I know last names have been a hot request for probably as long as the game has been out. I don’t RP but I’m pretty sure the RP community would love it too. I also understand the reasons why it might be difficult to do in a game that currently doesn’t support it. In addition to the potential troll names that would be hard to moderate without human interaction.
So why not let us select from a list? We already have many many NPCs with last names I’m sure we’d all love to sport. Shadowsong, Feathermoon, Felsong, Sunstrider, and think of all the dwarfs wanting to represent a colored beard.
If anything, most of those names are names I’d want restricted if we had the option of surnames. People pretending to be related to major lore characters is pretty taboo among roleplayers.
The simplest solution is to simply increase the # of characters we can use for a name and allow the use of spaces (and potentially apostrophes and hyphens). That way, last names aren’t forced on anyone, especially since some races don’t even use last names, and Blizzard doesn’t have to figure out a way to fundamentally change the system to allow surnames.
That solution leaves a lot of room for really jarring names though. Using multiple spaces alone would be frustrating to see, so maybe the “simple” solution isn’t the best. But maybe limiting it to “1 special character, including spaces” would be possible. In which case that’s probably still a good option. They already do a check for 3 consecutive instances of the same character, so I don’t see why they couldn’t also run a check for “more than 1 [list of special characters]”.
This is something that does need to be addressed better. I have a personal quota for the day of reporting non-rp names and guild names on rp servers but I still see some of those same names I’ve reported months ago still around, even when they clearly break the rules.
Well it would be nice since maybe it’ll allow for the same “first” name to be used by anyone due to different surnames, I always found it annoying to try and think of a normal name for RP servers only for a lot of things to be taken.
As for the trolling maybe they could just enforce rules for names harder I always see people running around with questionable character names even in RP servers.
I don’t believe it’s a good idea for the names to not be preset. They don’t catch some offensive names as it is. Start adding spaces and suddenly terrible words are easily bypassed by a space or two.
To use an example from EVE Online. One space, hyphen and/or apostrophe can be used. (Strictly speaking that applies for both first and last name fields)
I’ve wanted this forever and I think it would solve almost all problems regarding taken names. If they did it though, I would kind of hope for restrictions for certain races who, from a lore standpoint, aren’t traditionally meant to have surnames, like trolls and draenei.
Just want to bump this because I’m also on the last name train. Also, having last names that are preset, I’m not sure is a good idea when you’re talking millions of players. There would still be the problem of finding a name and choosing a last name only to have both taken.
Perhaps a way around this would be to do something like what second life has done ( ya I know… hush lol ) They have legacy names and display names. You’re legacy name is the name you started your character with and your display name is the one you’d like to be known by. There might be some tos issues regarding the display names, but I’m sure Blizzard could find a way around that. It’s not much of an issue for second life, which is frankly not nearly anywhere close to the powerhouse blizz is.
RP community largely doesn’t care because RP addons provide last names recognized in chat boxes and through profiles. Most of the time, RP’ers like being left alone because they don’t wanna be policed - at least that’s how it is in my circle of RP friends and guilds.
As chances are pretty good they didn’t care for the name part soo…they don’t care about other angles of the game.
Well that and I like "odd"names they put some thought and effort into them. Double entendre done well can be really cool. then you see the usual crap and go you don’t whatis sadder. the name…or the person who seems to be a paint huffing idiot for thinking this is soooo good.
PLus last names could be stage to set up server mergers. As the pool of people for dupllcate names smaller here. I know in sme servers Duvainil is taken. I tried and the game said no. Last name I get the second chance at that.
Not saying WOW is dying, lots of other people do that lol. But, yeah, some servers ain’t what they used to be population wise. At some point merging a few might outweigh the value of sharding them.
Sharding is kind of a band aid that is showing you can use it…but you should be going in to get some stiches on that cut really. Server merge to not rely on sharding would be those stiches in this case.
Seeing this with my oceanics. Its why I am leaning to US servers now. I get better performance on MG since it has its own sustainable population. Vice my oceanics where I can rate the quality of sharding on a scale of 1 to 10…and never break 5.
That one doesn’t make much sense considering surnames are based on racial identity. Stompypotato would have a name like…I dunno, Lighthoof cause you’re a paladin.
But your blood elf priest wouldn’t have a name with hoof in it. It’d have a name with Sun, Dawn, something like that involved.
Mmm…sounds too involved. It means that for every added race they bring in (especially with things like AR’s), then they’d also have to individually give people last names for every single WoW account.
I dunno, if the OP (and others) want last names, they could just download TRP 3 and have last names as much as they want. Can even alter their name entirely.
I have a blood elf named Shadina on WRA (an RP realm). But in chat boxes and when you mouse over her, it says Magistrix Shadina Snowsun. People can have all the titles and last names they want with that addon. And anyone else with the addon will see it.