New efforts!

[Minotaur]

I absolutely hated the name@global system in neverwinter.    If I come up with a name, I want it to be unique to me.
Cannot tell you how many Drizzt's, Gandalf's,and Legolas's I saw running around.

I never had many problems coming up with a new name in CoH.  Were there names I wished were available? Yes, but someone else
got them first, and I was fine with that.

I actually prefer NW's, means you can actually call your character what you want to, not xX14m3n4m3.Xx and variants you saw in CoH. I had Helena Handbasket on most of the servers, but some were L and some were 1 if the L variant had gone.

[damienray]

2077 ??? :faints:

[Heroette]

Wasn't there like 32 characters? lol

It was 20 letters (I know because I had to name a toon "EagerYoungSpaceCadet" - no spaces, there weren't room for them). 

[Ankhammon]

Remove two spaces. SupaDupa OompaLoompa. Hmmm... Does look weird.

As to the game: considering negotiations actually started Spring-ish 2014, what's an actual good "despair" date? End on the fiscal 2016 year?

I'd say legitimately if it's not announced by the time CoT, HaV and Valiance hit live then it would be a good time to join the despair parade. By then there will be similar games available and even if the game came back it would lose out on potential player base to those games. 

Simply, I think the player base would be small enough to discourage a deal completion.

[Arcana]

All right, penalized was the wrong word. I value being able to get the name I want using the char@player system more than I value unique names.

More specifically, it appears you value being able to use the name you want more than you value anyone else having the right to have their character names be unique.  Preferring one over the other doesn't require taking sides, but advocating one over the other makes it mandatory to take a side.  With many game design decisions, there exists a middle ground.  You can want the game to have PvP, or you can want the game to explicitly not have PvP, or you can express the middle ground that you have no intention of participating in PvP but you don't mind the game supporting it for the players that want it.  With unique character names, that middle ground doesn't really exist (barring some bizarre naming systems).  If you want unique names you automatically oppose duplicate names and vice versa, and not just for yourself but for everyone.

Can't please everyone all the time.

[Twisted Toon]

What's a tape?

Most commonly, it's an adhesive used to join two items together. There are several types of tape. Duct Tape (and its lesser known cousin, Duck Tape), Masking Tape (the tape of Heroes and Villains), Scotch tape (Good on the rocks or straight up). There is also double sided Tape, when you can't make up your mind which way to stick.

Also, there's a virtually unknown Video Tape and the lesser known Cassette Tape (not to be confused with its rarely seen Reel-to-Reel Tape). They will not bind anything together without being wrapped around the objects several times and tied in a knot.

[Twisted Toon]

All I know is, after several years, Master of Disaster finally fit without smashing any of it together (unlike back at launch).  Woo!

So at some point that name line had character spaces added to it. :)

That is correct. Emerald Radiant changed his name to what it was supposed to be. Emerald Radiance.

the Character limit for names was One Freakin Charater too short for the name I wanted for the character when I created him. I was happy when they lengthened it from 15 characters to 20.

[Twisted Toon]

But that's your *individual* creativity. It stands to reason that one person isn't going to trip over their own names, or repeat the exact same name (too often-same character with different powers is one issue there, but not alleviated by the char@player solution anyways.). The issue I'm talking about is when you have years of people such as yourself, creating hundreds of characters, each with their own unique creative name, you're going to get at least some portion of later arrivers finding themselves disappointed.

So what I snipped actually helps my argument: the more people there are making more names before someone joins the game, the more likely it is that it will cause issues for others.

Well, if someone were to create characters in 2012 (the year the game was shut down), they would have to have been competing with 8 years of names from other players' characters. It takes a bit of creativity to do that.

I had very little trouble coming up with names for new characters myself. One of my favorites being Tanker Belle on Infinity. I made her in...2009, I believe. Tan'Ker was made sometime after that. Not to mention the plethora of Roses I made for both Heroes and Villains. My limitations are mainly that the name should have something to do with the powers or the origin of the character. Moxy Rose was a former Family flunky who decided she didn't want to be a flunky any more. Rose and Posse was a Thugs Mastermind. Eartha Rose was an Axe/Stone Brute.  Etc.

Just think outside the box and don't get focused on having to have Super Flame Guy of Awesomeness. Because, I'm fairly certain that few citizens would utter that mouthful when talking about your character.

Although, they might talk a lot about their ex-girlfriend...  ;D

[JoshexProxy]

Most commonly, it's an adhesive used to join two items together. There are several types of tape. Duct Tape (and its lesser known cousin, Duck Tape), Masking Tape (the tape of Heroes and Villains), Scotch tape (Good on the rocks or straight up). There is also double sided Tape, when you can't make up your mind which way to stick.

Also, there's a virtually unknown Video Tape and the lesser known Cassette Tape (not to be confused with its rarely seen Reel-to-Reel Tape). They will not bind anything together without being wrapped around the objects several times and tied in a knot.

they meant dynamic tape, it's a data storage medium capable of storing TB of data on a strip of thick magnetic tape, like the videotape but thicker and the case is different entirely. they say never to wind it once data is stored or you will increase the data loss via magnetic bleeding.

[Twisted Toon]

I think I was too subtle...

Where was that humorous-post emoticon again?

[Thunder Glove]

... and the lesser known Cassette Tape

FRENZY IS BLUE RUMBLE IS RED

Edit: I wound up reading the Transformers Wiki for an hour after making this post.

[LadyVamp]

they meant dynamic tape, it's a data storage medium capable of storing TB of data on a strip of thick magnetic tape, like the videotape but thicker and the case is different entirely. they say never to wind it once data is stored or you will increase the data loss via magnetic bleeding.

Actually, I was referring to plastic film with rust stuck to it.  The reel to reel and early cartridges held megabytes of info.  not terabytes.  A few designs actually broke 1 GB barrier.  My guess would be the world servers if they had backups were done on LTO-1/Ultrium or Quantum (S)DLT. Both were the standard at the time for reliable backup.  I hope they didn't use 4mm DAT or the far more reliable (if you could call it that) 8mm Exabyte.

Of course the tapes we'd want would be the ones storing the code repository.  The world servers probably wouldn't be of any value.  But even with the code repository tapes, it would take a massive effort to turn that codebase into a working server.

[Arcana]

Most commonly, it's an adhesive used to join two items together. There are several types of tape. Duct Tape (and its lesser known cousin, Duck Tape), Masking Tape (the tape of Heroes and Villains), Scotch tape (Good on the rocks or straight up). There is also double sided Tape, when you can't make up your mind which way to stick.

Also, there's a virtually unknown Video Tape and the lesser known Cassette Tape (not to be confused with its rarely seen Reel-to-Reel Tape). They will not bind anything together without being wrapped around the objects several times and tied in a knot.

That's an interesting tale of the tape.

[Victoria Victrix]

Well, if someone were to create characters in 2012 (the year the game was shut down), they would have to have been competing with 8 years of names from other players' characters. It takes a bit of creativity to do that.

Actually, that is not true.  At least a year or more before shutdown, there was a steady inflow of released names from inactive and/or deleted accounts.  I know, because I lurked and got one of those names as soon as it became available.

[Vee]

Re naming - I made an emp on shutdown day (always swore i would) and was able to get 'Achilles Heal'. That that name was available on any server tells you pretty much everything you need to know about healzor culture.

[Felderburg]

Re naming - I made an emp on shutdown day (always swore i would) and was able to get 'Achilles Heal'. That that name was available on any server tells you pretty much everything you need to know about healzor culture.

...does it? I do like the pun and am surprised by its availability, but I'm honestly not sure what it tells me about healzor culture.

[DocHornet]

...does it? I do like the pun and am surprised by its availability, but I'm honestly not sure what it tells me about healzor culture.

That they rooted for Hector?

[Vee]

...does it? I do like the pun and am surprised by its availability, but I'm honestly not sure what it tells me about healzor culture.

ahh, Felderburg must be one of them, grab the garlic :P

[chuckv3]

Remove two spaces. SupaDupa OompaLoompa. Hmmm... Does look weird.

As to the game: considering negotiations actually started Spring-ish 2014, what's an actual good "despair" date? End on the fiscal 2016 year?

Despair ahead of time, and assume it's dead forever. That way, the only way to go is UP.

[Twisted Toon]

Actually, that is not true.  At least a year or more before shutdown, there was a steady inflow of released names from inactive and/or deleted accounts.  I know, because I lurked and got one of those names as soon as it became available.

Granted, some names were released into the wild after a while of captivity. Others, however, were still unavailable. Dark Dave, Arilou and Sniper Rose (Infinity, Infinity, and Champion servers) were unavailable from Year 2 of release...on their respective servers. Emerald Radiant was unavailable from 2004 up until they increased the character limit of names. Then, Emerald Radiance became unavailable and Emerald Radiant was again available for use.

Still, there were a lot of players with active accounts creating multiple characters over the course of 8 years. That adds up to a lot of names. I know I had 2 accounts with about 150 characters spread across both of them. I'm fairly certain that there were a few people that had more accounts and characters than myself.