Character Name Renewal coming on November 12, 2013

[Capt Froggy]

So what do you think?

Hello,

We wanted to let you know that on November 12, 2013, we will be initiating a “Character Name Renewal” program which could affect some of your characters.

If you are a Free-to-Play player:

If your character is below level 10, and you have not played that character in the last 60 days, your character will be flagged for rename.
If your character is below level 30, and you have not played that character in the last 120 days, your character will be flagged for rename.
Characters level 30 and above will be unaffected.

If you are a Preferred Status player:

If your character is below level 10, and you have not played that character in the last 90 days, your character will be flagged for rename
If your character is below level 30, and you have not played that character in the last 180 days, your character will be flagged for rename.
Characters level 30 and above will be unaffected.

If you are or become a Subscriber:

You will be unaffected by this Character Name Renewal program.

If you don’t want to risk losing any of your character names, be sure to log in to each character by November 11, 2013, 11:59PM PST//7:59AM GMT.

May the Force™ be with You!
Star Wars: The Old Republic Team

[Deleted]

Sounds fair enough to me.
If you are free to play and have only put about 3 hours into the game in the last 2 months or about 30 hours in the last 4 months then potentially losing your character(s) name will be no biggie.
Same for preferred players...3 hours in 3 months or 30 hours in 6 months is no real commitment so there should be no problem in potentially losing the character(s) names.

Of course we all know the reason for this is not to free up names for active players, it is to prod departed players into returning in the hope they will get lured back for a while.
It is relatively harmless so if it boosts player population it is good in my opinion.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

What a lame thing to do.

[Hellravager]

What a great way to anger what little people you have

[Edge-]

What a great way to anger what little people you have

Have? These are people with inactive characters likely on inactive accounts. If you want to keep any name, all you have to do is log into that character to re-flag it as active and you're fine.

I wish more games would do this, because there are a lot of people who get shafted out of names because someone made a level character that they never logged into and haven't even had an active account for a year.

[moff]

What a great way to anger what little people you have

Uhm, no. its simply a way to clear up some names that were once reserved but never really used and with almost certainty *will never* be used, its a great thing to do.

who is angered by this? if it bothers you, you simply have to log in to your free 2 play account in the next 2 weeks. if it doesnt bother you, you wont be annoyed either.
level 10 can easily be done in a day, level 30 in a few days. every character below 30 wasnt seriously played, if you dont care about that character, or the game in general because you didnt play in the last 100+ days and didnt even read this news, chances that anyone will be annoyed by this are next to zero. although there are always people complaining just because the like to complain.

[Fkiolaris]

No biggie, I will just make sure that I will log into all the alts of mine that I care about before Nov 12th and that's it. Not that anyone would want the stupid names I gave them anyway, but I am sure that their "data" showed that plenty of reserved names that were requested belong to practically inactive characters/accounts.

[Capt Froggy]

I understand the reasoning behind it, it prod old players to come back for a month and maybe clear up some old names.

But the bad part about it is that some people who havent played in awhile, and they come back and find out that they lost their names, will never want to come back again.

[inboundpaper]

Eh, they took all my cool character names when they merged servers.

[Deleted]

I wish more games would do this, because there are a lot of people who get shafted out of names because someone made a level character that they never logged into and haven't even had an active account for a year.

For the record, Blizzard allows you to request a name of a low level character whose account has been inactive for a long time. They flag that character for renaming, and you're free to take it.

[l33t]

I wonder why it is so hard for people to create their own unique name instead of trying to take away other's.

[WarpedAcorn]

I wonder why it is so hard for people to create their own unique name instead of trying to take away other's.

XxJediDrizztLegolasxX was taken and my heart was broken. QQ

[Deleted]

But the bad part about it is that some people who havent played in awhile, and they come back and find out that they lost their names, will never want to come back again.

As well as it being mentioned on the official site and related fan sites, each account has been emailed the OP notice too.

Where's the bad part?

[catcommando]

So what do you think?

I play as preferred and think it's fair. But I didn't get this email...checked spam folders and everything so thanks for posting this. =/

Think as a good will gesture though, BW should allow former subs to keep names on characters greater than L10. Could see the former subs raging pretty hard should they come back to find the lowbie alt they working on got flagged for a rename.

[Korgoth]

How dare they keep me from having a name I dont use!

[Parrin]

I'm happy to hear it. I got the email, and might check out a few options. But I really don't see it having any real impact. It certainly won't make the game more enjoyable. It will just have an outside chance of increasing the time I spend on a specific character.

[Azhreia]

So what do you think?

Freeing up names that are no longer really in use seems like a good idea. Especially after they massively reduced the number of servers last year. Only (minor) gripe I have with this is that they really should have mailed everyone with this information. I didn't get a mail (checked spam folder too), but since I learned about it here it's good.

[Tekkommo]

This is a good thing and I wish more MMOs did this (although a friendly GM in wow made a name available for me on my server).

The game is F2P so you don't need a sub to login and save your character name.

[redwolf2000x]

I wish WoW would this I hate having to try to come up with names only to discover some lvl 1 orc has it in reserve. I want my name damnit

[Thelxi]

Just the other week I managed to free up 3 names with one single ticket in WoW. My previous record was 2.

On topic, it's a good thing for the game. So many names go to waste because people like myself spam that login button on launch claiming all the good names and then never use them.