Renaming my character

[Lucious]

Maybe someone can explain this to me....why can't our toons have the same name as another? I mean, they changed the legacy where it is not unique, why not the first name?? I had to rename 6 of my 7 toons during the first merge, where I went from Naddist rebels to Prophecy of Five...so I feel your pain. I got lucky this go around and didn't have to again. But it just seems to me they could have multiple first names since we can now have multiple legacy names.....any idea why?

Frankly, I think it isn't necessarily something to provide for a unique identifier on the server. Perhaps in the old days, The unique names may have been a necessary thing to track accounts and people. Today, it may be more of a "tradition" to require (or now, allow) people the satisfaction of being different from everybody else. Who knows. I would think that the server/system can attach an "invisible" identifier to each player, therefor allowing multiple players to have the same first name. It would complicate things on the dev/programmer side, but hey, that what computers are for Try putting a ticket in and maybe you'll get a good answer. I have never had a bad experience w/BW CS.

[war1023]

I think the issue come from 2 character same name same class both online at the same time how do I talk to the one I want to and not the other one without have them in my friends list/guild? How many people are going to talk crap on the forums because of a wrong tell. Simple way to deal with it, Do duel names, first and last. Give a larger pool of unquie names.

[war1023]

I love how people don't understand something they turn to calling it lame.

It’s a name I have used for years, I quit WoW for 7 months after I got out of the navy and logged back on. Friends were able to see my character name on an alt that didn't have me in there friends list because the alt was created well I was gone.

Name means something when it comes to PvP and PvE too. I've seen people turn around retreat when they saw I was solo guarding a node because they knew I would mess there world up if they attacked me. I've done it too. I know Soul is one hell of player and would beat me down with his hotness before I could kill him. Character name means more to some people that spend time building rep with them. To think that there is someone out there getting own in pvp with my name piss me off. My character name is not just my a name but the rep that goes with it. Some good some bad.

My rep with my character: solid pvp, not a kill farmer, team player, asshole, has no problem explaining fights in FP, expects you work as a group in the FP or will kick you, asshole, doesn’t care if you want to watch cutscenes and doesn’t mind killing what you want as long as you speak.

[Lucious]

Hey War...didn't know you were a squid. Had I known THAT I would have tried to like you more j/k

what did you do? I was an STG back in the 80's.

[SoulBender]

Aren't all squids sweepers first, then a specialty?

USMC CH-46 Grease Monkey then Crew Chief... Oorah

Damm.... that should have been my legacy name...

JackOfAllTradesMasterOfNone would have been good also.

[Count Sacula]

Eeew I didn't know you fools were in the military. I was stationed in Iceland and then NorF#%k VA. Good times those were. I think I did the least amount of work ever in those 4 years.

[Lucious]

Soul, by your sig I can tell we have very different tastes in toons we play. My 2 50s are a BH Merc (light 4 la-de-da LOL) and an Inquisitor Assassin, Dark 5, and waiting for that facial mood expression to come along. He'll be grinning ear-to-ear.

and nope, everyone, pretty much participates in sweepers. Sweepers is how we call the ships crew to clean the ship. "Sweepers, sweepers! Man your brooms! Get a good sweepdown of all decks, spaces, and ladderwells! Now, sweepers!" haha been over20 years since i was in...

[SoulBender]

I can here the whistle now.

[Jetsu]

War, I understand the benefit of unique names (which is that people will recognize and remember you immediately). My point isn't that it's "lame". What I was getting at is that games should ultimately be played for their entertainment value and that should be the ONLY real qualifier of whether or not you should be playing it (because that's it's only purpose).

People tend to play MMOs "professionally" where the thought of losing progress (either because a new patch/expansion is making their gear obsolete or a name change due to a unique conflict is going to make their community "reputation grind" begin again, though not from scratch). That's counter-productive to both the genre and our entertainment time. We're not getting paid to have a good reputation or great gear, we're paying for the chance to build up both for the sake of entertainment.

When a game isn't fun enough that you look forward to the time you put in it's not a very good game. The progress that makes your character powerful or that makes people on your server run in fear at the sight of your name can be earned again, and the process of earning it should be enjoyable. If it is, it's not worth quitting just to "make a point". If it's not, then don't play it, but realize it's because the game no longer entertains you and not just because of whatever setback made you realize you were no longer enjoying yourself.

[war1023]

I was a nuke; no I didn’t work with nuclear bombs; I worked with nuclear reactors. MM1 (SW) top radiation sponge for the boat. 18hrs down in the hole got to love it. Maybe that is why I like the dark side so much, I never saw the sun.

[war1023]

I wasn’t referring to you Jetsu, I know you may disagree with me but you understand me.

The fun part of it was knowing my character was feared, respected and ignored. Meaning I didn’t have to focus on that character and could work on my other characters building their rep up. The thought of some retard afking well guarding a node, calling inc after they die, fighting in mid of 2 nodes and billion other retarded things people do is pissing me off. When I know that Soulbob will call inc when he see people vs Countbob that calls incoming when he dies. I set focus on countbob if he is guarding or wait for soulbob to call.

[Count Sacula]

I wasn’t referring to you Jetsu, I know you may disagree with me but you understand me.

The fun part of it was knowing my character was feared, respected and ignored. Meaning I didn’t have to focus on that character and could work on my other characters building their rep up. The thought of some retard afking well guarding a node, calling inc after they die, fighting in mid of 2 nodes and billion other retarded things people do is pissing me off. When I know that Soulbob will call inc when he see people vs Countbob that calls incoming when he dies. I set focus on countbob if he is guarding or wait for soulbob to call.

Nobody is scared of a 2 month old kitten.

[dodgerfn]

You have no idea how many people on the forums asked that same question.

Well did anybody have a good answer? Sorry, I don't go anywhere near the official forums, can't take the bs....

[dodgerfn]

Frankly, I think it isn't necessarily something to provide for a unique identifier on the server. Perhaps in the old days, The unique names may have been a necessary thing to track accounts and people. Today, it may be more of a "tradition" to require (or now, allow) people the satisfaction of being different from everybody else. Who knows. I would think that the server/system can attach an "invisible" identifier to each player, therefor allowing multiple players to have the same first name. It would complicate things on the dev/programmer side, but hey, that what computers are for Try putting a ticket in and maybe you'll get a good answer. I have never had a bad experience w/BW CS.

They 'allowed' us the satisfaction of having a unique legacy name....for a while anyway. Might as well do the same for our first name and then everyone will really be confused. I understand War's point about seeing 2 people in chat with the same name, but aren't we also going to be confused if 2 people have the same legacy name?? If I see that I'm goin to assume they are on the same account, but of course that may be far from the truth now. I'm just still trying to figure out a good reason for the legacy name change from being unique.....just doesn't make sense to me.

[Jetsu]

They 'allowed' us the satisfaction of having a unique legacy name....for a while anyway. Might as well do the same for our first name and then everyone will really be confused. I understand War's point about seeing 2 people in chat with the same name, but aren't we also going to be confused if 2 people have the same legacy name?? If I see that I'm goin to assume they are on the same account, but of course that may be far from the truth now. I'm just still trying to figure out a good reason for the legacy name change from being unique.....just doesn't make sense to me.

When you type /t Jetsu you talk to me. When you type Jetsu in the mailbox "to" field you're sending mail to me. If you type /ginvite Jetsu you'll get a warning saying I'm already in a guild, but you were TRYING to invite me. When you type Delmear (my sirname) you're... well, you're not because it's not used for any interactive system.

Character name is currently what they're using to uniquely identify characters (and some type of unique identifier IS needed for many reasons). Legacy names were not our identifier in any functionality regard. It could be argued that they identified our account, but since nobody interacts with our account at the account level in-game there's no need for a "user friendly" name and they almost certainly are just using account IDs in the background (which means things like the name can be non-unique and it doesn't change much of anything).

They could include the sirname as our character identifier so that it's the combination that unique, but that would require a LOT of rework and result in a more complicated system (not to mention a lot more user frustration going forward while chatting and sending mail).

Currently:
*When someone enters a legacy name they get it (because they're no longer unique).
*When someone enters a character name it's checked against other character names on the server.

If we started having to use character name and sirname to designate a character:
*When someone picks a legacy name they would have to check the combination with every one of that player's character names on the server against all current name combinations on the server.
*When someone enters a character name without a legacy it would have to be compared to all names of all characters who also have no legacy (or if they didn't treat it as a "NULL" name they'd have to come up with another way to handle people without a legacy to preserve unique identifiers).
*When someone enters a character name when they already have a legacy it would have to be checked against every combination on the server (this aspect is fairly similar to the existing method).

Technically speaking it would likely require a bunch of unique constraints being removed from their database tables (though hopefully they still have an auto-incrementing ID on the tables that would still serve as a unique identifier), all the validation checking listed above, AND a complete rework of the social /macros as well as the mail system and chat system.

Not saying it won't happen, but allowing more open legacy naming was likely as easy as removing a constraint that wasn't used to drive anything but a string concatenation at the end if your character name (or the title thing) and a few strings on the Legacy and login screens.

Changing character identification to include sirnames as part of it is a much larger project.