We're Freeing up Old Character Names

While they're just labels to me, I understand some people find value in them, so good for them, I guess. That said, given that Account names must be unique, I don't understand why character names must be unique. If everyone wants to run around calling their character "TonyStark," where's the harm?

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TheBagman wrote:

While they're just labels to me, I understand some people find value in them, so good for them, I guess. That said, given that Account names must be unique, I don't understand why character names must be unique. If everyone wants to run around calling their character "TonyStark," where's the harm?

Ever used the chat? Especially whispering is through charactername not accountname (there might be an ADDITIONAL option to use the accountname as well).

I'm gonna try to get BiggusDickus

Is there also a way to rename an existing character I named hoiasdfbgujks just I got bored to find a name which was not taken? /(And funnily more then once names like asfghaebxf where already taken)

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Chris wrote:

Since we launched the initial Closed Beta in 2011, roughly 50 million Path of Exile characters have been created. Many of the oldest character names belong to accounts that are no longer active. These inactive character names are generally simple common ones that we'd like to make available to our current players. When The Awakening launches on Friday, old names will be available. If you take the name of an existing character, then that user will be prompted to rename their character when they later try to log in to it. If you have logged onto any character on your account in the last year, then their names cannot be taken.

Characters whose names are taken are not lost - their progress and items are still intact. They just need to pick a new name when they log in.

This name expiration was designed to be as permissive as possible. Every character on an account accessed recently is safe, and that duration is set to an entire year.

Hopefully the name you want will be available when The Awakening launches!

I once relied on Yahoo. I had Yahoo email addresses, accounts, etc. I had intermittent Internet access (this was before 2008) and so I had a period of several months where I couldn't access the Internet. They reset my email addresses, meaning that ANYONE could have re-recreated my accounts, log in, and get any new emails that were meant for me.

I lost total faith in Yahoo and will never rely on their services again, switching over to Google, which is a far more reliable service.

This move GGG just made reminds me of the absolute appalling move Yahoo made. Yeah at least this time it's not your sensitive data that's at risk, but it's the principle of account or character ownership.

If I create an account and a character in 2012, play for a few weeks, then leave the account for 10 years, I expect to be able to come back in 2022 to my account and character name intact.

If I buy cellphone airtime or data, I expect that data to remain intact 10 years from now because it's mine. Sadly this is not the case. I find it absolute garbage that so many services these days have a "you must use the service all the bloody time or we will terminate the service" attitude.

Really sad to see this from GGG. If character names aren't safe, then where do you draw the line? What's next? Forum account names at stake?

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Autkast wrote:

Legolas here I come.

Sorry bud, not going to happen lol.

Great news nonetheless!

<3 So awesome!

I like that PoE uses unique names. Would become boring quickly otherwise.

I know you can check out names with poe statistics but this requires the account to have at least one char in the top 15.000. Any better way to check on name availability beside manual checking at the character creation screen? Guess not.

Finally! Now I can play as Protis Sni-

Thats nice. Cause every word that sounds like a name already exist.