Guild Wars 2

I’ve been thinking about renaming a couple of my characters. An item already exists for this in the gem store, but looking at it raised a few questions in my head.

Is there some difficult technical reason that a name change costs 800 gems? The total makeover kit, which allows you to change a great number of things and provides access to new colors, is only 350 gems. Forgive my limited knowledge on this matter, but it was always my impression that names are more or less just stored in a database, and once a feature to change them has been programmed, it’s a matter of changing that value with an automated system. In contrast, the makeover kit is changing a lot more values, it involves a more complicated interface, and new things had to be developed for it.

Additionally, the total makeover kit allows you to change your gender as well, but since you’re not able to change your name with the kit, that seems to be undesirable in many cases unless you also purchase a name change contract – which is more than twice the cost of the kit itself. I’m trying to understand the discrepancy here, because in another MMO (Guild Wars 2 is only my second), a name change was also a fairly pricey undertaking. Is there something inherently difficult about offering a name change versus changing pretty much everything else about a character, or is it simply a matter of people being willing to pay that much more? If it’s the latter, why not offer up a package with the two combined?

Cheap name change = “I can be a kitten to everyone around me and just change my name and start over.”

Change your hair style and skin color, not so much.

tolunart.2095:

Cheap name change = “I can be a kitten to everyone around me and just change my name and start over.”

Change your hair style and skin color, not so much.

I am not entirely sure I can get behind that hypothesis. It is my impression that when you place someone on your ignore list in Guild Wars 2, it is their entire account, not just a particular name that is affected. As such, a person could change their name hundreds of times and still find themselves unable to escape your list. Needless to say, pricing an item because you don’t want people to use it seems like a backwards idea; there is no doubt a great number of annoying people who play the game with a pocketbook to afford this.

On another note, I would hope that anyone who displays the behavior you describe above would find themselves banned from the game, unable to continue their disruption.

look theory of supply and demand

Supply is infinite on gem store items. By supply and demand theory everything in there should be free.