This is probably a Good Thing, but I’m sure some folks aren’t in a mood for anything that smacks of further “restrictions.”
Starting 10/24/2005 the City of Heroes and City of Villains character name policy will change. Names for characters under level 35 on game accounts that have been inactive for over 90 days will be changed to unreserved status. This means that those names will become available for new character names if picked by an active player. This policy is being enacted in order to free up character names based on player feedback.
That actually seems pretty reasonable — more than reasonable, in fact. If your game account is inactive for over three months, your character’s name might get recycled (if someone chooses to try to take it). And if the character is level 35 or higher, the name is still safe. I have no idea how many names this affects, but it seems pretty straightforward to me. At worst, it’s not like your character is being deleted (which is pretty remarkable), but that you might have to rename Miss Mystery to Lady Mystery or something like that.
*will remember to log in on the reserved named characters tonight.*
Actually, my first thought was that this was for all character (i.e., any character you have out there that’s unplayed for 90 days may get their name lost). I’d even think that’s reasonable, frankly.
But this only applies to folks with inactive game accounts, i.e., accounts that you stop paying for. That CoH lets you do that and still come back and find your characters at all is amazing to me. That after 90 days you *might* lose your character names seems trivial.
In other words, I’m not worried at the moment that “Mr. Thebes” needs to be signed on every 90 days to keep his Egyptian motif stone tanker name — unless I quit the game for over 3 months.
Account holders, active and inactive, will be notified of this.