpringnly no butt has in the world a problem with that, but suddenly in a virtual GAMe world, people have issues with this!!

its so ridiculous, it isnt funny anymore this stupid ppointless double morale of people when it comes down to games, especially when the technology exists to ensure, that from a viewpoint of account safety you can have BOTH AT THE SAME TIME.

You can have account safely while also providing all players in a game like GW2 the freedom ,that everyone can receive the names that they want to get, without that someone gets the virtual middle finger, just because anybody else in the world was maybe some freakign seconds quicker than you to name their characters.

The game already provides display names with changing namer codes which enable us to have the same display name for our accounts, just with different changing disply name namers.

Besides of me there could already exist in GW2 up to 9998 other Orpheals…
DO I peep CARE??? NOOOOOOOOO

So why the peep hell should I care about it, if there are like 9998 possible other accounts there which could have “maybe” characters that could potentially (seriously, unless someone provokes and or is some kind of Stalker/Troll, how high is seriously the chance, that people will create just out of coincedence characters with exactly the same name???) have the same name like a character of my account – and even then you need to consider a big load of other character customization factors into this as well like:

- Height/BodySide/Skin Color
- Hair Style/ Face Style
- Race
- Class
- Equipment/ Equipment Color Settings (we have far over 500+ colors already!!!)

There are so many factors with that you can individualize already your accounts, that its very hard to nearly impossible to make just out of coincedence 100% same copies of a character that if they woudl be able to share the exact same name and even then still stays the 100% untouchable individual account display name and account name (email adress) which are absolutely untouchable unique and can#t be copied..

So why the peep hell do make people such a freaking huge problem out of the whole thing, when in fact the technology easily would be there to ensure that all playrs could have the freedom of naming characters with the same name, regardless of which Server you play on, when theres so many different factos to individualize a character, that by far it is not enough to share just the same character name to be mistaken by accident should eventually one of those people that share names with others come onto the stupid idea to try to scam somebody and try then to let somebody else get the blame for it that shares the same name, in hope, that Anet’s customer support would be unable to identify who exactly is the account that needs to get punished for that action???

Sometimes I kind of think, this fear for getting scammed due to enabling open character naming is the sole reason for it, why we don’t have open free and unlimited character naming that is bonded to our unique account display names for quick and easy identifications for the customer support, if needed.

i doubt it, that it would be for ANet any kind of technical limit or some kind of super huge server cost difference or anythign liek that, if they would enable it that we could name freely our characters like we want… and if there really needs to be some kind of limitation, than take the easiest limitation of

“every name can exist once per unique account display name”

Would mean then, that every unique character name could then exist exactly 9999 times and not just only once and if ever one name pr accoutn display name shoudl exist already 9999 times, then you would need to make yourself a different new account display (2nd GW2 account) to have in theory again a chance of 1/9999 that you might get with that different account display namen then on your second account a character with exactly the name that you want, without that you are practically forced to disgrace the name with weird dialects and special letters just to increase your chances that you might get a name, that can look at least very similar to the original

Orpheal.8263:

Massive Long Rant

I recommend you try to relax every once in a while. A system we have in place that you personally don’t like, doesn’t make it ‘dumb’, ‘idiotic’, ‘ridiculous’ etc. etc..

I like unique names just so I know which IIIRytlockXOX I am talking to.

Your rant have many mistakes. I just going to point one:
Character’s names are not limited to the servers, but the whole game.

No, just no.

As someone who is prior military … what happens if someone is playing and all of a sudden they go away for duty for what should be 6 months, while away they get extended out for another 6 months … and another. Now they are gone at least 1 1/2 years from the game. It could be longer, it is the military we are talking about here. Are you really going to tell the girls and guys “sorry but you were gone x months now the chars/names you had are gone”?

penelopehannibal.8947:

Orpheal.8263:

Massive Long Rant

I recommend you try to relax every once in a while. A system we have in place that you personally don’t like, doesn’t make it ‘dumb’, ‘idiotic’, ‘ridiculous’ etc. etc..

In your opinion maybe, please refrain from trying to change mine.
I see no reason, why anybody at all should even “like” this very limitating “system” to begin with – it absolutely has NO advantages for anyone of us that it gives you no naming freedom and basically that system comes from behind the moon/

The only rational reasons I can up with it are either, there exist some kind of costs that anet doesnt want to pay to enable us naming freedom, technical limits within GW2 that we simpletons can’t realize that are no absolute IT specialists/programmers that are very well expertised with the super customized stuff around this game that seems to work in some things like a house of cards short before collapsing, if you just change a wrong piece of it somewhere, or its simply the huge fear of the playerbase7community here about the “possibility” of getting maybe eventually scammed by other someone, who tries to be someone else in hope, the original gets the blame for the ill action, when in factthe customer support can see instantly, who has done something bad and who hasn’t via the unique account display name that for sure is also linked everywhere inside of the game with our actions that we do inside of the game.

If it is not one of these 3 reasons, then I don’t know why else Anet cripples down our freedom of naming characters and limitates us artificially to 1 name for the whole game, when it should be practically possible to allow 1 name per account display name to raise the limit to 9999 at least and break this thick ice of artificial name limiting, where none should realistically exist at all.

Leon de Damasco.8105:

Your rant have many mistakes. I just going to point one:
Character’s names are not limited to the servers, but the whole game.

Makes it not better >.>

penelopehannibal.8947:

Orpheal.8263:

Massive Long Rant

I recommend you try to relax every once in a while. A system we have in place that you personally don’t like, doesn’t make it ‘dumb’, ‘idiotic’, ‘ridiculous’ etc. etc..

But with a numbers system of .1234 we can have a whole 10,000 Sephiroths!

…I’d gouge my eyes out, honestly. I’m so glad FF14 gave me the option to abbreviate player names to just the initials.

Rauderi.8706:

penelopehannibal.8947:

Orpheal.8263:

Massive Long Rant

I recommend you try to relax every once in a while. A system we have in place that you personally don’t like, doesn’t make it ‘dumb’, ‘idiotic’, ‘ridiculous’ etc. etc..

But with a numbers system of .1234 we can have a whole 10,000 Sephiroths!

…I’d gouge my eyes out, honestly. I’m so glad FF14 gave me the option to abbreviate player names to just the initials.

And?…

I do also already see everywhere alot of try hard narutos, try hard Ruffys, try hard Legolas and what not all else of well liked characters of all kinds of other medias like games, books, movies and so on as also other games, even without my proposed system, simply due to peoply trying to troll other people with this by putting as many as possibly X’s and Y’s before or after the name …

Or haven’t you seen already alot of Xxxx Sephiroth Xxxx ???

I follow the opinion, if there is really seriously someone, in a game like this who wants to be known in the game by such a name like Xxxx Sephiroth Xxxx, then this player should have the total freedom for this, as well as not being at all limited as to how the character is named, as long the name doesn’t violate against the game rules (obscene stuff, religious stuff, insulting stuff, body stuff, trying to copy real person names, famous example, Heidi Klum oO whyever her lol

That person must in the end live with it, that everybody will call him Xxxx Sephiroth Xxxx, not me …

However, i also think there should exist a simple way for players to allow them to give them “Nicknames”, (when put into block list) so that the display of that blocked persons charactername gets switch to your chosen Nickname, so that “visually” you have as a player to practically rename other players that you blocked for you and restore that way practically for you your “immersion” by givign them as nicknames some appropiate names that you will see from this point on, if you should ever meet this charcter in the game again, together with a small symbol that indicates for you as a reminder, that the person in front of you is a blocked person on your listed and got nicknamed.

Basically this is using simply the same technology of naming pets in this game, just on other players, just so reworked, that it simply works on blocked players, or even without this requirement, simply make it possible to give all players nicknames with an option in the menu to activate7deactivate show custom nicknames (Y/N)

I also follow the principle of – wheres a will, theres also a way.
If anet sriously ever wanted to improve this situation, then they would most basically done it already, but after all these years its safe to say i gues,s that they simpyl dont care about this, same as like they ignore to improve the obsolete Follower List stuff to give us players more privacy and also to allow us more freedom with from actually can follow us by lettign the game send out first requests to us, if others may “follow” us to become able to see, where we are, what we are doing right now and so on …
But thats an other dead ignored topic

Orpheal.8263:

In your opinion maybe, please refrain from trying to change mine.

I’m not trying to change your opinion, you have whatever opinion you want. It’s the way you’re expressing it that I’m talking about. There really is no need to be so hyperbolic about it.

If anything, I think it would be a good idea to free the names from an account that are Permanently banned after 6 months.

If you can’t get your account unbanned after 6 months, you aren’t going to get it unbanned ever….

Free To Play Accounts, It would be cool if there were a limitation to reserve a name due to inactivity. Maybe, if you are do not log in after 1 year your name becomes available. The following Restrictions in place:
- Only Free to Play Accounts
-Did NOT buy an Expansion
-Did NOT buy the base game
So truly free to play accounts who do not log in for 1 year will be effected.

People who spent money on an account, should be allowed to keep their names until ANET pulls the plug on the game. The exception, being; if your account is permanently banned after 6 months serving said ban.

The reason to not free the names from a banned acc (no matter the period of the ban) was cleared (Imo) before in this treat.

Swagger.1459:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

BTP means no “inactive” accts.

So, no,

B2P doesn’t mean you get a name etched in stone forever… It means you can load up and play whenever.

Unfortunately there are tons of names in limbo on accounts that haven’t logged in for a long long time…

Name purges have been common among mmos so it will be ok.

From experience… Sometimes real life things happen, coming back to a game to have your name wiped is an instant “kitten this” and never play again….

I’m positive that Anet wants players who return to the game to have incentives to stay with the game, not reasons to uninstall.

No, this would be a terrible idea, thankfully they’ve said they’re not going to do it.

Maybe try being creative instead of asking Anet to take something away from someone who paid for it?

Orpheal.8263:

I also follow the principle of – wheres a will, theres also a way.
If anet sriously ever wanted to improve this situation, then they would most basically done it already, but after all these years its safe to say i gues,s that they simpyl dont care about this, same as like they ignore to improve the obsolete Follower List stuff to give us players more privacy and also to allow us more freedom with from actually can follow us by lettign the game send out first requests to us, if others may “follow” us to become able to see, where we are, what we are doing right now and so on …
But thats an other dead ignored topic

I totally agree were there’s a will there’s a way! How ever have you heard the saying “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it”. Take a look at this thread as an example you and the OP are for this idea, practically EVERYONE else who has responded is against it, and have given numerous reasons and counter points as to why it’s a bad idea and should not happen.

It’s not a case of A-net ignoring something, by not doing this A-net is in-fact doing what the majority of customers want.

All names are first come first serve, and are held until that player deletes the character and doesn’t use the name again 24hrs afterwards.
No exceptions. Get creative.

Orpheal.8263:

Really long passage….

So, with your plan, must we ascertain each player’s Display Name first, before attempting to add them to our Friend’s list/Blocked list manually? Do the Display Names show up when we mouse-over the characters in-game?

How do we determine which ‘Legolas’ to add to our Friend’s list, Blocked List, etc. without knowing what their Display Name is…including the numbers, as (you pointed out), Display Names are not unique (word-wise, anyway)?

If changing Display Names is a technical nightmare (as stated by the Devs), is it possible changing the method Character Names work would be one as well?

Things to ponder.

I agree OP, if an account hasn’t been logged into for over two years, they lose their names. This isn’t like WoW where logging in requires a subscription. All you gotta do is log in, maybe even just into the site, and your names are safe.

The proportional of benefit to cost is horribly imbalanced. When I said “barely any names were used” a few days ago, I get the feeling that nobody knows what “barely” stands for. In all the names that were purged in City of Heroes, less than half of 1% were ever used again. I can’t get the exact number, since that resource was wiped off the face of the planet, but of the thousands of names purged, less than 100 were ever used again.

This is because, and as hard as this is to consider: a lot of the “inactive” accounts had unique names that other people weren’t vying for. For every fanboy who wants to be named Gandalf the Wise or Chuck Norris or Wolverine, there’s at least 200 players who’ve named themselves Diavara, Van Rahl, Morgol Fangbreaker, etc. who haven’t played since launch, and may come back to this game later.

So, lets consider the name purge, both from a historical sense and from a logical perspective:

Pro: A couple of players who can’t/won’t come up with a name might get the option to name themselves what they want.
Con: The players who would be negatively affected by this outnumber the beneficiaries at least 200 to one.
Con: The vast majority of names that get wiped are unique ones that never get used again.
Con: Out of the all the people who do want to name themselves Wolverine, still only one person will get it. It’s not going to be you.
Con: Every person who does come back will have their experience ruined when they find their account gutted and robbed.
Con: Most of the players who would benefit from this have already chosen a name and have moved on.

Really, no sane business would ever make this move. It didn’t work in the past. It won’t work again for the exact same reasons.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Con: Out of the all the people who do want to name themselves Wolverine, still only one person will get it. It’s not going to be you.
Con: Every person who does come back will have their experience ruined when they find their account gutted and robbed.

These two statements are spot on. When ever I see this topic brought up I always wonder what name the OP wanted. Just knowing 90% of them even if a name wipe occurred they probably would not get it.

The second one I also totally agree with. As I said in an earlier post, I can’t play much at the moment, (and logging on is extremely unlikely) I’ve been playing since head start, and my account has always been in good standings. When I can get back on if I came back and saw my names gone I would uninstall and never look back. It’s a matter of respect for customers who got their names, they should not be taken away.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Orpheal.8263:

Really long passage….

So, with your plan, must we ascertain each player’s Display Name first, before attempting to add them to our Friend’s list/Blocked list manually? Do the Display Names show up when we mouse-over the characters in-game?

How do we determine which ‘Legolas’ to add to our Friend’s list, Blocked List, etc. without knowing what their Display Name is…including the numbers, as (you pointed out), Display Names are not unique (word-wise, anyway)?

If changing Display Names is a technical nightmare (as stated by the Devs), is it possible changing the method Character Names work would be one as well?

Things to ponder.

In another game I play they use a system where every character name is followed by @account handle. This @ can be seen in mail messages, chat messages, and by mousing over the character. It works very well.

So a character might be named Geist, who would then be listed as Geist@Ashen.2907

Orpheal.8263:

Massive Long Rant

penelopehannibal.8947:

I recommend you try to relax every once in a while. A system we have in place that you personally don’t like, doesn’t make it ‘dumb’, ‘idiotic’, ‘ridiculous’ etc. etc..

Orpheal.8263:

In your opinion maybe, please refrain from trying to change mine.
I see no reason, why anybody at all should even “like” this very limitating “system” to begin with – it absolutely has NO advantages for anyone of us that it gives you no naming freedom and basically that system comes from behind the moon/

Well, if you aren’t able to read all the other posts to see why lots of other people like this system, which many of us do not feel is limiting, then I can see why you’re frustrated to the point of being unwilling to discuss it.

• Current system allows people to return to the game whenever they like.
• It makes it easy to recognize and invite (and remember) people based on their names.
• The system isn’t that limiting, because there are so many potential names to choose.

In the end, it’s a personal preference to want names to be reused, either across servers or after a period of inactivity. ANet’s preference is different and that works for a lot of people, even if a few would like to see it change.

ANet have said they are never going to do this, ever. Why are we still talking about it?

Lolwut? Ridiculous. Ain’t ever gonna happen.

Who the hell would want a second hand name anyway? That’d be like wearing someone else’s used pants.

And besides…. put bluntly: ‘You like my character name? You want it for yourself? Tough kitten, I was here earlier or I thought of it before you. Get your own.’

~TG

Embrace the gibberish.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Some names are reserved from early Linking to GW as well.

Nope. These names were only reserved early on in the game, they aren’t reserved any more. Quite a few of mine were taken by other people because I didn’t know there was a time limit on this.

brently.7946:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Some names are reserved from early Linking to GW as well.

Nope. These names were only reserved early on in the game, they aren’t reserved any more. Quite a few of mine were taken by other people because I didn’t know there was a time limit on this.

They where held for 3 months.

BrotherBelial.3094:

brently.7946:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Some names are reserved from early Linking to GW as well.

Nope. These names were only reserved early on in the game, they aren’t reserved any more. Quite a few of mine were taken by other people because I didn’t know there was a time limit on this.

They where held for 3 months.

No, it was only like 4 days guaranteed. The 3 days of head start and then one day after launch (then however long to work through the tickets).

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/37245-reserving-your-character-name-for-guild-wars-2/
After launch day (and after we work through support tickets filed on launch day), we’ll free up the millions of unclaimed names for new Guild Wars 2 players to use.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Some names are reserved from early Linking to GW as well.

it was at least, i can’t use any of my GW1 names anymore…..

Nope, never gonna happen, unless the game put it upfront they will delete accounts after a set time of inactivity, a name purge will never happen especially for B2P games, where you paid for the right to create your own personal character, name included.

I would say, just get better at names. I have never once had an issue with naming my characters.

BrotherBelial.3094:

ANet have said they are never going to do this, ever. Why are we still talking about it?

• ANet has said ‘never’ before and sometimes they change their mind.
• Some people can’t accept that besides ANet saying ‘never’ that this might be bad for the game and the community.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m strongly against ANet changing the policy — it’s a lot of effort on their part for the small number of people unwilling to take a little more time in choosing a character name. However, those people are entitled to voicing their preference.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

BrotherBelial.3094:

ANet have said they are never going to do this, ever. Why are we still talking about it?

• ANet has said ‘never’ before and sometimes they change their mind.
• Some people can’t accept that besides ANet saying ‘never’ that this might be bad for the game and the community.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m strongly against ANet changing the policy — it’s a lot of effort on their part for the small number of people unwilling to take a little more time in choosing a character name. However, those people are entitled to voicing their preference.

And I agree, they can. But the reason they wont do it is because they can’t. The only time they can change a name is if it is offensive. Could you imagine the work it would take to look at every account, then decided if that account has been unused long enough, also ANet would probably warn people. Something like “we are going to free up names on accounts that have not been used for X amount of time. If you want to keep your name just login to keep it.” Anyone who wants to keep there name will just do a quick log. Maybe there would be a few. Most likely the people who call there characters xXDeathbringerXx. But at any rate, if they did this and someone lost there name, it would be another reason not to come back.

Lets not for get this game is buy to play. Many MMO’s say the whole names will be wiped if you are inactive. Blizzard said that with WoW. I’ve not played WoW in about 6-7 years. My characters names are all still there.