I think in community driven games your name is especially important. It is what you are putting out to the community and generally the first thing others will see, "know" about you. While this first impression may be off the mark, it is often hard to overcome the first impression someone gets of you. What does your character name say about you?
Thorndeep said:
I think in community driven games your name is especially important. It is what you are putting out to the community and generally the first thing others will see, "know" about you. While this first impression may be off the mark, it is often hard to overcome the first impression someone gets of you. What does your character name say about you?
I once suffered for a chosen nickname, not intended, very bad and oblivous of. (something for a check thread? lol)
Earning a faction or community title would help.
Wandidar was created by the in game EQ name generator. It still took me a while to decide to choose it, and I felt fortunate that it wasn't already taken when I did. Like everyone else, I've suffered through the what seems like a 10 hour session of trying to find a name that isn't already taken. Over the years though, I have come up with a selection of sufficiently unique names that they are never taken whenever I use them. It was basically because at some point, I decided to think outside the box a bit.
Having said that, I would love some form of a system with last names / family names my avatars could all belong to.
Note: I have also picked some very, very bad names I had to live with for a while that I didn't know were that bad until after I chose them. I once had a caster named "Oreanis" which seemed sufficiently "casterish" to me. Then one of my in game friends stated calling me "Oreo Anus", and it stuck.
Kilsin said:How important is your characters name to you, do you put time into creating it or is it just random and meaningless to you?
I have a few I will try to get, but it's no big deal. I figure my actions will make the name mean something to everyone else. I'm not going to ragequit if I can't have the name I want.
Are we including Guild names? Just wondering how some of the more well known guilds would feel if someone were to get their classic guild names (FoH, Afterlife, Halcyon Affinity, etc.)
Also, will there be any naming conventions? For instance, I once had an idea to creat a guild named By Priscription Only and required members to name themselves after drug names like Prozac, Nimbutol, Thorazine, etc.
And will there be room for non-normalized characters? Like "Panic! At the disco"
Nephretiti said:I hope they have a "naming Convention" team that reviews /reported names etc. If name is found to be "not worthy" they can get a renaming voucher on the next login. After three naming vouchers the player is assigned a name by the team.
Or just have a naming policy clearly stated, and if you deviate from it you are assigned a name.
When someone creates leggolas they know what they are doing. It's not an accident.
I love the idea of owning your last name the same as your first, with the option to share with designated others.
I think picturing someone trying to use a last name, and then having to find out who already has it and begging to be adopted into the family is awesome.
Only real negative I could see, is how long you would allow someone to be inactive with holding the last name before transferring the ownership to maybe the first person they shared the name with? That way if you adopted someone's last name and they quit you wouldn't forever lose the ability to share it forward.
I can also see a counter point to where you would just have to change your last name or adopt a new one, especially if gaming interactions were based around it.
The progeny system has so much flavor possibility here Walking around and guards whispering to each other "That's the great hero of X's grandson!".
Edit: I was bad and didn't answer the original question. Names are important to me, and try as I might, I struggle to break away from my original names. I would be interested to know if there's a consideration for accounts to be an option to share or possible part of whats added on the friends list, as it makes tracking your friends and all their alts so much easier. The downside I guess is then it's harder to hide on an alt if you want some peace and quiet.
I think names are already incredibly important, and becoming moreso day by day. At TwitchCon we had so many people introducing themselves to other fantheons by their in-game name -- it is what it is -- your in-game persona, especially in a social community focused game like Pantheon is *everything*. This is why we continue to head down the road of assigning a first and last name to your character upon creation. Rushing to reserve names, finding out one you've used for years has already been taken, etc. just causes so much unnecessary angst and disappointment.
Just as RL civilization went to two names (and then 3+, I have a first, middle, and last of my birth certificate), so also must virtual civilization.
There is some downside... there could be 2+ other Aradunes running around, but at least you could be Aradune combined with a last name that together makes you unique. Not to mention how this could be tied into the Progeny system, etc.
The concerns I've heard range from 'I don't want to have to think of a second name', to how cool it was to get your last name at 20 in EQ, to UI/Chatting issues.
I don't have much to say in regards to the first. I do agree it was cool to get your last name at 20 in EQ and in fact the idea certainly wasn't mine -- MUDs had been doing that for years, since the late 80s at least. But I think we can offer titles and other ways to recognize and reward.
Lastly the UI issue(s) I think are fairly easily dealt with:
1. If you were logged in and there were, say, 3 Aradunes logged into the same realm as you, and you typed '/tell Aradune Hey man, let's meet up at the bridge', the UI would simply let you know with a pop up list the three people logged in and you would choose one.
2. Example 1 above, however, would happen infrequently, especially if it already happened at least once. We will have an Alias system for this and other reasons (e.g. it's not just to address the more characters logged in with the same first name issue). Essentially you can take anyone from from a Names List (note you'll be able to have multiple lists, say a friends list, an annoying persons list, etc). You can then assign an alias to any of those names. Like I said, this is to address more than just the 2+ names list -- say you have a person you chat with who insists his character's name is some crazy long authentic Sindarin name "Arkininathdunearinatha". I would immediately do /alias Arkininathdunearinatha Arky. Then when I do a '/tell Arky hurry up and meet at the bridge slacker!' it just works. He doesn't know you've renamed him/given him an alias, but your config does, and you no longer need to type or worry about his long name. Same with multiple people with the same first name. '/alias Aradune Mithara Stinky' and now you just use Stinky to refer to him (me?).
3. This greatly helps with realm/server transfers. No more issues there we hope. Will a name, first and last, need to be together unique not just across a realm but across all realms? Likely so, yes.
One thing to keep in mind too is that this is very much a CS issue, moreso than a dev or design issue. Frustrating people by not allowing them to have a name very important to them creates not only an emotional and negative scenario, mad rushes to try reserve names (were we to allow that), but it just gets worse and worse the bigger and more successful the game gets. So the player isn't happy, and then he or she communicates their unhappiness to a CS or GM, taking up valuable resources on our end as well.
I do realize the issue is controversial and trust me, we've given it a LOT of thought. It's something that has plagued CS since the early days of EQ, and it's only grown by orders of magnitude since then with so many more people playing online games where their online persona is very important to them, has a reputation, has sentimental value, etc. In fact, I personally reached out to my friend Rob Pardo (co-creator of WoW, etc.) and he let me know he wished they'd done it this way, that this was a huge issue with WoW, with not only a lot of frustrated people but a huge load on CS. They finally automated it to some degree, but had he a time machine, he'd also approach this issue similarly.
Kilsin said:How important is your characters name to you, do you put time into creating it or is it just random and meaningless to you?
I really think my character name is important, i named it crazzie due to the fact i am crazzie and would box 7 or more accounts at once to keep me active, busy and most of all engaged in multi things in the game. I do out of the box things in my lifetime while playing.
I hope we have a really good filter so we can stop names like STUPIDMORONTYPENAMES being used.
I enjoy my game play, and i am looking forward to learning the group game with 1 or more characters again.
Names matter when searching, remembering them as decent and respectful players and people. Hopefully we have a great community again like it was 20 yrs ago.
Aradune said:3. This greatly helps with realm/server transfers. No more issues there we hope. Will a name, first and last, need to be together unique not just across a realm but across all realms? Likely so, yes.
Thanks Aradune.
I like this point. Nothing more annoying than when servers merge and you get a "-1" tagged to the end of your name because there was already someone on that server with the same name.
It may seem silly, but I think a character with only a first name just sounds so much more legendary, like Madonna, Beyonce, Rihanna, Oprah, Adele, Drake, Kesha, Usher... the list goes on and on. All the players I looked up to in EQ only had a first name, so maybe that's just what I'm used to.
Although there are a lot of people whose reason is that it's too easy for some troll with the same first name as you to tarnish your reputation. And I would agree with that too. A lot of people work hard for their good reputation - myself included. But hopefully people can be more discerning and pay attention to people's last names. It might feel weird to have introduce myself with my character's first and last name at a Fantheon, but I could probably get used to it. Your persona in a game is very important for sure, but I think part of it is that you be easily recognizable.
Pros and cons as always.
Time to see if I come up with a cool last name that's easier to spell and pronounce.
Mine has morphed over the last 8 years or so and is who I am in my gaming world or social media. I am with Baz in thought.
I never go with a last name unless forced to (i.e. FFXIV) but if given a choice, much rather have just a single name. Was hoping with name reservations awhile back, this would be managed and taken care of...
Whatever happens, this is not a deal breaker.
Thanks for the clarification Aradune :)
My names are incredibly important to me in MMOs - I understand not everyone gets attached to character names like I do, but I do. So if using a first/last will allow me to have the names that I've had in prior games, then YES PLEASE.
I also love the /alias concept. Man, I wish previous games had had that!
Kilsin said:How important is your characters name to you, do you put time into creating it or is it just random and meaningless to you?
For my main character my name is very important to me.
Mine is a combination of my first ever online character combined with the type of class my first EQ character was. :)
