This server has been live for well over 6 years I believe and we have around 1200 players online on a daily basis. It's literally impossible for anyone who's starting now or remaking a new character to use a decent name due to the many created accounts we have in Royals. Now I do agree that we should never change/delete a character's name when the account is not banned, because the player can come back at any time. I, for instance, took a long break and came back now, so it would suck to have my character's name changed without my consent. However, I do think it would be great to free up the names on permanently banned accounts, and I mean actually perma banned, no chances of ever getting unbanned. Like accounts used for hacking/scamming. This is because, the game has been live for so long and there's a good chance hackers/scammers who have been banned in 2013,2014 may have taken some cool IGNs that the community would love to use.
This was discussed before Example https://royals.ms/forum/threads/replacing-inactive-player-names-ign.77059/ Main concern: - Might confuse GM when they're checking the list of banned players
It's also just too complicated, not to mention the fact that it would affect buddy lists, guilds, etc. Plus, I kind of like the fact that you don't see too many "good/og" names around. Makes it feel more nostalgic and less like a private server.
There are still plenty of names available if you consider the fact that this server has nowhere near the same population as GMS. It was difficult to get names there too but still possible if you were creative enough. Like Gert said, freeing up names would kind of devalue the good names that people worked hard for and I personally wouldn't like the feeling of wanting a name change just because a good IGN was freed up. It also gives an advantage to anyone that knows what the names are and would allow someone to just snatch all of them to try to profit.
I read your post. Devaluing does not mean deleting. If the system was already implemented, I wouldn't have any problem with "freeing" names from inactive accounts as long as it's been long enough. I would actually prefer this over freeing names on banned accounts. If they did that, the people that know banned users have the best chance at inheriting thier names. Which basically means you'd sometimes just be giving a hacker's rare name away to another hacker or someone that associates with hackers. My point was that it devalues the names that other active players are using. For example, if I joined in 2015 and got a nice seven letter name that I was proud of, I wouldn't be too happy to log in and see players who signed up in 2019 using rare four and five letter names that they got purely from being lucky because a name that they happened to try was available again.
