WoW Classic Name Change - a good feature to add

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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I’ll echo some earlier forum posts on this topic, and say that WoW Classic should have some means to allow players to change their character names. They already do in a sense - by being reported! People on my server anyway ask for that anyway, whether or not it works I can’t say. But that’s not a good way to go about it since it can lead to suspension or banning if your intent was to just change a name - and if it doesn’t, what kind of process is that?

I had to change all my character names (long story, not particularly scintillating), and for the most part selected new ones that I liked well enough. One I did not, after playing it long enough and just not feeling attached to it as I had the original name (this was my first character and my main in WoW Classic, incidentally). I’d happily pay for another name change for that one. It’s not Blizzard’s fault I chose a name I didn’t attach to.

GMs can force name changes on accounts - that’s how I had to change all my characters. Maybe a process to petition GMs to allow name changes (with fees) could be worked out, by TBC if not beforehand. Or some account-level petition, like the item restore process.

I thought about opening up a ticket but there’s nothing to respond to - so, I thought just post to forums. Not sure Blizzard reads these, but it felt like something more than stewing in my dissatisfaction at seeing someone again asking in city general and LFG to be reported so they could name-change.

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The only downside to name changing is trolls and blacklisted players could perform ninja looting or other evil deeds, change their name, and turn around and keep doing that to avoid blacklists.

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Name change is bad because it allows Vile players who scam others to escape punishment.

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Yeah, and those are good reasons I suppose. But I’m not sure if they’re dispositive enough. They’re based on a hypothetical, plausible as it may be, that someone would do something lame and then pay to have their name changed - which could happen of course, someone on my server became a pariah for ninja-ing a mount and I think ended up server transferring.

Nevertheless, those reasons are just that: a hypothetical, whose occurrence is difficult to calculate and whose action isn’t necessarily something that should discount another person - or several people - from wanting to change their character name for benign reasons.

It’s like saying “1 in 100 people will abuse this so we shouldn’t do it” vs “99 out of 100 people won’t abuse this.” I made those numbers up, I have no idea really, but it’s not persuasive on me to say that X number of bad apples might use a pay-to-change system to sustain their character. Especially as there are ways that could be mitigated including GM intervention and review of a name change, adding to the cost/increasing the fee to change. In principle, and as an example.

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no

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Name change service was added in TBC. It’ll probably be available on the TBC servers.

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They are not hypothetical as they have happened since the first implementation of the paid name changing system. It is actually evidence to our concern with a paid name change system. Now if there was a time limit between name changes like say 6 months then that would greatly negate the ability to maintain a certain level of anonymity while performing nefarious deeds.

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It’s not a hypothetical. You literally gave an example of it happening on your server.

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Except that, since people cannot change their names by paying on my server or any other, it “is” a hypothetical in this case - because the service doesn’t exist. In Classic anyway - maybe it is being abused wantonly in Retail, I don’t know.

What I provided were examples of analogous happenings that do support the notion that people would abuse the system or could anyway, but the system doesn’t currently allow for paid name changes on any WoW Classic server. The specific example I referenced though was someone asking others to report them so the system would force a name change - which isn’t the example of someone doing something lame and paying to have their name changed at all. So far as that person goes they just wanted a new name.

Pawzible’s idea about a time-delay seems like a good one, if I were in charge of this. That’s what I was driving at as well: the harms associated with one person, or a few people, abusing the system could be mitigated while allowing other people, maybe more or maybe less because I don’t know and nobody really does at this point, to undertake the change.

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Stop saying it is hypothetical. There is tangible evidence of the concerns and they have been stated and experienced because the service was released long ago and the same concerns happened long ago.

It is not hypothetical if it has actually happened. It will happen again.

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Hard to say.

You could transfer characters across accounts in Vanilla but that’s yet to be seen for Classic.

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id be for it but only if they also implemented a name history feature. a lot of people that have harnered bad reps would use it to get a clean slate and continue trolling.

id want it because i chose a name i dont like for my warrior.

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I didn’t know you couldn’t do that in Classic. That’s interesting.

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And until it does happen in the current context it’s a hypothetical with respect to the current context. I’m using the term correctly. I’m sorry you’re bothered by that, but it’s not on me to change how my profession or any other correctly uses terms like that.

Is it likely? Sure. Hypotheticals can be 95%+ likely to happen. Is it informed by past experience? Absolutely. Doesn’t change that the term is hypothetical when the constraints are that this is not a service that currently exists in Classic.

Semantics aside, your point is valid Pawzible but not one I’d consider sufficiently persuasive. Your concern, as I understand it, is that the social value of a scarlet letter is more important than individuals being able to change their name (and so “hide in plain sight” as it were). (and because we’re saying individuals, and not specific people like “Steve will do this”, that also makes it a hypothetical - but again, semantics).

I don’t find it sufficient that someone doing something lame, like being a ninja on some item, then >>paying<< to change their character name, is reason enough to say the service cannot or should not exist in Classic. Especially as it does exist in Retail.

I’ll save you some trouble though in noting that by opening this thread, I signaled that I’m probably not persuadable, leastways to consider that an X number of bad actors paying to change their names trumps Y number of good actors, short of having the data to show that an unreasonable number of people would do the former relative to the latter.

Put another way, I’m (personally) okay with a certain number of people doing what we expect they probably would and abuse the name-changing, if it means most users are not doing it that way.

And as you yourself provided, I believe such a system can exist with adequate checks to reduce even that risk. But ultimately, someone being scarlet lettered isn’t a priority for me (as the OP). And of course, you and others are free to disagree.

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What you typed was a long winded way to say that the concern I brought up is both valid, happend in the past and that you acknowledge it.

I also did not say that I was against a paid name change system. I was merely playing devil’s advocate by bringing up a valid point. You made an assumption because of the point I tried to make.

Personally, I am for paid services like name changes, server transfers, race and sex changes. I just enjoy playing devil’s advocate.