Tuesday, August 21, 2007

What's In a Name?

I noticed that Cryptic is bringing back their controversial name policy next week. Starting August 29, characters less than level 6 that have been inactive for more than 90 days will have their names become unreserved. This means they may lose their name if someone else tries to use it.

Some of my characters in City of Heroes might lose their name because of this. But that's ok with me, since I'm not playing City of Heroes anymore.

I think more games should do this, especially games with unique first name requirements (such as EverQuest II). Its one thing if the name is in use. That's unavoidable. But its quite frustrating coming up with a good name for a character you are trying to build and then finding out that someone who doesn't even play the game anymore got there first. Especially if you actually took the time to come up with a good name instead of dubbing yourself Xxxlegolasxxx.

I think more games should implement policies like this. (Though I also think more games should have naming requirements like in Guild Wars, where you had to pick a first AND last name. This makes it less likely that your name conflicts with someone elses.)

2 comments:

Zubon said...

Also, it is level six. If you were not interested enough to play that character for a couple hours, and you have been gone for three months, your claim of deep attachment is suspect.

Gamer Hudson said...

I got burned on this when there was no minimum level and they took all my cool names away, but I hadn't played in almost a year. So I guess I deserved it :(