I hope they will at least address the community about this issue with some kind of explanation on the matter, like it is a limitation of their database or whatever.
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As I’ve pointed out in this very thread, it’s pretty obvious why.
(a) It will make FORCED server merges easier in the future; no one has to lose names.
(b) For the VOLUNTARY transfer of players in the future, whether to existing servers or when new servers are brought online and people want to move - SEA for example - again, no one has to lose names. In both (a) and (b) it’s actually a pretty cool thing to look after customers.
Now, of course people will be annoyed. Most people choose highly unoriginal names and, as a result, you have 100s if not 1000s of people trying to be “the” version of that name. What they have to realise is that there are tons of people out there who all feel as entitled to the name.
I didn’t get my forum name in game, for example, even though it’s a literary character, most popular in the 1970s when most people here weren’t even born. But it was gone at EU launch.
Names aren’t server locked? LOL amateur design
I doubt they would force people to move to server regions that are further away - why would they merge EU with NA or SEA when the latency is through the roof?
Quick answer: they wouldn’t do that. But no one was saying they’d do that.
But if servers - in the same region - have to merge, that’s what my point (a) is about.
ie: If they have to mash servers in the same region together, no one loses their name. And looking at past MMOs, that’s likely on the cards at some stage in the mid-future onwards.
Meanwhile, I also made a point (b) which people tend to ignore in these discussions, but it’s probably even more important. Namely, you may have people in the future wanting to transfer into a different region if, for example, they’re someone in India or Malaysia or somewhere like that and are currently playing on a sub-optimal server like Australia. If AGS opens a server closer to them, they will probably want to move to that server. Once again, being able to move servers - in this case across regions - will be possible without them losing their character name.
It’s pro-customer. If these guys have been playing for 6 months or a year, the ability to take their character to another server - whether in the same region or out of it - and not lose, is huge.
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I suggest AGS add a Last Name which would be optionally shown. With a Last Name, only First Name + Last Name would need to be unique.
–Dyn
Yet if you consider the current system, where you can put multiple spaces between words (whether those words are firstname/lastname or something else entirely), that already provides more potential options than what you’re suggesting. I recognise that many players don’t seem to realise they can even have one space, let alone multiple spaces, via the way I see so many name combinations where they’ve mashed the words together rather than using a space, so maybe this isn’t understood by people out there, but it’s absolutely a feature in the name system.
If the names were region locked instead of global, that would still work in your “B” case. If new servers were added and people had the option to migrate from existing servers to these new ones, there would be no names reserved in these regions, therefore any existing names would be available.
It currently allows spaces? Yeah, poor design. Also, in my suggestion the Last Name would be a separate field and neither First or Last Name would allow spaces (nor other non/barely visible characters).
–Dyn
And you don’t see the problem there? OK, I’ll spell it out. Because any existing names would be open on that new server, the people who want to migrate would have to do so the second the server opened and compete with others for their name. That’s problematic. So again, I don’t know how many times I have to point out this system rewards existing players and keeps their names safe, regardless of what the future holds. It’s abundantly clear why it’s the process.
Wait… wuuut? Allowing spaces is “poor design”? I think the majority would disagree there.
I disagree with your logic. New server, new allowance for reserving names.
What other games have operated this way with global locks on names? Because I’m drawing a blank on any that have worked that way.
I doubt we will agree on this but you’re welcome to think it’s an acceptable system. I think having a name locked to an account as soon as you reserve a name is ridiculous though, especially when that name continues to be reserved after deletion and when the length of names is 16 characters, soon the game will be riddled with names that look like email handles from the 90s.
No! Again, do I have to explain this in detail? Here we go again. If someone has been playing from India or Malaysia or whatever, sub-optimally on an ANZ server, but has still put in the hard yards, they have EVERY RIGHT to not only keep their character when transferring to a new SEA server, but to also keep the name that they’ve used all that time. It’s simple, common sense.
By having the names locked like this, whether one is travelling within a region’s servers, or outside a region’s servers (in the SEA example I just gave), players never lose their name.
Totally irrelevant! Honestly, your comeback is, “I’ve never seen this done before, ergo it shouldn’t happen here…”? Come on, that’s weak. You just don’t like this system. But it aint changing.
You need to play the game and chill out, my friend. Hurling insults about my intelligence because I have a different opinion than you is a weak argument and clearly many other people feel the same about the poor naming system.
Show me an example of that please.
My apologies pal, I was half asleep when I responded and thought you’d said some things but that was another thread I was reading. Don’t sleep and text kids 
Edit: in the interest of not double posting, I have already reserved the names I wanted to use and was very lucky in being able to get all of them. As far as your concern on players moving servers and losing their names when new regions open, that has happened in the past and in those instances, the player that moved first kept the name and the second player had to name change. I honestly doubt ags are going to do anything, but we can dream.
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Yea this really grinds my gears too. I’ve been using the same name everywhere for like 10 years. Used Doxum in alpha and early Beta and now all of a sudden someone took my name with no way of me getting it. :c
Well, that’s the thing, character personalisation isn’t supposed to be some kind of limited edition stuff 
it’s just a basic freedom granted to players in every games. And an important one.
Apparently you are some kind of amazon employee hired to defend this decision from the devs on the forums Flashman, aren’t you? Otherwise you wouldn’t have spend that many time on this post telling us how great this decision is.
So could you report to the devs that this is still kind of a big issue pretty please? now that the raggy have stop whinning about the servers not working etc…
Lot of peoples are still pissed they didn’t got their names…
Of course. If someone agrees with AGS on something, they have to be an employee, LOL. Dude, do you hear how pathetic those words sound? I’ve given multiple reasons why this is a good thing, and quite positive for players in the long run. The only people who have got the sulks about it are people who didn’t get “their” name, failing to realise that there’s probably a few hundred to a few thousand people across the globe who think it’s “their” name, too. Even if names were server unique, many would still be in a fight for “their” name. It’s just how it is.
Maybe if you start thinking about it in global terms, and additionally how you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake in all of this, you might get a dose of the reality of the situation? Try it.
No need to be toxic towards each other. This is a thread where everyone can express their distaste or likeness for having names globally locked.