Good idea but I just checked and you're still able to add anon characters to your friends list.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marancil
Printable View
Good idea but I just checked and you're still able to add anon characters to your friends list.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marancil
Actually, I think Codemasters names that didn't transfer were freed up. I snagged three good names just last week that I know for a fact were not available pre-transfer.Quote:
Originally Posted by GB-Esty
Anyway, 'can not be added' can mean:
1. Someone's reserved it on a Monster Player. Creeps can't go on your friends list.
2. It's reserved in-game, either for an NPC or it's blocked by the filter. 'Sir', for example, is considered a title and titles aren't allowed in names, so attempting to add Siragon, Adasir or Gilsiranel will get you the same message.
3. The character was created but never logged. After the intro requirements were changed (and people could no longer skip the whole sequence), I think it now also means they never left the intro sequence.
Oh ok I was not aware that they had freed up the names. Well I've tested one by leveling to lv10 and making a creep - I can't add them there either so I think that rules out that one. The second option shouldn't be a problem as I have created characters with the name on new servers. The third is an interesting idea and not something I had considered. I'll go and test that quickly :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Lilka
[edit]Yup option 3 appears to be the answer! I hope that means that I should get to keep the name then if they've never bothered to log in. Thanks for your help.
I tested this:Quote:
Originally Posted by Lilka
When you create a character, but never log it in: "Cannot be added"
As soon as you log it in once, even if it is in the tutorial before the intro, the character can be added to friends list.
The most likely culprit is that someone has reserved that name with a character and hasn't logged it in. I tried to reserve my main character name yesterday, and was unlucky. Guess I will have to think of a new name or just keep Name-1 :D
If they never bothered to log in for more than a year, then yes.Quote:
Originally Posted by GB-Esty
If they just created the character last month to reserve the name, then you are out of luck and you will be getting a new name.
Lilka, if it works like dropping from VIP to Premium, you'll be asked to 'turn off' two characters (the excess you'd have after the transfer). They do not 'die', they just become inactive until you buy another character slot (or two), at which point you can re-activate them. Otherwise, they stay in 'suspended animation' until you buy or clear space for them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lilka
Somehow the creation of a character for the sole purpose of taking the name, not actively playing it to a "normal" extent, seems against some kind of rules. Or it should be.
I could easily start spamming my character names on all remaining 18 servers, and in the transfer, what will happen, how do you think?
Hmm
Name Adam on server A
So I go get name Adam on server B + C + D + E + F + G + H + I + J + K + L + M + N + O + P + Q + R + S
In the transfer I land on server N. Adam on N is a very new character hence it gets renamed to Adam1? Or does my Adam character from server A gets renamed to Adam1? How do you figure?
All the other "Adam" characters on all the other servers are wasted, but they also reflect a false positive on overall player stats. How is this in any way good for Turbine? Sure it might help me keep my character name but at the expense of a huge name spamming across the other 18 servers.
Are you guys seriously doing all this?
I agree with the naming issues/. I already spotted a troll last night telling someone he was going to go to multiple servers and make a toon with their name so if our server closes they lose the name. Yes majority of the community is full of awesome good players but the players who want to grief and or troll others by doing this should for 1 be punished and 2 not be able to reserve the name.
So my suggestion would be
Use what you have in place But also have a second check
If 2 players exist on the same server and are both active, the player created MOST RECENTLY will have the forced name change.
So for instance if this troll was to create a kickman on every other server and I was forced to move, He would recieve the rename because he sis the newer toon and I have been more active
Also @Bucko39 no you were not being rude... there have been tons of other suggestions which IMO would have been better. I even suggested doing what games like STO do and place the account name (in chat only( as a tag
So like I would be Kickman@Kickman in chat byt my toon would still display Kickman Fails as his name (and yes my toons name is Kickman Fails because he Fails and is the worst Hunter on Lotro)
Hopefully we get some replied from Blue names on this issue and the character slot issue
I guess for the US servers it's a bit more suspect but for the EU we know there will only be 5 servers left consisting of at least 1 German, 1 French, 1 English and 1 RP. The remaining 1 could be either another German or English or another RP. Now I know I don't want to go on a German, French or RP server so that actually only leaves a few servers that I need to reserve my names on and only one or two servers that will have my names on when the other servers are closed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marancil
Any system that allows an active player to take over the name of another player that is also considered active is going to pose problems. What if you have 3 months /played, and the active player has 2 months /played and just logged in last week.... is it fair to waltz in and say: Hello, please give me your name!Quote:
Originally Posted by Solastrion
Also, there are 19 servers closing, as many as 9 in the US region. That could potentially mean that you trump the /played of someone on the target server, then 2 weeks later someone comes in that trumps YOU with /played, and a week after that, someone comes in that trumps THAT player with /played, and so forth. If you base it on some sort of "my account is worth more points than yours because...." system, you could see situations where the name transfers from toon to toon 3, 4, maybe even 5 times if it is a popular name in a period of just a few months.
It would be nice if there was a way to negotiate with a target player for a name, but that would involve somehow getting rename tokens to them if they don't care about the name. That can be done, you can buy 2 x 600 points codes online and send that person the codes by email: 995 for the rename token, and 205 TP for their trouble - but it is a pain, and no guarantee he will actually use the points to rename himself. (And what if he does on a day you have to work late, and someone else with a free rename token from a forced name change decides to change their name to THAT name, hours after your negotiated target renames?)
It's not ideal, but the only way to do it is the way they are doing it now: Active vs Inactive, and people on target servers never lose their name.
Vyvyanne / Frelorn - I have a list of questions that I hope you can take some time to answer.
1) Regarding bound house items: If you migrate your account/characters to another server, and forgot you had lend out this really nice BOUND housing object to a friend back on the old server, and that person migrates as well: Will the item be returned to you on the new server, or will it disappear forever in the fires of mount doom? (Side question: what if I have a bound Tower of Orthanc of someone that has already migrated?)
2) Regarding character names: If a character has not logged in yet but is merely used to reserve a name, is it considered an "active" character? (it has no login date/time registered after all and cannot be added to friends list).
3) Regarding kinships: I reserved my kinship name on a potential target server. When I disband that kinship when I am ready to migrate from my old server, will I immediately be able to take the kinship name?
Will we have 2 English, 2 German and 1 French server in the EU or 3 English, 1 German and 1 French server?
When I'm looking at the several sites that have statistics of the player base (based on loginnumbers I think) and although I doubt they give correct player numbers I think they give a good idea of the relative size of each server.
The EU population is about this: 51,5% English, 36% German and 12,5% French. Comparing the size of Brandywine, that is around 32%. Having 1 DE server gives it a bigger size then Brandywine, I don't know if that is preferred?
Biggest English EU server is 21,5% currently (evernight). Having 2 English, 2 German and 1 French gives them ~26%, 18% and 12,5% of the EU population which will make those servers around 20-60% bigger then they currently are.
A random thought for either Turbine or players to consider re the Great Rename Issue:
Might there be a 'LOTRO Name Clearinghouse' set up where a player that was dedicated to his/her character name(s) might post a message asking if the current holder(s) on certain servers might be willing to yield their names? While I don't think any of the names I have are likely to be used by others, it's quite possible that they could (there are quite a few), and I would have no issue (in most cases) with renaming my character(s) so someone 'attached' to their name might retain it.
That said, I'm not aware that there is a mechanism for such a 'voluntary rename' in the current system, so I guess I'm also suggesting that be made an option. I'd much rather rename one of my characters than see someone leave the game because they had a strong attachment to a particular name and I might have been 'first to it' on a specific server, and I suspect there are other players that feel the same way. I understand that some folks really 'identify' with their names, and in those cases where others might not feel as strongly, opening a channel for flexibility would be a Good Thing for both the players and for Turbine.
Well... you only need to worry about 5 servers, as the characters on all servers will disappear. But I do agree, and I have brought this up before: The potential for "name trolling" is real. One way they are going about it is that they will stop character creation on the target servers until the migrations are done, so once it is started you can no longer create new characters. (Which is a shame as well, as it will stop new players from coming on)Quote:
Originally Posted by Marancil
I had suggested that if you want to reserve the name, you must complete the intro. It takes about 15 minutes on a beorning, and if you don't have that class it takes around 30 minutes on a dwarf/elf. It would prevent trolls from quickly grabbing names with their 21 toon slots, as they would need to spend time if they are serious about the name. Someone that is more serious about the name, will take the 30 minutes it takes to complete the intro and reserve the name. A troll wouldn't do this work.
I have already noticed that 2 of my characters are "cannot be added" (not "does not exist") which means they are created but never logged on. Right now this means I will lose the name.
I was hoping they would make the distinction between active and inactive at the "novice" level, in other words: has completed the intro. But I also think they can't do that. So it is what it is.
Just anothe another thought I wanted to throw out there with the character slots.
We are being merged down to 5 server... But
Brandywine is unavailable to go to so that leaves 4
One of those will be a RP server which means alot of us will have naming violations
So in reality it means there are 3 servers that will be available
So now you have a player who purchased 5 slots
He plays toons on 4 worlds
All 4 worlds are closing
He is now being FORCED to pay for 5 more slots to continue playing the toons because he only has 3 available worlds to go to... Brandywine and the rp server are not an option (well the rp one is if he pays for toons renames or gets forced renames by the gm)
Quote:
Originally Posted by kickman77
Landroval (which is the US RP server) is officially merely "Roleplay Encouraged", which means there is no special rules for it. It uses the same naming rules as all the non-RP servers.
Why is that?Quote:
Originally Posted by kickman77
I have said and quoted Turbines text on the matter that RP rules in any form are NOT mandatory for other players if the "others" end up on a RP server...
I think closing 19 servers is too much unless the population is worse then I thought. I would say 15 at most.
All the RP servers should be staying and also include 1 EU & 1 NA for low pop.
Which 5 would that be? We do not know yet?Quote:
Originally Posted by maartena
Nametrolling, as we refer to it, can just be banned. If my names are older than the occurence of them on any other server that remains viable for transfer, I will insist on mine to prevail.
we will find out what servers on aug 3rd says in the dev diaryQuote:
Originally Posted by Marancil
Quote:
Originally Posted by ertr
Ok I was misinformed...Quote:
Originally Posted by Marancil
But than you have to take into account the rp is optional yes, but there are tons of events ect. on that server that some people would like to avoid so again leaving them only 3 servers.
People are going to be invonvieneced no matter what, I just hope that it is minimal and some of the things announced are looked at and possible altered like the character slots and name change before this happens because it seems aalot of people will be put out with these merges
Haha, I am not THAT American to not know where Amsterdam is on a world map. I don't know where it fits into the global network topology which generally follows a combination of real world realities (e.g. oceans and intervening unfriendly countries) and business drivers like like the financial traffic between NYC and London. Where money goes, so goes faster Internet.Quote:
Originally Posted by cdq1958
The Friends list may not always work correctly. The only way to know, with certainty, is to try to claim the name. If you can create a character with the name, it is available. If not, then it has been claimed at some point in time. Since the Codemasters DB is separate from Turbine's original DB, I would think that Codemasters claimed names would only be taken on those servers, unless a player claimed them, as described, on both sets.Quote:
Originally Posted by GB-Esty
Since we've always had the ability, from day one, to make characters on all of the available worlds on a first-come, first-served basis; if you didn't take advantage of that (me, for instance), then it is not another player's fault for claiming the name on an available world. When this was announced back in January, the first thing I did was to check all 15 NA worlds to see if my names had been taken already. Some names were taken and some were not. The next thing I did was to play on all of the worlds to see what their cultures were like. I'm still scouting, but will now shift the focus when the closure list gets announced.
Still trying to figure out name availability. Most of the characters I'll want to transfer are unavailable on the servers I expect to survive. Of the few that I can "friend", the last login dates are month and day spread out over the year. However, I don't see how to to find the *year* of that login. Am I missing something? For example, I'm pretty sure Aurora and Thanior, the founders of Carpe Jugulum on Silverlode, haven't logged in since about 2009, but they also just have month and day.
Am I missing a setting or something?
Amsterdam isn't that far away from London and a major barrier would be the Channel, so I'd think that it would be a major link or hooked to a major link between London and, say, Belgium. :) Yep, follow the money works for that, too.Quote:
Originally Posted by banhorn