Purge Level 1 Names

[Jlad]

I just joined maybe a week ago, and the first 4 names I tried were all taken. It's rather frustrating to see that these are all owned by level 1 characters that don't even play the game.

Hall of Fame has mostly level 1's at 40000, and extends all the way down to 157,000 current characters. Accounting for the fact that some of the retired people above Rank 40,000 make up for the non-level 1's below 40,000, roughly 3/4 character names are in use by people who don't even play the game. And it's only going to get worse.

[BlueDude2]

This is the nature of browser games. Inactivity burns will annoy certain members of the player base, hence, they will keep them necessarily as a part of policy.

Please make a suggestion that can get around such a problem.

I agree that it is annoying, but annoying isn't justification for a paradigmatic shift and significant effort by game developers (who have very little to gain).

[ballersburden]

It can be made like Diablo 2... where if you don't play for a certain amount of time when you first start within a week your name gets automatically deleted by the system.

[Dweomer]

...Can we wait until we hit the required number of members for Server 2 to be added?

I like the idea, don't get me wrong, but... timing.

[Bullbound]

Here is an idea that might help no matter what level you are. This may help with inactivity and mushroom buying:

Account inactive for 30 days (the account has not been logged on at all, from any location) and no mushroom purchase ever made: Account is deleted.

Account inactive for 30 days (the account has not been logged on at all, from any location) and a mushroom purchase has been made at some point: Account is left alone.

Account inactive for 90 days (the account has not been logged on at all, from any location) and a mushroom purchase has been made at some point: Account is removed from the HoF, guild, etc. while being flagged as Inactive. To reactivate, the player logs on to an alert that a confirmation e-mail has been sent to him/her. They confirm the e-mail address again and they are put back onto the HoF where their honor belongs, guildless, but they can have their character back as they left it (minus the time that would be lost from mounts, potions, etc. if they had not already expired).

Account inactive for 180 days (that is half a year we are talking about) with a mushroom purchase at some point = deletion.

[Dweomer]

Works for me.

[iTZKooPA]

Originally Posted by Bullbound

Here is an idea that might help no matter what level you are. This may help with inactivity and mushroom buying:

Account inactive for 30 days (the account has not been logged on at all, from any location) and no mushroom purchase ever made: Account is deleted.

Account inactive for 30 days (the account has not been logged on at all, from any location) and a mushroom purchase has been made at some point: Account is left alone.

Account inactive for 90 days (the account has not been logged on at all, from any location) and a mushroom purchase has been made at some point: Account is removed from the HoF, guild, etc. while being flagged as Inactive. To reactivate, the player logs on to an alert that a confirmation e-mail has been sent to him/her. They confirm the e-mail address again and they are put back onto the HoF where their honor belongs, guildless, but they can have their character back as they left it (minus the time that would be lost from mounts, potions, etc. if they had not already expired).

Account inactive for 180 days (that is half a year we are talking about) with a mushroom purchase at some point = deletion.

We'd honestly never want to delete and account that had been played at all. Sure, it's unlikely they'll return after 30 days, 180, whatever, but if they do, and the account is gone, they'd never stick around.

It's more likely that level 1's would be pruned (as suggested), because they didn't even do a single quest.

[ronozoro]

I agree with iTZKooPA. There are times when my life just gets too busy to get online and I will often ignore a game for a month or more until things settle down. If my character was deleted I would probably just find a new game instead of start over.

[Jiriki]

Deleting accounts is not something to be taken lightly. Sure any level 1s that have been inactive for a long period of time (say 90 days) should be deleted, but any character that has advanced needs to be kept.

And if names really become an issue then any player that has been inactive for longer than say 6-9 mos should have the names deleted (not the character) and a user could assign a new name at login whenever they come back. This could use the current method of wiping out offensive names so very little development work. Its just a database update.

[Dweomer]

Originally Posted by Jiriki

Deleting accounts is not something to be taken lightly. Sure any level 1s that have been inactive for a long period of time (say 90 days) should be deleted, but any character that has advanced needs to be kept.

And if names really become an issue then any player that has been inactive for longer than say 6-9 mos should have the names deleted (not the character) and a user could assign a new name at login whenever they come back. This could use the current method of wiping out offensive names so very little development work. Its just a database update.

How would that work with the name of the character being the login for the account?