<<I'm kinda curious; the assumption is obviously 'it will free up the names for use'. But your post says it won't. Why not?>>
No, my post said it wouldn't "solve the problem" as most people think the problem is.
People see folks rolling up names like Snotbubble or Supersaiyan and assume that means "no decent names are available. In this case, A does not mean B.
Other folks see the suggested names that the Character Manager offers and say, "Ugh, that's all you've got?" and don't understand that the Name Generator is just that. It generates random names, some of which will be decent, some of which might give someone ideas for a decent name, and some of which will be an absolutely clust...trainwreck.
There's also the fact that in many cases, the names people REALLY want have been snagged by people, rolled up, and then promptly de-activated, with the thought process that someday, they MIGHT get around to rolling up "Bill the Barbarian" or "Shawn the Necromancer", but they never get around to it. Likewise, in many cases, some very, very cool names are also "on peoples' deleted character list", but they don't realize they CAN get access to them. They assume if they don't see the character on their list of available characters, it's gone, so they don't even try to get Rolando back, they just roll up Rolawndo and grump about the lack of available names. That also results in people in the game assuming that there are "no names left" if someone had to pick THAT. Yes, we can always go through and delete unused characters that people are squatting on, but we can't stop it from happening again, which it did last time we did a purge, and will also happen when we do a new one. But think about that for a second. Would that be "cool" for us to do, even if you're not using that name right at this moment? I think after a length of time, it would be fairly OK to assume it's not going to get used, but we still don't even take away people's boats until YEARS have gone by, because we have so many people who come back for short bursts every so often.
Then you have people who try to roll up Gandalf or Anakin or Morpheus or one (or a dozen) countless names from another game or a book or a movie and when it's not available, say "UGH you need to do a name purge!". Then they roll up Gandalff or Anakinn or Morfeus and either find THOSE names unavailable, or they get those names rejected, which makes other players assume a) we let that name through and b) clearly there are no decent names available.
Then you get people trying to roll up names of gods, NPCs, or famous people/characters that we've already put in the "Not Acceptable Name" system and they get auto-rejected and that makes them feel that we have "no names left".
Then you have the folks who are bored (or drunk or on some sort of substance) and just want to see what name(s) they can get away with or want to make their friends laugh. That's disruptive on numerous levels, but also adds to the assumption that we have "no names left".
Then you get people who roll up gimmick characters that are clever for a minute, but then get deleted and forgotten about, adding to the list of names that are unavailable, but probably also unacceptable.
One thing to point out as a reminder or a new bit of knowledge for those who aren't aware: Deleting a character from your account on the website does NOT free up the name for someone else to use. It just "disassociates" the character from your account. To free up a name, you have to go to an Inn and CHECK IN REROLL and (I believe) pick a new name for the character. This is a great use for the name generator, by the way. I'd be willing to bet that most of you aren't aware that every character you ever rolled up and then deleted off the website is still sitting "on your account", just hidden.
As it stands, I'm willing to bet I could roll up 100 new characters right now and get a good, non-OOC, non-genre-muddying, non-character-from-a-book-or-TV-show name 85 times, if not 95. Then again, I like playing with words and I understand what's acceptable and what isn't, something that doesn't apply to all our players, past, present, or future. We've had some doozies rolled up and the have to listen to the person who doesn't (claim to) understand why Buttstallion or Poopsock isn't OK.
Hope that helps explain the myriad of facets to this issue. :)
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