Trasak said:Your Surname is your clan/family name. You can join a clan/family the same way you can join a guild through an invite system. The clans will have more of a friends and family guild purpose and allow for a special group housing option when player controlled property comes in. If one of the characters on your account is a clan elder/officer when you create a new character that character can automatically be included in the clan. Starting a clan is something that is a little more involved and will require both resources and quests to start and more of both to increase the clan rank.
I really like this idea. Your first name would be unique on the server. The clan name would also be unique. With a clan elder being able to invite family, friends, and alts to the clan. Thus controlling who would be able to use / display that surname. And I could easily see clans tieing into other systems such as Progeny, Faction, Reputation, Heraldry, Shared Bank Space, etc.
Personally, I don't have strong feelings about names, but many do.
If each character has only one name, it would have to be unique on the server for obvious reasons. However, to facilitate possible server mergers at a later stage, the names really should be globally unique. This would likely make it impossible for many to name their characters as they want to, causing frustration and strangely spelled names.
This is where surnames would serve a real purpose. The combination of two names is much, much more likely to be unique than a single one. An added benefit would be that you could choose to give your alts the same surname making it easier for other people to recognize the player behind the character.
For these reasons I think surnames should be assigned when the character is rolled. But I'm also fine with a first name only.
Moloka said:Kellie said:I like having to earn it, it feels like an extra little goal you can aim for.
I agree. There was a lot of these little goals in EQ, bread crumbs that were nice. Surnames, spell book disappearing, bigger spell particles, things like that were always a nice little pick me up between spell levels.
Everquest was this way. The milestone restriction on surnames was one of those things that let others know 'Cool, that person is at least level 20.' I honestly expect this to happen this way, given VR's stance on looking your level with gear and such. It wasn't forced, though.
I'll be fine with whatever they come up with as I don't feel strongly about any part of it. But I'll give my feelings just the same.
I don't want a surame at all.
If they have one (I'm pretty sure they will) then
1) I hope it's not required at Char. Creation
2) account wide..bad idea. Elf surname on an Ogre!?
3) having it as a milestone is good.
4) Surname as a Progeny reward, each time?
I'll add more if I think of any
Rzar said:I listened to Brad's interview on the Countdown podcast. He mentioned that he and the lead dev were debating between getting a last name at ch creation vs earning it. I vote for earning it. I remember in EQ where you couldn't get a surname until level 20. I felt so accomplished when I dinged 20 and could choose my last name! That is all part of rewarding dedication.
Hmm, that's new. I thought so far the plan was to allow players to choose the name they want plus a surname (allowing multiple players on the server to have the same first name). A name alias mechanism was supposed to allow you to define a short name for a player. This seemed like a good compromise to me. If we can't choose a surname at character creation, then first names WILL have to be unique. Does that mean the old plan has been dropped? Guess I have to look up that interview...
There've been good arguments already, but most important to me is being able to choose the name I want as first name. Not being told "That name's already been taken". If the first name you enter during character creation is unique, I would like entering a surname to be optional however.
Naunet said:Hokanu said:A surname earned at a certain level or so i think is much better, because it gives the world you have traversed through an opportunity to impact the choice of your surname (or maybe it doesnt if your set on it from the get go) but you may have someone get to (for arguments sake) level 20 and have a real affinity to their characters/classes flavour and then you may well take as aspect from a feature of your class you really like and utilise it in the surname giving it more meaning to you.It wouldnt bother me which way it ended up really, but my little example of this is was my Necro named Gothmogwort, people always joked around about the wort part and would do the whole ewww, where are your worts at Goth?? so at level 20 I decided on Gothmogwort Wortybum.. so the little interactions i was continually having in the world ended up carving my surname for me.
A friend who was a wizzie loved his fire spells and the firebolt etc so much that he gave his guy the surname Zu'Asche (to Ashes) because of his love for his fire spells :)
Just my experience, I can see a good argument for either!
All the more reason for it to be a title and not a surname, which is tied to family...
I get where your coming from on a realism perspective, I guess I'm not too tied up on realism with this subject, but I get what and why your proposing that.
I prefer having to wait for some number of levels before picking my surname, particularly if the early levels are entirely free to try. Having folk invest a bit in the game before being rewarded with a last name seems appropriate to me. I would not like my name forced on me (last name == Smith just because I craft armor), as too many unrelated folk would be running around as part of some massive family simply because of our trade or profession. Choice, not force.
By the way, I never picked a surname in EQ (bard diva syndrome), though I was proud when I hit 20 and finally had the option...
I would much prefer to select it up front (even if it doesn't appear until later).
Depending on how name reservation is done in Pantheon (and whether the *player* (not just the character) is identifiable in game), it could be very important to select a surname at creation time else ruin your eventual intended first/last name combo and lead to confusion with other players and other weirdnesses later.
To me my name is more important than a lot of the customisations MMOs tend to allow these days. I can have a choice of 50 haircuts, but can't select a family/professional name? Weird.
Pantheon will be a high fantasy game with carefully designed races, classes, professions, etc and, to me, names can be as meaningful to one's persona as any other character creation choice. In fact it's something I probably take longer staring at the character creation screen to do than anything else.
Only being able to use a first name is kinda like only having a few very basic sliders in character creation. Feels like an unnecessary and restrictive limitation.
All this reminds me... I need to start thinking about names *now*... Need more info on lore and naming rules and name reservation and and and....
Another vote for earning it.
I used to think it was strange, back when I thought of surnames as family names, before realizing how much "family names" are a relatively modern thing.
Knowing better, I love the notion of picking it up over time.
disposalist said:All this reminds me... I need to start thinking about names *now*... Need more info on lore and naming rules and name reservation and and and....
KCRiley said:Another vote for earning it.
I used to think it was strange, back when I thought of surnames as family names, before realizing how much "family names" are a relatively modern thing.
Knowing better, I love the notion of picking it up over time.disposalist said:All this reminds me... I need to start thinking about names *now*... Need more info on lore and naming rules and name reservation and and and....
Heh, seconded. I think the only bit of information on naming conventions was for halflings, way way back http://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2349/naming-conventions/view/post_id/31938
Thanks for that link. Yeah we will need more lore! I liked in LotRo that they had lore-based naming hints at character creation, though I sometimes ignored them and used a name that was more of a nickname than a given/family name.
Zorkon said:I'll be fine with whatever they come up with as I don't feel strongly about any part of it. But I'll give my feelings just the same.
I don't want a surame at all.
If they have one (I'm pretty sure they will) then
1) I hope it's not required at Char. Creation
2) account wide..bad idea. Elf surname on an Ogre!?
3) having it as a milestone is good.
I agree with everything. I do not want a surname forced upon me.
I see the benefits to having to get to a reasonable level before choosing a surname - as discussed by a number of people above. My inclination lies in that direction.
Disposalist's points are eminently reasonable and there is logic in going that way too. My logic in not quite being persuaded is twofold.
Firstly - too many people that choose a first name based on what last name is available are looking for "cute" names that often wind up being jarring to other players. One cannot prevent that but one need not encourage it. Thus, someone that wants to name her character Kitchen but only if the last name Sink is available.
Secondly - those concerned with lore-sensitive combinations of names will usually be able to come up with something good. Thus - suppose I want to name my dwarf Ahira Rocksmasher. Ahira Stonecrusher is one of literally hundreds of similar alternatives.
More importantly - games that give unique first names but no last name on character creation normally (in my experience) do not have unique lastnames. Thus you can be sure on character creation that you will eventually get the last name you want assuming it is a permitted name under the game naming rules.