If all Worlds/Servers are combined into 2 (American & Euro)....what happens to our characters names?

[Kaine.3501]

If they combine all of the current Worlds (servers) into just 2....North American and European Worlds (servers).....then what happens to our characters names? Are all of our characters names reset? Because you might have people with the same character name on multiple current Worlds (servers).

 

I wish MMORPG's created a system that allowed us to name ourselves whatever we wanted. However, problems would arise when it came to guild invites, mail, etc.. Let's say you wanted to name your character something common like "Ryan"....maybe in the game when you are the only Ryan in the area all they see in your name...but if there is another Ryan they see something like Ryan.5826 or whatever added onto the end of your name. Maybe on your friends list you see Ryan.5826 but do not see the number in game unless there are 2 Ryans in the same area. I think one of the most frustrating parts of an MMORPG is simply picking a name at the very beginning...almost everything is taken in Guild Wars 2. Final Fantasy XIV forces you to make a last name which helps. I just think that you should be able to name your character whatever you want.

 

[RoseofGilead.8907]

Character names in GW2 aren't dependent upon server, meaning you won't find more than one character using the exact same name, regardless of what server they are on/used to be on.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Character Names are unique within Guild Wars 2. It's not possible to have a name anyone else has.

[Kaine.3501]

> @"RoseofGilead.8907" said:

> Character names in GW2 aren't dependent upon server, meaning you won't find more than one character using the exact same name, regardless of what server they are on/used to be on.

 

Ok thanks. I thought it worked like World of Warcraft where you can have a character with the same name on several servers. Wow....that makes it even harder to pick a name if every single server shares the same name database.....all of the names are gone. lol

 

Do they clean up the names...like delete names if people don't log in for a certain amount of time....and make them create a new name if they log in years later....or are the names permanent?

 

[artemis.6781]

No they never do that because someone may leave the game and come back later. Wouldn't you be pissed if your character name was deleted?

 

Edit: all the names are not gone. Try being creative and not using the classic fantasy game/novels. Perhaps look into the lore of your chosen race for some suggestions.

[crepuscular.9047]

Anet never delete names, I created all my toons during pre-launch, played for 2 days and stopped because my crappy machine back then kept on overheating, came back 3 years later just before HoT all my toons still 'alive'

 

just like a lot of post WoW's golden era MMOs, they use a single database table space for keeping toon names

 

Only if you have an offensive toon name, then Anet will contact you directly to change your toon name or they may suspend your account

[Dawdler.8521]

Uuuuuuh... there already are only 2 servers in practice, EU and US. The server names are just a remnant thats currently only needed for WvW matchups, they will be deleted in the future once the alliance system drops. These "servers" hasnt been used as separated MMO servers for 4 years or somewhere around there (and they where never unique, the account system was always global since we could trnsfer to other servers).

[Steve The Cynic.3217]

> @"Kaine.3501" said:

> If they combine all of the current Worlds (servers) into just 2....North American and European Worlds (servers).....then what happens to our characters names? Are all of our characters names reset? Because you might have people with the same character name on multiple current Worlds (servers).

>

> I wish MMORPG's created a system that allowed us to name ourselves whatever we wanted. However, problems would arise when it came to guild invites, mail, etc.. Let's say you wanted to name your character something common like "Ryan"....maybe in the game when you are the only Ryan in the area all they see in your name...but if there is another Ryan they see something like Ryan.5826 or whatever added onto the end of your name. Maybe on your friends list you see Ryan.5826 but do not see the number in game unless there are 2 Ryans in the same area. I think one of the most frustrating parts of an MMORPG is simply picking a name at the very beginning...almost everything is taken in Guild Wars 2. Final Fantasy XIV forces you to make a last name which helps. I just think that you should be able to name your character whatever you want.

 

Re: naming systems.

 

GW2 *allows* multi-part names (e.g. my characters Cleopatra Aegyptus(1), Juiz La Cachée, Kylara Nightsong, Dances In Dungeons(2)) but also allows mononyms (Kylarina, etc.) so if you fail to name a character, that's your creativity that has disintegrated.

 

FFXIV offers no "partness" flexibility. You have two parts and that's it. That does help, since you can differentiate your Kylara Thingywotsit from my Kylara Nightsong, but does prevent e.g. Dances In Dungeons or Kylarina.

 

The Secret World and Secret World Legends have a different system. Your character's name comes in three parts: "First name", "Nickname", and "Last name". First and Last are not unique, and nor is their combination. Any number of characters (even *all* of them on a server) can be Melanie Roberts, so long as their nicknames are different. In effect, the nickname is the "classic" MMORPG character name (and, indeed, it's how you appear in PvP), but your character's name can be whatever with no collisions. (For reference: my main character there is Melanie "Truckslayer" Roberts. "Truckslayer" is her nickname, and the reason I picked that is a very long story indeed.)

 

(1) Yes, I know, the Latin grammar is faulty. She should be "Cleopatra Aegypti" = "Cleopatra of Egypt" rather than "Cleopatra Aegyptus" = "Cleopatra Egypt".

 

(2) Dances In Dungeons rather than Dances With Wolves, obviously.

[sorudo.9054]

i am personally for 1 global name and no unique character name, the global name is unique (just like your forum name) but the rest is all free for the taking.

[Danikat.8537]

I'd love it if GW2 (and other games) allowed you to name your characters whatever you wanted and used some other system to tell characters with the same name apart, but I can imagine that could get complicated for players - you can't always see the account name of the person along with the character name so even if it promoted you to choose between Legolas - Awesome.1234 and Legolas - lotrfan.5678 you may not have any way of knowing which is the 'right' one. And I imagine a lot of people (role players for example) would be more unhappy with their character name being modified to something like Legolas.1234 than having to find a unique name.

 

Plus it seems to be something computers struggle with generally. This is why my work email address book has names like John Smith, John M. Smith, John Smith 2, John Smith (Finance) etc. - even though there's plenty of other fields to tell them apart the names have to be unique.

 

Having said that I've almost never had trouble finding an available name for a GW2 character. The only ones I really wanted and couldn't get were Alleria Windrunner (I genuinely didn't realise a minor character from an expansion to an old game was that popular, even though she was my favourite character) and Xixxi which is an obvious asuran name. In both cases I changed 1 letter and got something I'm happy with. Xexxi I might change if Xixxi ever became available, but I think I'd keep Alleria Wildrunner, I've had it so long now (since GW1) it'd be weird to change it.

 

Other than that it's only when I'm making a temporary character and just putting in whatever names or name-like words come into my head (and going for a 1-word name) that I have trouble. If I can think of one I add a title/second name and then it's fine, if not I just keep tweaking it and eventually I get something which works. (The other option is to add accented characters, if you don't mind that it changes the pronunciation, but I can never remember the shortcuts for them and can't be bothered looking them up or copying and pasting when it's a temp character because the name isn't that important to me.)

 

I don't know if it's just that my mind works completely differently to most people's but if I take the time to think of a name that suits the character it's never taken. Although sometimes I've found other people with very similar names. For example I called a character Uncia Snowfur and found another charr called something like Uncia Whitefur, but that is an obvious theme. (Or at least it's obvious if you know that uncia is the species name for the snow leopard.) Even 1-word names I picked years after the game came out, like Ambage or Aurhedyn were available.

[Lord Trejgon.2809]

> @"Kaine.3501" said:

> all of the names are gone. lol

>

 

I managed to find non-taken blue flower name for my sylvari created around PoF launch, so you can find names that are not gone too ;)

 

 

[Sinful.2165]

In Ultima Online multiple people could have the same name. It was kind of neat. There was no chat box back then or system to send messages or mail. People used ICQ to communicate long distance in game. ;)

 

Anyway as a suggestion if you struggle to come up with names that aren’t taken you can always add an umlaut or accent to one of the characters. I’ve always appreciated that GW2 allows that. I personally like to keep the same name but usually end up playing several classes until I settle on one and that used to involve deleting old characters to reuse the name.