Name Changes - 11.25.2007

Just a small post from me this week regarding the Name Change option now available for characters - is this not the stupidest thing I have seen Blizzard implement on this game so far? I mean who would be so opaque as to feel that renaming their character would have any influence on how they play or what they experience in game; or indeed have anything to do with their happiness level?

Well, apparently, quite a few people on my friends list! Came online the other day and saw this random person online in my friends list - I promptly thought I'd been keylogged and someone was messing around with my account until the guy messaged me telling me who he was and that he'd changed his name :)

Upon further investigation, most people that are considering this option/have already done it seem to have fairly justifiable reasons for doing so - this probably isn't an issue in the US, but in the EU people seem to want to change their names to avoid being 'labelled' as from a certain nationality; not for racist reasons I'm sure, but to generally escape confusion. For example, two English players I know have changed their names to avoid being stereotyped as Scandinavians - when they chose their names originally they were unaware of that name's significance in other languages - and I'm confident this situation is not uncommon.

So as it turns out there may be at least one viable reason to change your character's name. In my opinion, you need a good one before throwing your money away.

Would love to hear people's opinions on this.

-Joe Zara [Phoee]

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm fine with them implementing it because the only small inconvenience it may cause is me having to ignore another name. If they were a butthead with an old name, they'll still be a butthead with their new one and it won't take me (or anyone else) long to find that out.

Anonymous said...

I am one of those who is going to change my char name. Here's the reason. Pre TBC i had another account which i sold because i wanted a new start in TBC, i knew if i kept my current i would be too happy for my 60 epics that i wouldnt change it untill lvl 70 or so. So what i did was selling the account and then buying a new, which ofcourse led to me not being able to pick my old name. I just checked when i heard about the name change, and my old char name was avaliable, so i reserved it and now im going to get the name back. The reason i'd do this is because alot of people on the server know me by the old name and not the new. Hope you could understand what i wrote.

Aticus said...

I agree with the name changing system. I switched servers to Earthen Ring right when BC came out. However, my childhood character name (dating back to EverQuest, Diablo, Baldur's Gate) was always Neflight. When I transfered over, my new mage on ER was name Neflight so my 60 Paladin had to change his name to Aticus.

Now that the name change was available, I changed my mage's name and am now waiting for the 3 month period to change my Paladin's name to Neflight. Funny thing is though, after 2 1/2 months of thinking about it, I really don't want to change it. Aticus just stuck with my Paladin so well that I feel like I will be playing a whole different character.

Now, I won't be changing it after all. Funny how you think something is going to be a great idea when it really isn't. But, I agree it is something good to have just incase.