Funcom threatening to delete noob Age of Conan characters

**nekrosoft13** · 01-12-10, 03:21 PM

When it comes to character deletions, just about every MMO out there has a clause in their Terms of Service that indicates they have the right to delete your characters at any time and for no reason whatsoever. With that said, there are very few companies that choose to exercise that right.

Up until now it has been Square Enix as part of Final Fantasy XI (even then they occasionally restore characters as part of 'welcome back' promotions), and Alganon's new "trial" which allows you to play for 30 days free before they wipe your character if you don't subscribe. However, as you can see from the above image, Funcom has opted to join the ranks of "will delete characters" in regards to Age of Conan.

When contacted for comment about whether or not this was true, Erling Ellingsen, Director of Communications for Funcom said, "Yes, that's correct. It's a database clean-up. We're going through all accounts that's (sic) been inactive for a long period of time, deleting characters under level 20 to free space in the database."

The first 20 levels, often considered by many to be Age of Conan's tutorial levels, are primarily spent leveling through a single-player adventure with some multi-player aspects in the city of Tortage. The fact that you have to level past this solo-heavy content when you start a character gets a little old for players who just want to play with friends. As Funcom are now choosing to delete the 1-20 characters of inactive players -- potentially nuking inactive bank alts in the process -- it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out as a long-term strategy. Will it bring back inactive players, afraid of losing a bevy of below-20's? Or has Funcom just alienated people who were planning to come back, but now don't want to take the chance that their characters will potentially become clean-up fodder down the road? Time will tell.

http://www.massively.com/2010/01/11/...an-characters/

01-12-10, 03:49 PM

It's not a threat... it's a normal process to delete idle accounts/characters.

**MUYA** · 01-12-10, 07:59 PM

I don't see what the big deal is? They are deleting characters from accounts that have been inactive for 7 months and not from active accounts. If the accounts are going to be inactive for that long it's probably safe to say the people who created those accounts do not want to come back or use em.

Quote:

• NO characters will be deleted from an account that has a valid, running subscription.
• If an account's subscription ran out 7 or more months ago, and the account is not reactivated until the character deletion process starts, characters below level 21 will be deleted. Characters of level 21 and up remain untouched and are NOT deleted.

I really peed off that they nerfed the double XP potion....was making leveling alts fun in "easy mode"

lIqUID · 01-12-10, 08:34 PM

game sucks balls anyways.

**MUYA** · 01-12-10, 09:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lIqUID

game sucks balls anyways.

Game is good if you are looking for PVE. That's what I enjoy

PVP...probably describes your statement but I don't PvP and there are many QQ'ers QQ'ing
about the PvP aspect of the game.

01-12-10, 03:21 PM	#1
nekrosoft13 I'm Geralt Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: Chicagoland, once a year in Poland Posts: 24,364	Funcom threatening to delete noob Age of Conan characters When it comes to character deletions, just about every MMO out there has a clause in their Terms of Service that indicates they have the right to delete your characters at any time and for no reason whatsoever. With that said, there are very few companies that choose to exercise that right. Up until now it has been Square Enix as part of Final Fantasy XI (even then they occasionally restore characters as part of 'welcome back' promotions), and Alganon's new "trial" which allows you to play for 30 days free before they wipe your character if you don't subscribe. However, as you can see from the above image, Funcom has opted to join the ranks of "will delete characters" in regards to Age of Conan. When contacted for comment about whether or not this was true, Erling Ellingsen, Director of Communications for Funcom said, "Yes, that's correct. It's a database clean-up. We're going through all accounts that's (sic) been inactive for a long period of time, deleting characters under level 20 to free space in the database." The first 20 levels, often considered by many to be Age of Conan's tutorial levels, are primarily spent leveling through a single-player adventure with some multi-player aspects in the city of Tortage. The fact that you have to level past this solo-heavy content when you start a character gets a little old for players who just want to play with friends. As Funcom are now choosing to delete the 1-20 characters of inactive players -- potentially nuking inactive bank alts in the process -- it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out as a long-term strategy. Will it bring back inactive players, afraid of losing a bevy of below-20's? Or has Funcom just alienated people who were planning to come back, but now don't want to take the chance that their characters will potentially become clean-up fodder down the road? Time will tell. http://www.massively.com/2010/01/11/...an-characters/ __________________ Windows 8 the next big failure, right after Windows ME

01-12-10, 03:49 PM	#2
\|MaguS\| Guest Posts: n/a	Re: Funcom threatening to delete noob Age of Conan characters It's not a threat... it's a normal process to delete idle accounts/characters.

01-12-10, 08:34 PM	#4
lIqUID whip yo ass! Join Date: Nov 2003 Posts: 653	Re: Funcom threatening to delete noob Age of Conan characters game sucks balls anyways. __________________ Fathom the hypocrisy of a Government that wants to require every citizen to prove they are insured, but does not require them to prove that they are citizens! i7 930@3.8ghz on Noctua NH-U12P Evga x58 LE MSI GTX 480 formerly known as HIS HD5870 128 gig Crucial m4/80 gig Intel X25-M ssd/500 gb WD 750 watt Corsair TX Coolermaster HAF-X if my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 miles per hour you're gonna to see some serious sh!t.