Please, PA. We need a purge of character names from people who no longer log into the game. If someone's been gone for three years, they shouldn't be allowed to sit on much desired names. There are people who have not logged on since 2016, whose highest level character is level 16, and they have names I want. I'm sure there are hundreds of cases like this.
Please purge these names. Make them character####### or whatever, and in the extremely rare case they ever log back in (they won't) give them character name change coupons for however many characters they have.
OR, if you won't do any of the above, redo the character system to allow people to have the same character name. It's not hard to implement. Other games have done it.
Another case to make with this is the amount of players who don't even make it to getting their family name. If you search for things like Adventurer<random letters and numbers> as the family name, you are absolutely swamped with results from thousands of accounts that have all made a character or three taking up names.
Names/ accounts that do not receive a login within 2 years should be marked as abandoned, and names on them should be made available again. Not only this, there are clear accounts out there that attempt to sell "highly popular" names for real world money.
Anyone who hasn't logged in since 2016 had their names wiped in the data transfer when PA took over.
First come first serve. Just because someone hasn't logged in in x years doesn't necessarily mean they'll never come back again at some point. A better suggestion is what Multarix stated regarding accounts that have not set up a Family name.
I never understood why character names had to be unique at all if we already got family names (as long as one person doesn't use the same character name twice).
Anyone who hasn't logged in since 2016 had their names wiped in the data transfer when PA took over.
This is incorrect. Logging in was not a requirement to transfer game data. Also, this was several years ago.
As for those who say "well they might come back," there are families with only one character at level 15-16 that were created in 2016. They aren't coming back.