Dear Administrative Team of MafiaReturns:

It has come to my attention that someone has abused the "Reserve Name" Feature. They have simply reserved my alias (Skorpeon), and it is no longer being able to be used by myself. As you know, I have used this alias for maybe about 10 years. This is a shame that I had to come up with another name for this character because I couldn't use the one I wanted to.

I think a possible solution to this would be to implement an "Authorization" process where someone would request to Reserve a name and It would alert a Helpdesker or Enkindle/Izzy and they would have to approve such a reservation after obviously confirming the identity of the player. This would alleviate any issues similar to this in the future, of people stealing alias'.

Please advise.

-Skorpeon

I would like to protest this change, as I think it represents an unnecessary shift towards OOC aliases/relationships. This seems like a small change in the long scheme of things, but I am not willing to consider in-game names as a reflection of our OOC personas rather than the other way around. Your OOC personality should have no legitimate domain over the game in any way, shape, or form.

We have already taken steps to recognize OOC entities like allowing credits and perks to carry over between accounts, but I will protest any further provisions made to empower these OOC entities. The player known as "Skorpeon" can only affect the game through his character, by whatever name that may be, and it should stay that way.

Like I said, it is a very small change. But it's a change that I would prefer to disallow as it continues the plunge we've begun into recognizing players as OOC entities rather than IC entities.

Are we to presume that the names "Skorp", "-Skorpeon", "_Skorpeon", "Skorpeon-", and any further variations of the name should also be un-reservable? It just seems like something players can figure out on their own. I mean, Skorp you generally go by a host of different names. I fail to see why this is in any way deserving of coder intervention, plus my points provided above.

I must say i agree with Solon, we need to focus more on our character and less on our OOC selves. Many times I change names completely but have ruffly the same things in my profile.. My past 2 characters have been named Titus, simply because I had to suicide last time due to RL so I didn't feel as "Titus" really had a shot in the world so I used it again. But, I feel we should be forced to change names rather than reserve our names and carry the same one through the game for in your case 10 years

I'm all for this change. The way I see it someone reserved the name to mess with you and that shouldn't be allowed to happen.

The reason for the reservation is irrelevant. If players are allowed to reserve names at all, you cannot simply allow some players to "pull rank" and ask that their names be made available simply because they're older players.

The "reserve name" feature is available to everyone at any time. If you want to reserve a name, you do it. If you are late to the party, well it kinda ruins the concept of "reservation" if it can simply be yanked away because an older player wanted to use it. If you're a 10-year player and your name is of such absurdly high value, then why didn't you just reserve it in the first place?

Like I've already said, this still represents a shift towards accommodating OOC players instead of IC characters, which (in my mind) shouldn't be the purpose of any game feature.

Point is this feature was abused because someone reserved the name Skorpeon most likely to mess with the real Skorpeon. If someone reserved the name because they genuinely wanted to use it, it would have been ok. But it was not the situation here.

If the name meant so much to you that you felt the need to come out here and make this whole suggestion about it, why didn't you simply reserve it as soon as the feature came out? The whole point of it is so that you can reserve a name that you don't want others to use...

Skorp don't be so cheap

~Flash-Fire

There are people that reserve every name they can if someone has used it multiple times. This happens quite frequently.

For instance, I use a lot of names. I wouldn't reserve them all but I have yet to see certain ones ever used by someone else yet when I go to use one again its been reserved. So what could they possibly want to reserve the name for other than to be a dick? They clearly never use it.

I think it's more a credit making thing, and less a dick thing. I might be wrong, but it seems like a cheeky way to make a bit of game currency using a game feature, which shows good 'business' sense imo. Or, maybe they are a dick. Who knows.

Not sure how its a credit making thing. I am not paying to have every single name I have used removed from someone who decided they wanted to be a dick that day and reserve it.

I would like to see people forced to use the names they reserved or they get dropped.

TheJadedButterfly - There's now a feature where if you play a certain amount of hours on a name, it auto-reserves for you. Trust me, I feel your frustration. Until recently, the name I go by on IRC/have gone by for 8+ years now was not available to me In Game, and my favorite playing name was grabbed before I could reserve it too.

I hear there's a black market for this kind of thing. Rumour is there's a guy who deals in reserved names in exchange for credits, not sure how credible this information is though.

It's quite simple.Spend 3 credits to reserve a name you wish.  Case closed.

Not everyone has credits to spare. Not everyone purchases credits with real money. Some donate all their extra cash to their leaders as most of them expect their members to do just that. It gets pricey after a while.

At least one of my names has been reserved just to spite me. One of which happens to be my most commonly used IRC name and also the name I was known as when I was staff here. Does it irk me? Yeah, a bit. Do I let it get to me? Nope, because every time this turd uses my name to get a rise out of me I just shake my head at their failed attempt to get under my skin and go back to having fun. Sure, I'd LOVE to get my name back, but I refuse to pay this person's ransom for it. I'm not going to give this person any more credits than he already has, given he has far too many as it stands.

If I had a suggestion to put forward it would be that if you have a name reserved and don't use it after 3 months (or 6) that you either lose your claim to it or have to pay another 3 credits to keep it. Given there are some people out there that have made a game (business) at reserving names of known (and unknown) players en mass it could get a bit pricey and hopefully some of us would be able to reclaim them. 

I would take anyone who used one of my names as a compliment. Just saying...