Guild Wars 2

For all the innovations GW2 brought to the genre, the naming system in GW2 seems a step backwards. There are names that were taken on release day, the players played for a week, then never played the game again. Some are friends, others are people who I had added to my contacts list to see if the name was available. Those names are now gone for the rest of GW2´s years of runtime because someone bought the game on release day and played for 1 week.

Bottom line, the age old problem of getting the name you want is going to be a bigger issue as time goes on, especially since names are unique across all servers internationally. Every time someone buys the game, more names are taken.

I was reminded of this problem when I thought of a new name for an alt that, while a somewhat simple combination of Latin words, is not a common or even close to common name by any stretch of the imagination, but not surprisingly, the name was taken.

It´s a problem that is lamented over in almost EVERY MMO, yet it´s rarely ever addressed. GW2 already has an account name system in place (similar to the battletags used in Diablo 3), so the unique name system seems even more an unnecessary hindrnance. For all the things Diablo 3 did wrong, one thing it did do right was let people get their names, and it worked out great.

It´s a system that really just works out for everyone. People who want unique names aren´t hindered from creating whimsical or even awkward looking names, and people who prefer more traditional names or surnameless-nicknames aren´t forced to play with an awkward name, or a misspelling, or a gaudy phonetic substitute.

GW2 already has the account name system in place. It would be great to see it take advantage of it so that the quality of character names doesn´t deteriorate over time as it did in WoW…to the point where most of the names you see look more like forum usernames than a character´s name.

While I can sympathize with someone who wants a very basic name, only to find that name is already taken… I also think the naming system isn’t such an issue. The majority of people who have problems in this area are those who try for the names of celebrities or game & movie characters. I actually appreciate the first-come-first-serve system, because I want my names to be unique.
In your case, it sounds like you just ran into bad luck. I made up the names of my characters, based on their race’s naming conventions, and none of them were already taken. None of them are as basic as, say, “Tom Jacobson”, but they aren’t difficult or misspelled either.

Weindrasi.3805:

While I can sympathize with someone who wants a very basic name, only to find that name is already taken… I also think the naming system isn’t such an issue. The majority of people who have problems in this area are those who try for the names of celebrities or game & movie characters. I actually appreciate the first-come-first-serve system, because I want my names to be unique.
In your case, it sounds like you just ran into bad luck. I made up the names of my characters, based on their race’s naming conventions, and none of them were already taken. None of them are as basic as, say, “Tom Jacobson”, but they aren’t difficult or misspelled either.

I wouldn´t say it is the majority. Though my main names are fairly unique, I´ve noticed quite a few of my alt names that I tend to use in every MMO are often taken in a new MMO within the first few months. These aren´t common names, names of celebs, or fictional characters, and aren´t names that you´d see in real life either. In fact, some are quite obscure.

Due to the game-wide uniqueness of names in GW2, it only takes 1 person out of millions to make the name unavailable to all. That includes not just active players, but anyone who simply plays the game for 2 days then quits, as well as people who play during trial promos. The pool of available names thus grows smaller as time goes on, and unlike other games which add new servers, these names are gone game-wide forever.

To put it into perspective, the name I tried for my alt in GW2 is pretty obscure (only 5 duplicates on WoWarmory out of the 10s of millions of characters logged into armory). It was of course taken, with GW2 being out for only 5 months.

Out of curiosity, I tried the name on my WoW account on 2 servers, both at least 6 years old, and one of them being my first server which is over 8 years old (it was around since WoW´s release in 2004). The name was not taken on either of them, yet, if the naming system was game wide, it would, of course, be unavailable.

I think the above example just goes to show how problematic game-wide unique names will become for newer players years down the line, as well as older players who are making alts.

Rather than making names server specific (which always leads to problems during server merges/transfers), I think an account unique naming system like Diablo 3 would be ideal.

the game’s naming system was actually supposed to allow for duplicate names. It even says so in the naming manual that if another character has the same name as you, your little numbers at the end of your account name would appear next to the character names if on the same screen / etc. This is also why the buddy system has you add account names, rather than character names.

I have to somehow agree. I was so eager at the pre-launch, waiting to get the names I want for my characters. Well I was unable to get into the game and when the official launch had been around 10-15 minutes and I finally logged in all the names I wanted were taken. It was quite odd, because some of them are really weird and unique. When I had to discover new names I tried everything. I tried ancient persian names, mongolian names,avestan names etc. and all were taken, so it was not like I was trying to get celebrity names. Bad luck I guess

If you’re trying to use a single (first) name then you’re going to have trouble because no matter how unique you think that name is, it isn’t really that unique at all. I learned from GW1 that it was far easier to either give characters a firstname/surname or to add “of x”/“the x” to the end of that name, i.e. “Olaf The Short” or “Erin Of Shaemore”. Never had trouble naming any of my characters this way.

I think for the most part it’s fine, although eventually it could get bad for beginners.

Or you could just pick creative names:
→ Sylvari Warrior: Vegetable Slayer
→ Asura Engineer: Suicide Firework
→ Human Mesmer: Disguised Moa

I’m happy with those ones

Hey Sirendor, according to the lore those names are not RP at all, not lore friendly ^^ Or perhaps you can say those are nicknames ^^

For humans, naming is not really an issue, if you take firstname / lastname route. For Asura it is a bit harder as they have no lastname, and the firstname is short, so hard to do an unique name. You can try the accents though, guildwars allow for some accentuated characters, like the ë, or the “i” with an accent.

In fact when it comes to mmorpg, GW1 and GW2 have less issues than most, because they really allow first name and last name, so easier to create a unique name like that. In other games the first name should be unique, if there is a last name at all.

But hey, imagine I create a human female character, I want to call her “Marie” as I like this name, but sure it will be taken, then I can create a last name, like “Marie Aerysä”, or any other, and there is few chance it will be taken…