Inactive Name Release

[Chai]

I'm not sure what reason you have to hate all that is Cryptic, and I don't really care.

Their naming system is a lot more future-proof than DDO's, which after this length of time serves as another hurdle in the way of new players.

I don't like their games either for the most part, but there are a few things which they do well in the mess of things they don't which could be cherry picked and used by DDO. Their naming system is one of those things.

[TrinityTurtle]

That would work if instead of accountname we used an origins location. I prefer to keep account names unknown to prevent hacking efforts, revelation of personal information for people who use their actual names in their account name, and so on.

*Snipped for brevity*

Anyway, the use of account names is probably not well thought out. But the use of a proxy displaying "of placename" could serve the same purpose and be easy to remember as well as aesthetically pleasing -- key things in an RPG and also addressing the biggest concern regarding names when server consolidation discussions come up.

I like the idea, with the caveat that tells would be then routed through the account identifiers instead of firstnames, because typing out Name Lastname Account while trying ot get a tell out in the middle of something could make communication rather impractical under certain situations.

[Chai]

I like the idea, with the caveat that tells would be then routed through the account identifiers instead of firstnames, because typing out Name Lastname Account while trying ot get a tell out in the middle of something could make communication rather impractical under certain situations.

In current games where your unique name ID would be charactername_lastname@unique accountname...

I could send a tell to your unique account name. So if your unique account name is "turtle" my tell would be.

/t @turtle hey whats up are you logged in?

And any character you are playing on that account sees the tell.

This type of database work also allows for friending an entire account, and ignoring an entire account.

Placeholders work for accounts. Some games call it a "handle" - just like what is used on forums. While my account name isn't "chai" someone can send a tell to @chai and any character I am logged onto will see it.

[SableShadow]

I like the idea, with the caveat that tells would be then routed through the account identifiers instead of firstnames, because typing out Name Lastname Account while trying ot get a tell out in the middle of something could make communication rather impractical under certain situations.

The games that use the system have a fair number of helpers (smart auto-complete, right-click options, etc etc), iirc from STO and Champions.
I think your caveat is right on the money; no one wants to type twenty or thirty characters when they're currently typing five to 10.

I like the idea, and think it works well in the games I've seen it used, but for various reasons I'm not going to hold my breath for DDO to adopt it.
Would require a "oh, yeah, *that* would make it easy to implement!" epiphany/dream/ice cream sundae moment on someone's part over there to make it even a possibility.

[Uska]

I'm not sure what reason you have to hate all that is Cryptic, and I don't really care.

Their naming system is a lot more future-proof than DDO's, which after this length of time serves as another hurdle in the way of new players.

Just one as an example champions is only that in name and doesn't isn't really based on the pnp game (NWO isnt either) and you beloved naming system is cumbersome DDO's is much simpler for,tells and mail and I have made over a hundred characters with no problem giving them names thst didn't draw on anyone else's

Their games are all boring bad copies of wow which is no treasure itself

[Ausdoerrt]

In current games where your unique name ID would be charactername_lastname@unique accountname...

I could send a tell to your unique account name. So if your unique account name is "turtle" my tell would be.

/t @turtle hey whats up are you logged in?

And any character you are playing on that account sees the tell.

Yeah, problem is, if you want to send a tell to Drizzt, with whom you just grouped and happened to not remember his handle, you're SOL, because there's like fifteen hundred of them.

Meanwhile, account names still have to be unique, so we run into the same problem as before. But, people pay less attention to account names than toon names, so good luck sorting through hundreds of similar-looking names in one of the following formats: firstname_lastname11, zzzL33TR0XX0RZzzz, or adfasdfadfaa567.

Finally, I can't imagine how difficult it would be to transfer DDO to a new system.

So seriously, the mentioned system has its ups and downs, but ain't that great for DDO.

[SableShadow]

Just one as an example champions is only that in name and doesn't isn't really based on the pnp game (NWO isnt either) and you beloved naming system is cumbersome DDO's is much simpler for,tells and mail and I have made over a hundred characters with no problem giving them names thst didn't draw on anyone else's

As I mentioned above, there are some issues that need to be dealt with.

Their games are all boring bad copies of wow which is no treasure itself

There are a number of reasons to hate Jack E-boy; this is not one of them.

[Uska]

In current games where your unique name ID would be charactername_lastname@unique accountname...

I could send a tell to your unique account name. So if your unique account name is "turtle" my tell would be.

/t @turtle hey whats up are you logged in?

And any character you are playing on that account sees the tell.

This type of database work also allows for friending an entire account, and ignoring an entire account.

Placeholders work for accounts. Some games call it a "handle" - just like what is used on forums. While my account name isn't "chai" someone can send a tell to @chai and any character I am logged onto will see it.

I don't want people to be able to send a account tell sometimes I don't want people to know I am on and be bothered when I want to play with certain people I log on one of the characters in a guild with them or that they know other times I wish to play with different people and I desire to keep that separate.


Plus how do you tell who they are by just looking at their character.? Your system also cuts immersion

[Gauthaag]

is not that funny that despite the idea itself is bad, releasing the names would solve nothing? Only thing that would change is that the name someone posiible wants - like drizzt - wont be on some inactive account, but held by another one person and thus claimed as it is now. no change at all and no lower number of drizzzzzit around.

And nope, i dont want to someone spend their precious time on checking which names just got free to release rather than checking for bugs or updates, so that some lazy noncreative guy can have his Gandalf.


And sorry i dont want to give my account name in public - however it could be easy solution for identification, it s bad for security. Bad enough we had to share those with forums.

[Chai]

Yeah, problem is, if you want to send a tell to Drizzt, with whom you just grouped and happened to not remember his handle, you're SOL, because there's like fifteen hundred of them.

Meanwhile, account names still have to be unique, so we run into the same problem as before. But, people pay less attention to account names than toon names, so good luck sorting through hundreds of similar-looking names in one of the following formats: firstname_lastname11, zzzL33TR0XX0RZzzz, or adfasdfadfaa567.

No, because If I send a tell to drizzt the system responds with a list of drizzt@ characters with level and class info included, and I get to choose which I send the tell to. All we are doing here is querying a database for the result we want.

I can easily find the drizzt@menzo level 32 ranger on (same server I play on) who is either logged in, or just logged off a few min ago, on a list of 100 drizzt characters.

[Uska]

No, because If I send a tell to drizzt the system responds with a list of drizzt@ characters with level and class info included, and I get to choose which I send the tell to. All we are doing here is querying a database for the result we want.

Cumbersome and awful current system is much eaiser

[UurlockYgmeov]

Answer to all your name issues - just to end a very entertaining and pointless thread.

http://fantasynamegenerators.com/

[robrocks15]

I don't like their games either for the most part, but there are a few things which they do well in the mess of things they don't which could be cherry picked and used by DDO. Their naming system is one of those things.

Cryptic's history is littered with short-lived executive producers and dubious publishers, and I haven't logged on to their products with the latest bunch myself despite lifetime subs.

One thing I did like about their server architecture was you could access chat channels on the other games, so you could keep an eye on events while in a different game, or using a chat client whilst not gaming. Probably not so relevant to DDO outside seasonal occasions though.

[Chai]

Cumbersome and awful current system is much eaiser

current system is actually more cumbersome on the back end. The more recent account based system is far less cumbersome and far more convenient.

Example include......

If you are griefed and want to ignore griefer, current DDO system, griefer can keep making characters and keep the harassment alive.

In the system current games use, I can ignore their account handle, and their entire account can no longer communicate with me or harass me in any of that same company's games.

In current DDO system your friends list has a name limit. If you want to friend all of one persons 20 characters it takes 20 line items, and you better remember all their character names.

In other news if I want to friend all someones 20 characters in the account based system, I friend their @account and it takes one line item. As a side note this also allows me to send cross server tells to same account, and even cross GAME tells on same account. You could be playing star trek and I could tell you we have a raid on in 10 minutes in NW and ask you to join.

[Uska]

current system is actually more cumbersome on the back end. The more recent account based system is far less cumbersome and far more convenient.

Example include......

If you are griefed and want to ignore griefer, current DDO system, griefer can keep making characters and keep the harassment alive.

In the system current games use, I can ignore their account handle, and their entire account can no longer communicate with me.

In current DDO system your friends list has a name limit. If you want to friend all of one persons 20 characters it takes 20 line iteks, and you better remember all their character names.

In other news if I want to friend all someones 20 characters in the account based system, I friend their @account and it takes one line item. As a side note this also allows me to send cross server tells to same account.

See my point exactly I don't want people to be able to friend my whole account now I don't care if they want to ignore my account but friend no I keep some characters separate from others on a couple servers I am in two guilds and on another I am in four and for some reason a couple of those guilds have people that hate each other but I have no issues with anyone in any of them. With your system I wouldn't have my current options chief of which is complete separation of my characters if I wish

[RoberttheBard]

I don't like that idea either since it would complicate tells and mail, no the system we have now is best

It really doesn't. That was, as far as I was concerned back then, about the only thing they got right. It gives you a name and an @whateveryouused. Made it really simple, and made it so that people that really truly can't think of original names didn't have to.

Edit to add that I would just use a system like they do in swtor, and have a Legacy name for the @ portion, although they didn't implement that like they did in Neverwinter. This wouldn't have to give all your characters the same surname, so you could be, for example, Mebrinde Kelven@Kelven, and have another named Robert Roberts@Kelven. This @ could be just about anything, but wouldn't need to be your account name. The other "downside" is if you're not feeling sociable in NW, and logged into another server, anyone on your friend's list knew you were being anti-social, because they'd see you log in..

[Chai]

See my point exactly I don't want people to be able to friend my whole account now I don't care if they want to ignore my account but friend no I keep some characters separate from others on a couple servers I am in two guilds and on another I am in four and for some reason a couple of those guilds have people that hate each other but I have no issues with anyone in any of them. With your system I wouldn't have my current options chief of which is complete separation of my characters if I wish

To the contrary.

Friending your account =/= them having a list of your character names.

If they send you a tell and you are on a character that doesn't play in the same guild your main does for instance, you can either not respond, or reply with a "im doing something else atm" response, at the discretion of the player.

Complete separation of characters is an option you can still maintain without putting in any more work to do so, even when all characters receive all communications sent to @account.

[robrocks15]

Just one as an example champions is only that in name and doesn't isn't really based on the pnp game (NWO isnt either) and you beloved naming system is cumbersome DDO's is much simpler for,tells and mail and I have made over a hundred characters with no problem giving them names thst didn't draw on anyone else's

Their games are all boring bad copies of wow which is no treasure itself

I'm not sure how you managed to misread the 50% of my post in which I said I don't care about your reasons for hating Cryptic as "please tell me your reasons" but congratulations, you did. I still don't care.

The only coherent reason you've given for not liking their system is that you want to be anonymous on some characters. That's a perfectly acceptable reason and one i might espouse myself but you possibly should have said it before the unsubstantiated hate posts.

[HAL]

Sounds good on paper, but is unwieldy in practice. 1) You have to keep track of two names per group member not one; 2) Character names are at least creative and memorable (usually), while player handles are more often than not something like "fgnipgdgy341%@#$" - good luck getting that exactly right when you want to send a tell; 3) it's quite immersion-breaking.

When I'm talking to someone I can right-click on their name to send a tell just as we can in DDO. I can also contact them from my Friends list or Guild list if any. I haven't found any difficulty with it at all.

[HAL]

I´m undecided on this. On one hand, it is not hard to come up with a satisfactory, original name, I don´t need to see hordes of Drizzd, Dr1zzt, D´rizzit, Elm1nstersm, G1ml1s and xxLeg0la5xx. I heard the latest fad are GoT-copycats, extremely lame, all of them. It sure would help surnames working as a unique item so you could have various characters with the same first name. On the other hand, keeping a claim on the name of a character not played for say half a decade seems like an unnecessary hassle.

MMOs generally just keep character names so I imagine its more of a hassle to NOT keep character names. And god forbid some error is made and they release the names of characters that shouldn't be released....never happen, right?