Server merge - is my name gone forever?

[apollojuly]

I had my first D&D monk named Thelonious over 20-25 years ago.

I was a part of the DDO Head Start and on the first day I created a character on Fernia named Thelonious.

I've had several posts over the last 18 months about how excited I was to have this character. Some may have been purged off due to age, and others lost in last weeks forum merge. Here is the only one I could initially find:
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php...us#post1207421

So now after the server merge I don't have a character named Thelonious any more. I have Thelonious-Fernia. None of my other characters are named xxxxxx-Fernia.

I think I know why - over the last 18 months I've dropped the name only to pick it up immediately as I experiment with a couple character rerolls. So me not having the name for 10 minutes dropped me in the seniority rankings apparently.

I want a character named Thelonious on the same server as all my other characters/friends/guildies. I've held that name for 18 long months - just sitting there. No one else has ever held that name on Fernia.

Do I have any recourse? If I am missing something obvious I apologize in advance.

[Vinos]

I don't see anything happening. You technically deleted him. Not really fair to the other guy who for all you know had his name just as long.

[Rekker]

Yup, the guy who never re-rolled his is getting to keep it. You could try sending him an in-game mail to see if he may change it. You never know what he will say unless you ask.

[Rowanheal]

Consider yourself...I was going to say a bad word here, but had to reconsider due to the rules of this forum.

Yes, your name is gone forever.

Had Turbine decided to use a global naming system many would not be faced with this anguish. However, it was not a global system and this is the outcome.

You can bemoan the loss and then add a letter to your characters name. Or you can try and talk to the other guy who has your name.

See ya in Stormreach,

[Mad_Bombardier]

Yup, the guy who never re-rolled his is getting to keep it. You could try sending him an in-game mail to see if he may change it. You never know what he will say unless you ask.

But, he can't change his without GM intervention or DDO Premium Services. You are only awarded a self-rename token if you had -Servername added to your name.

[apollojuly]

I've sat on this name patiently since the first hours of launch. 18 months x 30 days x 24 hours x 60 mins = over 750,000 minutes. And I give it up for 10 minutes to reroll. Oh man.

This probably seems silly to everyone else, but it meant everything to me.

[Sparker]

Sorry that you lost the name Apollojuly. It is, unfortunately, as you suspected. Once you deleted the character and remade him, you lost any "seniority" over the name, so any other player that had the name priror to that is now the elder.

I'm afraid your only option is to choose a new name with your token. Sorry Apollojuly.

I've sat on this name patiently since the first hours of launch. 18 months x 30 days x 24 hours x 60 mins = over 750,000 minutes. And I give it up for 10 minutes to reroll. Oh man.

This probably seems silly to everyone else, but it meant everything to me.

[wiglin]

Thats pretty crappy I agree. I also understand that with the overall big picture of this game a server merge was important to the success of this game. With that in mind their are only so many ways to make the naming fair.

It would have been nice if Turbine had a way to track how many hours were logged in the game with the account and allow that account rightfull ownership of all their names, but they didn't do it that way so now people that have been faithful to ddo since open beta can get hosed.

In the mean time this is a capitalist society and the way you let a company know you do not like what they do is to stop giving them money (and hope that Bioware's top secret mmo is based on dnd), or move on with a different name.

Names are very important to me in online gaming. I use the same ones everywhere, if my name was taken I would have moved on to a new game.

[Rekker]

But, he can't change his without GM intervention or DDO Premium Services. You are only awarded a self-rename token if you had -Servername added to your name.

Right, but if its just a mule he has and doesn't play, can't he delete the toon allowing Apollojuly to create his ???

[Mad_Bombardier]

Right, but if its just a mule he has and doesn't play, can't he delete the toon allowing Apollojuly to create his ???

True, he could do that.

[scottishjason]

Sorry that you lost the name Apollojuly. It is, unfortunately, as you suspected. Once you deleted the character and remade him, you lost any "seniority" over the name, so any other player that had the name priror to that is now the elder.

I'm afraid your only option is to choose a new name with your token. Sorry Apollojuly.

Ok here is why people are leaving this game every day. You really don’t have any grasp on how to run a game at all. Some people like me paid extra so we could get a head start in the game and save the names we wanted to use. Once we did that we created characters using those names. Which would have been the end of it. But over the last year you have changed the rules of the game. You have changed them so much that you have forced many of us to reroll our characters. In some cases many times. Then you come back and say, well we have to merge servers (again because people are leaving due to your total lack of understanding in mmo gaming). So people are now loosing names that they paid extra for. See that’s the part I don’t think you geniuses realized when you decided to merge the servers. Some of us paid extra at the start of this mmo for these names. So are you going to refund the people who have to now change there names? Its not our fault this happened, its yours. So how are you gong to compensate people that like I said paid extra for those names? Or are you going to do what you have done in the past… not talk about it and hope the problem goes away. Now I am not posting here to sound like a jerk or anything. I only lost one name but that’s not the point at all. The point is that I like many other people here paid for that name. Now after a year you have made a change that is forcing us to change them.

[Sparker]

But over the last year you have changed the rules of the game. You have changed them so much that you have forced many of us to reroll our characters. In some cases many times.

Nobody has forced you to reroll any of your characters. It is unfortunate that if you did so, you could have lost seniority over the name compared to another player that did not choose to remake their character.

So are you going to refund the people who have to now change there names? Its not our fault this happened, its yours. So how are you gong to compensate people that like I said paid extra for those names?

No, we can not refund players their pre-order money nor can we compensate players that pre-ordered and now have to change their name.

[pastor_dex]

Nobody has forced you to reroll any of your characters.

I may not agree with the rest of the posters ideas, but you are way wrong in this one, if I had a Rouge / Ftr build gimped by the changes, I would have felt pressured to re-roll so as not to waste a precious character slot.

Your company does owe these people something. Changes that effect a toons performance, particularly those that are created after the game has been launched for over 6 months, are something your employer is responsible for.

[Impaqt]

Ok So people are now loosing names that they paid extra for. See that’s the part I don’t think you geniuses realized when you decided to merge the servers. Some of us paid extra at the start of this mmo for these names. So are you going to refund the people who have to now change there names? Its not our fault this happened, its yours. So how are you gong to compensate people that like I said paid extra for those names? Or are you going to do what you have done in the past… not talk about it and hope the problem goes away. Now I am not posting here to sound like a jerk or anything. I only lost one name but that’s not the point at all. The point is that I like many other people here paid for that name. Now after a year you have made a change that is forcing us to change them.

How exactly did you "Pay Extra" for a name? I've never heard of this in any MMO.....

[StanC]

How exactly did you "Pay Extra" for a name? I've never heard of this in any MMO.....

Was wondering the same thing. I was part of the head start and did not pay anything extra for it.

[StanC]

I had my first D&D monk named Thelonious over 20-25 years ago.

I was a part of the DDO Head Start and on the first day I created a character on Fernia named Thelonious.

I've had several posts over the last 18 months about how excited I was to have this character. Some may have been purged off due to age, and others lost in last weeks forum merge. Here is the only one I could initially find:
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php...us#post1207421

So now after the server merge I don't have a character named Thelonious any more. I have Thelonious-Fernia. None of my other characters are named xxxxxx-Fernia.

I think I know why - over the last 18 months I've dropped the name only to pick it up immediately as I experiment with a couple character rerolls. So me not having the name for 10 minutes dropped me in the seniority rankings apparently.

I want a character named Thelonious on the same server as all my other characters/friends/guildies. I've held that name for 18 long months - just sitting there. No one else has ever held that name on Fernia.

Do I have any recourse? If I am missing something obvious I apologize in advance.

Only thing I can think of is to send an ingame email to the person who has that name. If you ask nice enough they may be willing to delete the character and let you have the name. Who knows they may not be attached to the name as you are.

[scottishjason]

The head start I paid for was part of the beta what cost me $7 per copy and I got three of them at my local best buy. But it depends on which promotion you got onto. Some people just got the preorder copy where you put $10 down then paid the rest when it came in. I know there was a few promotions out there that also gave you items but it totally depended on where you ended up getting it from.

If you would have come out and said make all of your characters the first day of the game and don’t delete them or you may loose your name when we cant find a way to keep people from leaving the game. that would have been one thing. But you didn’t. so that is why people are mad.

As for forcing us to reroll… are you freaking high? You totally changed out the way some of the feats work like lets see… evasion and armor? and I don’t even want to go into the “new” enhancement system. Then what about those of us that tried to make repeater builds… yea… when all you did with a repeater was sit there and blow bolts into nothing forever. Yea what was a useful feat. Now I know your going to come back with but we gave you a way to change out your feats… yea after a year of having the game up. How are we to plan what is going to pop into your head a year from now.

[Spookydodger]

A Thellonius by any other name would smell just as... Thelloniusian.

[Ziggy]

How exactly did you "Pay Extra" for a name? I've never heard of this in any MMO.....

Was wondering the same thing. I was part of the head start and did not pay anything extra for it.

well i paid an extra 5 dollars at bestbuy so i could preorder and be in headstart....

no wait they took that off the full price when it came out.