It was only really a footnote on the list of interesting things to come with patch 7.6, but to me the fact that the devs were finally going to release some old and inactive character names was the most exciting patch feature by far. While talking to other long-time players, we were unable to recall for certain the last time this was done, with the best guess being that it was over ten years ago (!). Obviously some names were lost and reclaimed during server merges, but still... a decade of forgotten throwaway alts taking up names had made coming up with new and unique names quite challenging by this point.
I also found it interesting to watch the reactions of different kinds of players to the announcement, especially from ones that were inactive at the time. I mean, I generally try to take people's grievances seriously even if I don't necessarily agree, but some of the complaints I saw were really quite bizarre, with people writing veritable essays about how they cared so much about their character names and Broadsword was evil for threatening to take them away, and then it'd turn out that they hadn't actually played the game in five years and considered the mere act of logging in to secure their names an unreasonable effort.
What really surprised me though were all the positive reactions I saw: people basically just viewing the name purge as a reminder to re-download the game and get back into playing and even giving Broadsword money. Clearly they should do this more often if that's all it takes to make people resubscribe!
Also, if you missed out on your opportunity to secure your existing character names for whatever reason and your names were "released", don't worry, you're actually not that badly off, because if you log in now, you can still reclaim them if they're available, and even better (and I haven't seen anyone else post about this) you get a free name change on all your characters! Meaning on login you can either re-use their old name if it's still available, or if you ever thought about changing it before (for example because you used a bunch of special characters and want to see whether you can now have the same name without those) you can now make that adjustment for free.
I know this because my guildies noticed that characters whose names had been released were identifiable in the guild roster by now having "_010124" attached to their names, and someone teased that they could troll people by stealing their names, which prompted one non-subscribed guildie to finally log in and find out about the above. He then proceeded to give himself a bunch of free renames on various alts for exactly the reason I mentioned, to get rid of some special characters.
Anyway, as for myself - I just went on to claim the name "Shintar" on Leviathan and Tulak Hord, which were the only two servers where I didn't own it yet. Now it's me everywhere! Shintar isn't always my main on the other servers, but she's always a trooper and she's always me. I also renamed one low-level alt on Tulak Hord who had an apostrophe in his name that ended up bothering me more than I originally expected when I named him.
Flying high on these gains I got a bit over-excited and decided to also use a rename token on my bounty hunter T'ir, who'd gained the apostrophe in her name during the very first server consolidations back in 2012. I don't play her that often so I'm not hugely invested (and this particular apostrophe doesn't bother me that much) but the idea of reclaiming a name I'd lost in 2012 still made me starry-eyed for a minute. Except - "Tir" on Darth Malgus was still taken. Fair play!
The rename token was still consumed on use though, and she just has the semi-permanent option in her character panel to change her name now. I just don't know what I'd even change it to if not removing the apostrophe! I guess I'll just consider it a write-off. Not that it's a big deal with the tokens being 90% off at the moment.
Did you get to snag any new names? Several of my guildies were extremely pleased to pick up some nice and short new names or old ones they'd lost, such as someone getting the name of his main back that he'd lost years ago.
There were a lot of unintentionally funny Tumblr posts along the lines of "I haven't played in five years and can't log in to all 40 characters I want to save!" I don't know how you can say something like that and not immediately understand how dire the pool of available names gets after 13 years. I haven't done any renames yet, because my CC stash is very low, but I should check if the sale has translated to lower GTN prices. I have at least one character who could use it.
ReplyDeleteI get the impression from some of those reactions (as well as some responses to the character model updates) that there's a not insignificant number of people who don't actually play the game (anymore) but are still very invested in their characters and the community, and I have to admit I don't know how I feel about it. Obviously they're allowed to be attached and involved and I don't want to be gatekeepy, but it does seem weird when they want to steer public discourse about the game in a certain direction and their interests actually clash with those of active players!
DeleteI hadn't though about renaming any of my characters until I read your post. Cue 'light bulb' moment for me. ;)
ReplyDeleteI had three characters on Star Forge with apostrophes in their name. I was able to remove the apostrophes from all three.
One, Lyo'nese (my primary Smuggler) I hoped to get Lyonesse, her original name. I couldn't so I went with Lyonese. That's good enough for me. :)
The other two I changed their names slightly, but that's ok. Those two are leveling alts where I'm revisiting all the planetary stories as well as the class stories. They don't have the history of usage that Lyonese has, so modest changes don't bother me. Especially since those two alts only get intermittent play when I'm in the mood to revisit a planet.
Being able to simplify a character name is such a small thing and yet feels so good, doesn't it? I just remembered that my three-letter-name agent on Satele Shan also had a special character in her name, and what do you know, I was able to get rid of that too. So sweet!
DeleteI also created a bunch of new alts with the intent to level them up a bit later. With these, I wasn't after any specific names, but it's just so nice to think of a random name and immediately get your first or (at worst) second choice. Before the purge, coming up with a unique name that wasn't atrociously long, convoluted or stuffed with special characters had become really difficult, so this update has been a noticeable breath of fresh air.