Guild Wars 2

And why would Anet do that? One of the biggest boon of GW2, to both Anet and the players, is that player can’t really quit the game. I’ve seen plenty of people who stopped playing GW2 shortly after the launch then come back 2 years layer. So yeah, it allows player to take a break and it gives Anet bigger revenue potential.

Or people can just delete their characters if they plan on quitting.

Chyanne Waters.8719:

Ayrilana.1396

Or people can just delete their characters if they plan on quitting.

That does not delete their account though just their characters and they also keep their names on that account.

What purpose is there to deleting the account if the characters have already been deleted?

Chyanne Waters.8719:

Ayrilana.1396
What point does deleting the account do?

Deleting accounts will free up space on the servers it will also free up character names that others can use.

All previously used names become available to everyone after 24 hours since the character was deleted.

I doubt the account really ties up that many resources and especially for those who would even use the feature.

The problem I see with this is that it’s a lot of effort for the player (relative to simply not logging in again) for no benefit to them. And potentially a lot of risk if they ever do change their mind.

Which means most people are unlikely to ever do it.

Think about games you’ve stopped playing – MMOs or otherwise. How many have you consciously thought “I am going to stop playing this game” and then straight away uninstalled it, vs. ones where you simply found yourself playing it less and less until you weren’t playing at all and only thought about that fact when you needed to uninstall it to free up space on your hardrive, or cancel a subscription or whatever?

I bet there’s very, very few in the first category compared to the second.

Sure there’s always posts on this and every other game’s forum from people declaring that they are quitting forever because something has/has not been added/removed/changed/turned pink but the funny thing is many of the people who post those topics actually continue to play. Or at least continue to log in to monitor whether their feedback produces any results since what they’re actually doing is requesting that the thing they don’t like be changed, just under the mistaken assumption that making it a threat will increase the effectiveness.

And even the ones who do mean it and do stop playing at that point are a tiny minority compared to people who just stop. This is why many game forums don’t allow those posts at all and instead use actual info on player activity to gauge not only how many people are playing but what they’re doing and what may have caused them to stop.

Can I have your stuff

Can I haz your goldz?

Chyanne Waters.8719:

I was looking at the forums and keep seeing posts like good bye GW2 I am quitting the game. I also saw recently someone asking about purging names from inactive accounts.

One way to fix that is add an option that the player can use that will let them actually quit GW2, but not affect GW if their accounts are linked.

Yes, usually people throwing a tantrum because ANet haven’t done what they want to the letter/the game’s not for them, and the latter because some people get so frustrated at their lack of creativity with making up new character names (which really isn’t that hard as has been stated by multiple people in the relevant threads).

I don’t see how deleting people’s accounts is going to fix either of those issues. I remember taking a break from GW1 after my first year of playing as I was burned out from getting GWAMM. I was gone for 2 years and boy, I would have been kittened off had I had to pay out again for all the character slots, bank tabs, outfits and unlock packs I bought. In fact, if I knew a game had a policy of deleting all my stuff after 6 months/1 year, I wouldn’t play it to begin with. Not because I’m in the habit of taking breaks from games, just that if something in life cropped up meaning that I had to take a break for an indefinite amount of time, I want to lose only my friends list, not everything I’ve worked for and bought. Having it happen when a game closes down is bad enough but it happens. Having it happen because some people are creatively constipated is quite another.

1. There are plenty of “I’m quitting” posts. There are also lots of "I uninstalled the game, but also “after this most recent update, I’m back!” posts.
2. Who would volunteer to close their account? Only those angry at the game or at ANet. That’s a classic situation for “decide in haste; repent at leisure” situations — why would ANet want to create a situation in which people are likely to regret that decision?
3. As stated by others, how much benefit is actually provided to the game beyond that which already exists for the time and trouble ANet would have to go through to enable this?

In short, this is a solution in search of a non-existent problem.

Chyanne Waters.8719:

Deleting accounts will free up space on the servers it will also free up character names that others can use.

Considering they retain information on banned accounts, I sincerely doubt database space is enough of a consideration for Anet to do this.

Ayrilana.1396:

Or people can just delete their characters if they plan on quitting.

Yeah this haha. They can also make a video out of it to sad music and make a few bucks lol.

I’m wondering whether anyone would use this proposed “feature.” Essentially:

• People paid for a buy-to-play game. That means they can come and go at will.
• Sure, someone can decide to quit, but that does not mean they will never change their mind.
• The “feature” would make returning impossible, thus removing the “return when you want” benefit the person paid for.
• The proposed “feature” might benefit people who want a specific name, it might not. It would in no way that I can see benefit the person who would be deciding to use it. Dropping the potential to return has a potential downside and no upside.

I suppose there might be some people who’ve recognized they have addictive tendencies and need to remove temptation completely or fall back into patterns they know are bad for them. For most such people, just uninstalling would work, as doing so would remove the possibility of impulse play.

No, no account deletion for those who rage quit (and might regret it after they cool off) or for those who are gone for a while but might return later, but not if they have to rebuy the game and start completely over from the very beginning.

Another really bad idea, brought to you by the forums.

Can’t tell if OP is serious.

The player already has control over this by deleting all of their characters. The names will be freed up after a short time (I believe in 24 or 48 hours?). Creating something like this can only backfire for Anet – Players who regret their decision may expect to be able to restore their characters, and even if the request is denied it creates additional workload along with creating the system in the first place.

How about an option that automatically gives all your stuff to random players that started the game <1 month ago once you quit.
That would be nice.

This is pointless and not worth even an hour of dev time. If you want to quit just stop playing.

NCsoft jacked their playerbase a while back with Aion. They did a complete wipe of any character that had not been logged in within a certain timeframe (if you are not playing the game at that time then how are you going to know about the impending character wipe?). I had actually planned on playing Aion again until I found this out. This was after a 2 year break.

Why this will never happen and something we should ALL be thankful for:

Stolen accounts. How fun would it be for you to find out your account was stolen and then the person who stole it decides to delete it just for laughs?

Yeah, not gonna happen thankfully. Besides I think if you really do want to delete your account you can do so by contacting customer support. They may go through a verification process to determine you are the true owner however, not sure.

I cant think of a MMO which allows you to totally delete your account.
Most even make it hard to delete your characters, and thats to stop rage quitters who change their minds and come back crying to the game company to restore all their deleted characters, and give them back their original names.

[Thank you for the suggestion and discussion. This appears to have run its course and the OP is deleted, closing thread.]