My guess is that global names established in beta will carry over to live. But because individual character names aren't unique it shouldn't really matter that much. Remember if my global name is XYZ and yours is ABC we could both have characters named SuperGuy@XYZ and SuperGuy@ABC without any conflict. Locally both our characters would be named "SuperGuy" but they would be internally unique to the game because of our different globals.

Gluke wrote:

Can anyone say for sure at this stage?

I doubt even the Rednames know with 100% certainty yet. But I'm fairly sure what I said about global names matches what's been talked about already. The real question (as Izzy mentioned) is whether they'll do a character wipe from beta to live or not - I don't think names are going to be the issue.

Typically all beta's include character wipes, including names, once the game is launched. I mean even if they had the WoW system of 1 name per server it wouldn't really be fair to the people who couldn't participate in the beta and grab their wanted name. The global name that CO did was super great. I had a guild of people with one name. We all knew eachother outside the game and it was just funny having a Supergroup called "Myr Turbine" and every member was named "Myr Token." Typically SG raids on leveling areas were met with tons of confusion.

I HAVE!

GW2's Closed Beta for Preordered copies carried over into the live servers...

Cyclops wrote:

Asterfix wrote:
Typically all beta's include character wipes, including names, once the game is launched. I mean even if they had the WoW system of 1 name per server it wouldn't really be fair to the people who couldn't participate in the beta and grab their wanted name. The global name that CO did was super great. I had a guild of people with one name. We all knew eachother outside the game and it was just funny having a Supergroup called "Myr Turbine" and every member was named "Myr Token." Typically SG raids on leveling areas were met with tons of confusion.

Agreed. I have NEVER seen a name from Beta transfer to launch day characters. My fav toon Black Falcon had to be spelled differently: Black Falconn.

Since it's already been established that the naming system of CoT will follow along the same lines as CO (a global-based naming system) the idea that "you'll have to lose/change your character names from beta to live" is somewhat meaningless.

Yes as people here have pointed out it's very likely (but not 100% certain) that there will be a "character wipe" between beta and live. But because the global naming system will allow every player to use any character name they want there should be absolutely no reason, even assuming we'd have to recreate our characters on the live servers, why you couldn't chose to name those new characters anything you wanted including reusing the exact same names you used during the beta. That's the beauty of a global naming system for MMOs.

Cinnder wrote:

I'd be very surprised if characters carried over from Beta into Live. As for names, I agree that the naming strategy MWM has decided on will avoid most of the traditional problems with names being taken at a character level. At a global level, there was the following perq for contributions of $75 or more: "[b]you’ll get the opportunity to reserve your Global Nickname before the general release[/b]". And that includes the $10 perq of access to closed Beta.

Depending on how they make the integration between their website-accounts and game-accounts (hopefully a single account database used by both) then they would be able to just set it so that ones global name is the same as ones forum handle (CO has it), then resetting that one between beta and live would be foolish. Thus having to reserve it would not be needed since all you would need to do is to create an account , and that should be doable at any time regardless of if you can access the beta or not.

Though they could still opt to have different forum handle and global name but I don't really see the big point behind it.

I'd like to correct something.

It wasn't the $75 pledge that let you pre-lock your Global handle, it was the $25.

Gangrel wrote:

Cinnder wrote:
I'd be very surprised if characters carried over from Beta into Live. As for names, I agree that the naming strategy MWM has decided on will avoid most of the traditional problems with names being taken at a character level. At a global level, there was the following perq for contributions of $75 or more: "you’ll get the opportunity to reserve your Global Nickname before the general release". And that includes the $10 perq of access to closed Beta.

I interpreted that as something akin to the headstart that other MMO's have used for their launch. So you would get in *early* (before general release) and able to create/play your character post beta/pre official launch.
I have preordered games and been able to reserve my name in them before general release because of the headstart that some game companies use...
As Lothic said, I can see it not really being a problem with global naming systems in place.
It can also be a case of just a webpage setup so that you "prebook" your global nickname from a webpage from a certain date. Wildstar did something akin to this for their name reservation (which went "interestingly"). The advantage of this is that you *don't* need to have the game downloaded to do it... so removes the advantage of those who are on fast connections from reserving a Global name before anyone else just because their game loads up quicker (or has installed before everyone else).

One advantage of the "slow development process" of CoT is that there should literally be many months between when this game first starts open betas and when it will likely offically "launch". One would think they'll have plenty of time to handle all of these "prelaunch" reserved global naming issues during that time.

Having a webpage to allow the Kickstarters who paid for the early access to "prebook" global names during this period would seem to be among the simplest ways to handle this. Something like that could even be done before the betas begin.

blacke4dawn wrote:

Depending on how they make the integration between their website-accounts and game-accounts (hopefully a single account database used by both) then they would be able to just set it so that ones global name is the same as ones forum handle (CO has it), then resetting that one between beta and live would be foolish. Thus having to reserve it would not be needed since all you would need to do is to create an account , and that should be doable at any time regardless of if you can access the beta or not.

This is somewhat easier said than done. When Perfect World took over Cryptic (makers of Champions Online), and integrated the forums, it seems they took the list of account handles that weren't already forum handles and reserved them. Then nobody could just snag someone else's handle. Nor could some players make a forum account with their own handle without moderator intervention.

To some extent, this can be handled by offering the chance to make both accounts, forum and game, at the same time. Or just having the one account, (edit: as suggested by blacke4dawn) flagged as "purchased the box" or "not purchased the box", and have a box registration page for those who already have forum accounts to enter the code from their box, although there may be problems with that approach, as well.

Edit: http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline/#/discussion/comment/1790619, for anyone interested. IIRC, my issue was that I wanted to use their unified game launcher, which required merging my account, which I couldn't do because my handle was reserved... If MWM ever needs to integrate two account lists, I hope they do it better than PW did.

I would just take this forum down and replace it with a brand new one, then let that new one populate with players as people make accounts. If you were in on the Kickstarter that got you "early name reservation" as a perq, you get that by being allowed into the system earlier to make a new account before other (non Kickstarter) people can beat you to the name(s) you might want.

There's no guarantee that everyone that has an account on here now would A) actually make a new account when the game rolls out, AND B) actually want their current forum name to be their global. People could change their minds, decide to give their account activation code to someone else, etc. Some people could have two separate accounts even, so you'd need to deal with that too.

Foradain wrote:

blacke4dawn wrote:
Depending on how they make the integration between their website-accounts and game-accounts (hopefully a single account database used by both) then they would be able to just set it so that ones global name is the same as ones forum handle (CO has it), then resetting that one between beta and live would be foolish. Thus having to reserve it would not be needed since all you would need to do is to create an account , and that should be doable at any time regardless of if you can access the beta or not.

This is somewhat easier said than done. When Perfect World took over Cryptic (makers of Champions Online), and integrated the forums, it seems they took the list of account handles that weren't already forum handles and reserved them. Then nobody could just snag someone else's handle. Nor could some players make a forum account with their own handle without moderator intervention.

The big problem there was that they were merging two independently built DB's into one larger one. That will always be a bigger problem compared to building it from scratch, since even though the DB's serve the same purpose (validate accounts) they could have been built completely different.

Quote:

To some extent, this can be handled by offering the chance to make both accounts, forum and game, at the same time. Or just having the one account, (edit: as suggested by blacke4dawn) flagged as "purchased the box" or "not purchased the box", and have a box registration page for those who already have forum accounts to enter the code from their box, although there may be problems with that approach, as well.

Considering that they will have to flag any form of purchase (and at the least separate them by permanent and temporary) then having a flag for the base game wouldn't be that big of an effort.

Quote:

Edit: http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline/#/discussion/comment/1790619, for anyone interested. IIRC, my issue was that I wanted to use their unified game launcher, which required merging my account, which I couldn't do because my handle was reserved... If MWM ever needs to integrate two account lists, I hope they do it better than PW did.

I do not see why MWM would build two different account systems considering I do not see why we wouldn't have access to the cash shop on their website (so we can top up stars or make purchases). I also don't really see any benefit to doing it like NCSoft did either, with several distinct game accounts under one master account.

NCSoft did the "one big account, several sub-accounts" thing because they had several different games running, each of which required or allowed it's own account for that game. At least I assumed that was why they did it.

...Wait, the Global reservation came already? Are you sure you're not mistaking it with something else, Kiyori?