Character Name Policy
Overview
The character name policy is a tactic for recycling used player names from inactive accounts so that other players may use them. The policy only applies to accounts that are currently deactivated, not accounts that simply haven't been used.
Policy Details
The policy change affects all accounts that have been inactive for over 90 days. This only applied to accounts that were disabled in some way, such as payment expiration or account suspensions. Accounts that are still being paid for, but simply have not been used for 90 days, are not affected.
Any character on such an account less than a certain level has its name moved over to "unreserved" status, which allows any new character on the server to be created with that name. In the event this happens, the original character under the name will be prompted to choose a new name upon login. In order to return a character's name to "reserved" status, the user must log the character in question into the game. As such, it is possible that a player can be actively using an account with characters whose names are still set to "unreserved" status.
When "unreserved" status is assigned to a name, the following changes are applied to the affected character:
- A new character name needs to be chosen (if existing name has been taken)
- The character's description and battle cry will be cleared
- The character's Friends list will be cleared
- All Mail received will be deleted
- The character is removed from their Super Group, if any
- Characters affected will be missing from other peoples' friends lists
- Any and all mail that other players have received from an affected character will have reverted to having been sent from "Unknown"
Current Re-enactment
On August 29, 2007, this policy was put back into use. There is no official word yet for how long it will continue to be enabled. The re-enactment of this policy came in time for the character transfer and character rename features.
During this enactment, characters below level 6 are eligible for unreserved status.
In The Past
This section contains information that no longer applies to the current version of City of Heroes/Villains. It is provided for historical purposes.
On October 27, 2005, the character name policy in City of Heroes and City of Villains was changed in order to allow names used by inactive accounts to be used by new characters created in active accounts. This was done as a maintenance procedure to cull out the vast collection of idle character names leftover from the past in order for new, active players to be able to use them.
During this enactment, eligible characters were below level 35.
On May 4, 2006, the character name policy was changed again to lift the previous enactment, which once again means all character names are reserved and new characters need a unique name upon creation. Any accounts already affected by this will still have their characters "unreserved" until said character is logged in though.