Unhappy with your character name, but don't want to lose your time and energy?

I would give Anet my eternal loyalty if they made this feature available, but so people dont abuse it, make it like the change territory thing,

you can only change your character name up to 3 times or something .problem solved, no abuse there huh?

And to the people that said about hair,face etc, Yeah that is a excellent idea, I mean after playing the same character for 100 hours, who's not tired of his/her face?

/signed

Here's the thing, when I got GW a year ago I wasn't sure about it so I was just going to mess around a bit. So I created a stupid name for my main character "Glichy Mc Glich". Apart from the fact that I spelt it wrong I have gone to far to simply delete him just to get a new name, but I hate the name, it doesn't go well with the rest of my other characters. So yeah this feature would be awsome, however this thread was made over a year ago, and nothing has happened since. I wonder if its still a consideration from Anet.

Technical aspects aside, I'd like it. (and aesthetics, but that's somewhat off topic)

/signed

Wouldn't it be possible to save the starting names where they are now, but have the modified names be somewhere accessible, and the client would only write the secure/unchangeable name if an accessible one wasn't available/created? Then each character would be linked (friends/ignore/etc. lists, for example) according to their secure name, although the accessible one would be the one that is displayed in the game. And a name history would be available, to avoid scammers (marked with change dates, in case somebody who wants a name that was previously taken aren't mistaken for someone who was once a scammer, for example). I dunno, maybe I missed some obvious flaw in my "brilliant" plan.

/unsigned

It's your own damn fault you named your character 'Iol Owned Noob'

Yes.. I've seen that.

Just suck it up and realise that 'funny' names aren't really funny or cool at all. This is just to make up for being an idiot when you made your character. The only way you can learn your own common sense is by making mistakes. Learn from your mistakes and make better names.

/signed

Better to have the feature in place than not to have it. There are different ways to make sure it's not abused, but that won't be a hard game mechanic to figure out.

And in response to those who believe this will cause problems in the database (i.e. cascading a name change through multiple tables), it really won't be that bad. The name should not be a key whatsoever; there should already be an automatically incremented number representing your character across several tables in the db, leaving the character name to be a single text field. No worries there.

Maybe people who don't make funny names still want to change them. I try to make my character names sound somewhat reasonably like a character from that continent would have, but sometimes I realize that it just wasn't quite right, but I'm too far in to warrant a restart. You play for a while and then you have one of those moments where you go, "Why the heck did I think this was good?" So far my Elonian character sounds *maybe* about right, but there might come a time when I look at it and simply cannot picture him with that name in this situation. I also have a Canthan-born character with a more Ascalonian-styled name, and while it doesn't bother me greatly, I would like to just tweak it to be more "Canthanish".

And as to the point you made, I don't like "funny" names either, but if someone wants to change it so something more reasonable, why should we stop them? The quality of a name is subjective, after all.

(The only characters that I have with remotely funny names are my mules, since I have no reason to care about them outside of their storage abilities. At least they are descriptive and correctly spelled, though.)

Being able to change your character names would be great. But you'd have to put some kind of limit on it to prevent/discourage abuse.

I'd suggest either making the namechange feature a set number of uses for each character (like how many times you can change your home server), or put a price tag on it (1,000g or something).

And preferably make it something you change at the Character Selection screen rather than ingame.

charge people 4.99 to change their name.

Why? because people who are serious will change it, and the people who would just abuse it can still abuse it...but are paying 5 bucks each time, so in the end, they're losing.

/sototallysigneditsnotevenfunnyhowmuchthisidearoxmy sox

/signed


And yet , a year later, and 123232 posts later. No answer

... lol just noticed someone ressurected this year old thread, >< was geting my hopes up for nothing.

/signed.

I also dislike my hair!

ah bah I named my paragon ''Vynas goes paragorn'' >.<

ah well, have ti live with it

If people are so worried about abuse why dont they put it on a sliding scale like skills. 100, 150, 200, 300, 400, 600, 700, 900... that way it would get really expensive... eventually. I mean the point of a scam is to make money right? If you're spending 9000k changing your name you probably arn't making money. Just a thought.

Anyways. /signed

I'm so tired of hearing people quote this as gospel. Unless the fields are the primary keys in the database tables (which is possible with the name, but doubtful with appearance), then they can easily be changed.

No problem whatsoever, so unless you know this for a fact (do you even know what type of database they're using), don't go quoting what is most likely a myth.

It all depends on how their database was architected. If it's an Oracle database, then it's likely that _all_ characteristics of appearance can be changed. It's whether or not Anet considers it a worthwhile investment of their time and money to do.

/signed

Oh absolutely a great idea. Some of my database guys at work have done this when we've screwed up on the database design and created a primary key with something that we later need to change. You create a new table called something like "Display_name", with the fields "character_name" and "display_this_name", or something similar. Then you have to go back and refactor all the code to change all references from "character_name" to "display_name".

That said, I doubt that Anet will do this, due to the cost involved. Of course if they turned it into a gold sink or charged you $5 to change your character name, then it might cost-justify.

Maybe if it was limited to one or two times. not an unlimited number. Peopel would eb changing their name everyday or some every hours. It would be insane.

hi woot.

unless everybody from Jeff Strain down to Gaile Gray are lying in posts and interviews it is just that secure and unchanable.

the devs know what their database is and they have said it is unchanable once made.

you have (as i) no idea how it is set up so saying it would be easy is total ignorance compounded by Bandini

/signed

Yet they can force you to change it if it is deemed offensive

Hey Lovitar,

Please read my two posts, perhaps I wasn't clear.

1) Names are most likely primary keys, so can't be changed. My second post agrees with an earlier person about how you can kludge around that. We have done that at work.

2) No way that appearance attributes are all primary keys, unless the database is completely normalized, in which case everything would fall apart due to inefficiency. Heck, they were able to do this in Runescape, they could do it here.

3) I doubt that Anet ever lies, and would not accuse them of doing so. I am continually amazed at the quality and quantity of their work. I just believe that they may not have thought this through completely. My people at work didn't think they could do a change that was very similar to #1 above until someone came up with the idea similar to the other poster (who I'd credit, but am too lazy).

4) The only way that Anet should do this is to either make money (by charging real dollars for each name / appearance change), or turn it into a gold sync (to address the economy of GW).

5) You're right, this is all speculation on my part. Although it is not ignorance. That is a very different thing.

Regards

earlier you were forced to delete the character, loot ,armor and all

note that the change is only a mask which other people see on a piece of data (name) that does not vary.

ALSO NOTE that the actual account is unaltered as the *banned* name is still there for the account owner to see when an item is customized.

he sees customized for *banned name* on any customized item which shows that the account data has not been altered.

$6 dollars per name change @ arena.net store for the win

i think $5 would be more realistic

/signed I wanna change my name

/signed

/signed --- ace idea

/signed

Make it a fee at an NPC for like 500 gold or something.

Now what do you all mean by it'll be hard to recognize your friends? You have a friends screen. Look it up there. You have a guild screen. Look it up there. Most people do that anyways. Whenever someone makes a new character, they have to look it up there. Same thing. It's not a big deal.

I'm pretty sure names like Joe suck his mama would be against the rules lol.

/signed

Make a fee for that, say, 5 dollars, and avaiable at the Guild Wars Store.
This way, one wouldn't abuse it, and if one would, he's paying for it so the GW Devs are being helped.

Remember, you can track whole accounts on your friends list, so it's not a big deal to be able to change names in the sense of scammes or blacklisted people changing their names. The feature would be there... just for who really wanted it, like character slots, another fully optional feature.

completely agree, and with those conditions,
/signed

Well, I am on 2 day vacation from work and have pulled myself away from Battlefield 2142, FFIII, and Tales of the Abyss. This topic appears best to start with.

There already is a name change system in place, I quote from here: http://www.guildwars.com/support/leg..._outcomes.php:

* For unacceptable character names, a mark will be placed against the account and the character will be blocked. This means that the character and all the inventory items and attainments associated with it will be inaccessible until the character has been renamed. The account will also receive a mark, and therefore will be inaccessible for whatever period of time is called for within the escalating suspension system.


Granted, this is for reported offensive names, but it would not take much effort to take this batch job, or whatever they call such processes at ANet, and integrate it into the store. They charge $5-10 per name, user buys a name change, app queries db to see if name is taken, prompts for another name if that one is taken, updates aka 'changes' just like it does for reported name violations, and ANet wins. They get $5-10, user feels satisfied that their name is changed.

Also, I do believe they lie at times, like all companies. The best way to get your client to get over what ever change the devs consider trivial and not worth doing, is to tell them it is not possible. If ANet has a system in place for when some one reports an offensive name, then it is possible to modify and integrate it into the online store. If it is not possible then ANet lied about the offensive name list. They have also proved they can integrate database changes with an online purchase into the system, via skill unlocks and character slots in relation to an account.

Forgot to mention:

As mentioned above, normalization is not good in the real world. If your db is fully normalized, you have to unnormalize it to use it, which creates overhead. Storage and memory are cheap now days.

This is speculation and educated guessing on my part, other than what I pulled from the guild wars conduct breaches. Like the auction house (unless this has been added since I started my GW break), this is something they probably do not want to deal with.

/Signed

I like the idea a lot, since I misspell char names easily.

Or simply want it easier to be remembered.

Hell, I wouldn't mind it if it costed 5k-15k or something similar to change your name. People sure as hell won't spam it then if it costed as much as high-end armor.

/Signed

Also, it would be cool if we had [Hairstylist] and [Makeup] NPCs to change hair and faces. But that's just personal opinion speaking. :P

well i will give you facts to replace your guesses.

the account name is unchangeable and is indeed not changed.

for offensive names someone at Anet sets up a mask so other people see the *new* name.

if you customize a weapon it will still show customized for *banned name* which proves the account is unchanged.

this is a mess they will not touch.

/signed

I desperately need an altered name for my warrior.

/signed

Yup, this and beeing able to change your body and hairstyle is something I would really happen.

/signed. Don't think it should cost real money though, maybe some in-game and/or a limit on amount of times.

That would be a waste of time, people should just be sure thats what they want, if you want a name that means something about your character a good site for names is

http://www.babynames.com/

no.............just, just no..........

thats like naming your baby and then when its 12 you want to re-name it and take it to plastic surgery......its just rong.

Agreed. I often find my characters don't look nearly as cool, or their names don't sound nearly as cool, as they seemed when I created them. I deal with it, but a good idea I'd like to see happen.

No, it's nothing like that. This is a bunch of 0s and 1s we're renaming, not a human baby. Come on, seriously.