Policy Updates

We just published updates to three policy documents on our website.

The first one is the Naming Policy. We currently have rules in our User Agreement that give you brief guidelines on what types of names are allowed, however, many felt that these guidelines were not clear enough. We have published a Naming Policy that expands on the guidelines in the User Agreement with a bit more detail and clarification on what is expected when players name their characters or guilds.

There is one change in the Naming Policy enforcement that is new. We are handling first-time offenses as per our standard practice: a mark is placed on a player’s account and the character is blocked (inaccessible) until they rename it, and the account mark also involves a “time out” period during which they’re unable to play. The change to enforcement comes with the second offense on an account. On a second offense, we will assign the offending player a new, randomly-generated name, their account will be marked, and it will be unusable for a period of time, as called for within the escalating suspension system. This new enforcement policy for a second offense was created to discourage repeat offenders from creating offensive names.

The Rules of Conduct and Conduct Breaches and Outcomes pages have been updated to reflect the information in the Naming Policy.

Secondly, the Rules of Conduct and Conduct Breaches and Outcomes have been updated to clarify PvP conduct issues, specifically the issue of match manipulation and other types of PvP abuse, such as leeching. Earlier this year in our update to the Universal Tournament Rules, we stated that match manipulation was against the rules. After continuing confusion as to whether it was technically against the rules to engage in match manipulation outside of tournament play, we have updated the Rules of Conduct and Conduct Breaches and Outcomes to reflect our position that match manipulation and abuse is against the rules and the spirit of the game in all forms of PvP play.

If you’ve got any questions, please let us know.

So HB ties are going to be watched or that doesnt count as PvP in Anet's view? (as it has been ignored so far)

How does this do anything to pvp chars, who were 95% of these bad names and are destroyed/recreated at will. Better than nothing I guess, but not much.

They will never fix HB tying.

I hope that offensive name submissions are truly reviewed, and not rubber stamped into temp ban. There have been two scenarios which clearly illustrate this: numerous reports of completely innocent names being temp banned because they got reported by someone either immature or retaliation for something else. Also, people who have wanted their names changed for whatever reason had their friends report them.

Good, I hope this starts to put an end to the hordes of leechers in JQ/FA.

(What, a girl can dream!)

Are there any plans for making this into a purchasable feature (where the user selects the new name of choice)?


On the subject of leeching - what happens if the offender is not reported by the demanded number or party members?
Should reports in such cases be sent in though support?
Or is this rule only applied IF a specific number of party members reports the problematic party member?

The ability to purchase a name change is a feature that's been requested often. It is definitely not an easy thing to implement, but we're keeping it in consideration.

Re: leeching. Nothing has changed in terms of how players should report leechers. The Live Team is taking a look at the reporting system, because they do know that the way the system currently works discourages people from reporting a leecher.

Here is one: Wenever you get banned for leeching your faction bars are set to zero. And those who report a leecher get a hundred bonus Balt points.

The naming policy seems very good.

I don't understand these types of responses... you just got done saying you can already do it, but it's not easy to implement?

I realize I've never worked on the ANET backend, but, to me, this is a simple database update. How can changing a name of a character possibly be a difficult thing to add?

lmao, i want to know what randomly generated names would be like? =D

A lot of things are possible given enough resources and time. We have limits on resources and time and there are sometimes technical limitations. It might look easy to add on the surface, but a feature like this requires not just a lot of back end technical work, but also the consultation of people in other departments besides the ones that are responsible for programming, designing the user interface, etc. For example, adding a major feature like this would need to be discussed and get approval from decision-makers (executives) in the company.

* Have offensive racial, ethnic, or national connotations.
Ok, this is fair.
* Reference sexual acts or real life violence.
Ok.
* Are pornographic.
Yeah, I'm sure people were jacking off to character names. Let's be fair, some armour suits already make better fapping material than a name ever could.
* Make inappropriate references to human anatomy or bodily functions.
Good. Tired of immature stuff.
* Reference illegal drugs or activities.
lolwhat?
* Reference major religious figures.
Awesome, so no more characters named Praise Jesus and such, I like this.
* Reference certain real-life people that may cause distress (e.g. Hitler).
Cause distress to who?

Do you really have to ask which group of people the name Hitler might cause distress too? Really?


Thanks for the update Regina.

Jewish people (driving German cars.)

You'd be surprised at how many people can be offended over the most minor things they're exposed to and you'd be surprised at how people get trigger happy with the /report system. However, I suppose the support team have to respect people's concerns in this politically correct age.

I don't mean Adolf, I mean distressing figures to anyone.

For example, if I saw someone named after Fred Phelps, I'd be pretty pissed, unless the name was poking fun at him.

My guess - Germans.
Seriously, I am sure it's pretty distressing to be constantly reminded how massively one failed at genocide and taking over the world!
Poor guys!



On topic:
So it's just a scare tactic.
Good to know.

There are names that are so incredibly dumb that they make me lose faith in humanity.

makosi, the oh-so funny and creative "Jewy People Driving German [Cars]" and the choice of your location in the user info, "Psychiatric Ward", are probably not covered by the naming policy of GW or the policies of this board, but such stupidity is the reason why restrictive policies are needed for MMO games, as common sense and sense of decency obviously got totally lost.

I foresee many more false reports if the little jerks get rewarded for doing it.

Good stuff, Regina. I am not easily offended, but it does bother me when I see inappropriate names or conversations in outposts where all ages may be present. The policy update should allow your team to manage the offenses a little easier than before.