Hot Topics: Inactive Veteran Accounts

Several topics floating around our favorite GPD involves things such as elder rewards, titles, defunct names, abandoned houses and other things associated with older accounts - inactive, reactivated or otherwise.

A very troubling aspect of the Free Character Transfer promotion is the fact that many names will be unavailable for transferees when they arrive on their new server home. While SOE has provisions to rename these toons, oftentimes the name is no longer used; perhaps even years old after the previous name owner cancelled their account.

While a name change may not be the worst thing in the world, it underscores a problem that SOE has when dealing with these long gone accounts: the refusal to let go and allow the current subscribers the chance to inherit the game and help it grow.

To this, I offered the following response:

This game will forever be stuck in a holding pattern if we continue to cater to non-paying subscribers and mollycoddle cry-babies who threaten to cancel whenever discussions turn towards significant and necessary changes.

Making difficult decisions is what defines a leadership. SOE has to realize that a good bulk of those dormant accounts are going to remain that way in the current global economy situation and with an ever-increasing number of competitor products in the MMO market. SOE should cut loose where appropriate and take care of the subscribers it has, not the subscribers that it lost.

I despise when things are done half-arsed; this is something that should have been considered. And while we're at it, stop counting non-subscribed months towards veteran rewards. It defeats the entire purpose of the reward program.

It is not an easy decision to alter and/or remove such information, but a failure to gratify the current subscriber base will lead to more dormant accounts that clog up the name table and the landscape.