Guild Wars 2

I started playing a week ago and I am one of those people who are Extreeemly picky when picking Character Names. Is there any way you guys can do us picky people a huge favor and remove Unique naming?
I think that because when adding a friend you see their account name anyway, it doesn’t really matter if you have a unique name or not.
I presonally find RPGs extremely more easy to get into when I can just go ahead and put my own name when creating characters…
As a result I honestly cannot enjoy the game, I can’t come up with names I like and if I’m good with something, it’s taken. I have been thinking for days, and even threw all my LV9 Warrior’s whole inventory into the Account vault and deleted him because I can’t play anymore. I’m serious about this suggestion, I hope though that I can think of 2 names for the Warrior and Thief I wanna play but it’s been days and I can’t come up with something I like. I hope I do come up with even 1 tho… I really wanna play this weekend.

There is already a change name option, sold on the gem store for 800 gems. Aka, don’t get your hopes too high.

No. Unique names are important. When you look at chat you see the character name and not the account name. Imagine going to Lions Arch and seeing 30 people named Dulfy. It’s not going to fly. Having a unique character name is part of my character’s personality. Use some imagination and creativity. You can use accent characters in your name and spaces as well.

Hey, check out this site: http://www.rinkworks.com/namegen/
This is where I go when I’m struggling. You can get some pretty good names here.

The problem is that the game (not just the chat) rightly displays the character name. You can then use that character name to /whisper, /join a party, send private messages (that can include items and gold attachments), I’m assuming /block and such.

All of this only works because the character names are unique.

I agree that it kind of sucks for character creation, and I’m really not happy with the influx of nonsensical names and especially nonsensical over-use of accents. Anyway, I wrote something on character naming that might help you pick lore-conform names (if you wish) by adding titles, middle initials, etc.:

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Every single name on the “Gaelic baby names” website is used up? Be creative and find something of your own. It could be more awesome.

I’ve had no problem so far creating unique characters with unique names.

I am not 100% happy with how character names are handled in GW2 either: I think

• the name field should be longer
• capitalization shouldn’t be enforced (thinking of my good friend Mcallister here which looks 100 times dumber than McAllister would have)
• allow for apostrophes and hyphens (you may think that apostrophes, aside from RL examples like O’Brien or d’Agestino, would make many players take on really dumb fantasy names only consisting of apostrophes and the letter y, but it cannot possibly be worse than all the “Jóhñ ?mìth” type of names we already have in game now)
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However, as long as these restrictions are in place, we can still easily come up with unique character names. Here’s some practical advice:

Humans

If your desired name is taken, give them a middle name or middle initial. “John Smith” may be taken, but “John N Smith”, “John Sterling Smith” or “John Smiths” may not be.

Charr

If you want to name your Charr according to Charr lore, your name will consist of 3 different parts, so it will be very, very easy to find a combination that hasn’t been done before, even IF you have your mind absolutely set on the first name or warband.

“Zeera Cinderwind” may be taken. “Zeera Ashenwind”, “Zeera Cinderstorm”, or “Veera Cinderwind” probably won’t be.

Norn

Even if you follow the pattern and create a norn with a real-life Nordic first name, you can take some creative freedom with the spelling. Secondly, as norn like to boast about their life achievements, how about a last name that reflects that?

If your first choice “Olaf Kegbrawler” is taken, how about “Olav Kegbrawler”, “Olaf The Kegbrawler”, “Olaf Barrelbrawler”, “Olaf Keghurler”?

Asura

Naming asuras can be the most or the least difficult to do, depending on your willingness to go with a title.

Strategy number one: randomly double a consonant.

If “Klicks” is taken, try “Klikks”, “Klixx”, “Gliccs” etc.

Strategy number two: since asuras typically have short names, they can “afford” (in terms of maximum letters) a title. That opens up hundreds of more combinations and also gives the character some nice “flavour”.

Is your new character “Genius Klicks”, “Master”, “Prodigy”, “Stipendiary”, “Advocate”, “Agent” or “Scholar”? I haven’t even gone into the titles that are used in game already such as “Peacemaker”.
I really wanted “Glitch” for my asura warrior because she is such a klutz, so I went with “Apprentice Glitch” and I’m quite happy with it.

Sylvari

I don’t think the Gaelic connection is particularly relevant here because nobody understands a word of Gaelic anyway, so you might just as well make something up that mimics the general “soundscape” of existing sylvari names. (Also, I’m not convinced that that is a general rule anyway: Pretty sure that NPC Leurent is pronounced in French.) If you feel particularly uncreative, use an existing name (NPC or whatever) and just change one or several letters to similar ones.

For example, you like the name “Gamarien”, there’s “Camarien”, “Garmarien”, “Gamarian”, “Galarien”, “Gavarion” and any combination or variant of those. Now Gamarien is a pretty high-profile NPC so people may already have done many of these variations and finding the one that works for you may be a bit annoying, but if you pick a less prominent NPC I predict that you won’t have any problems with this approach.

And also…

And my last bit of advice is: If you don’t feel particularly creative yourself, discuss your new character’s background, concept and personality here on the race subforums – other people may have awesome ideas.

It’s always risky to point to another MMO that has worked out the solution and say: “Hey! Why doesn’t our game do what that game does? I mean, they worked it out, why can’t we?” That kind of answer often gets a response like: “Their system is stupid,” etc.

Star Trek Online™. Anyone can make any name they wish. The difference in chat is that one’s account name appears to the right of your in-game name, much like an e-mail address, only the account part is dimmer. So you have “Fred@fredonline” or “Alice@elvesRus”.

While this has led to some confusion (you can meet a “Fred@fredericonline” and think it’s “Fred@fredonline”) I find GW2 offers a different kind of confusion. Here I befriend “Fred” only to have some stranger named “Alice” PM me a few minutes later like we’re old buddies … and nothing clues me in that Fred is Alice! Confusion is going to happen one way or the other.

That being said, the personal naming system is probably buried so deep in the GW2 system that it’s unchangeable. Such a request will never be considered. I prefer a non-unique naming system. And while everyone can have the same name as everyone else in Star Trek Online™, surprisingly most players opt for fairly unique names.

Edit: Good post, Pixelpumpkin.4608. Very useful tips for players who can’t create a name they may have used in other games!

Asura, Charr, and Humans can use Asian names too. NPCs for Charr and Asura use a few short two-three syllable JP names.

Humans this is becasue of Canthans GW2’s equivalent of Asians.

And with Humans: any sensible human name fits.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

The problem is that the game (not just the chat) rightly displays the character name. You can then use that character name to /whisper, /join a party, send private messages (that can include items and gold attachments), I’m assuming /block and such.

All of this only works because the character names are unique.

I agree that it kind of sucks for character creation, and I’m really not happy with the influx of nonsensical names and especially nonsensical over-use of accents. Anyway, I wrote something on character naming that might help you pick lore-conform names (if you wish) by adding titles, middle initials, etc.:

I’ve had no problem so far creating unique characters with unique names.

I am not 100% happy with how character names are handled in GW2 either: I think

• the name field should be longer
• capitalization shouldn’t be enforced (thinking of my good friend Mcallister here which looks 100 times dumber than McAllister would have)
• allow for apostrophes and hyphens (you may think that apostrophes, aside from RL examples like O’Brien or d’Agestino, would make many players take on really dumb fantasy names only consisting of apostrophes and the letter y, but it cannot possibly be worse than all the “Jóhñ ?mìth” type of names we already have in game now)

I completely agree! All of your suggestions are great, but the capitalization one should be enforced to only having 2 capitals in one word that way we don’t have a bunch of McAlLiStEr or MCALLISTER running around limiting it to 2 capitals per word wouldn’t be horrible. Sure we will still see a random cap in the middle, but it wouldn’t look as crazy as every other letter.

thank you guys for the help. still can’t decide on 2 i like though. i hope i’ll find ‘em 2night.
i looked around and apprently there are people who spend months on that lol.. I certainly don’t wanna take that long. the sucky part is that winter just started here and it would be perfect if i could play already. Oh well, hope for the best.

I am super picky, too – but you just have to keep looking. I have even re-rolled a few alts a few times because I ended up not liking their names. What are your goals for a name ? Do you care about fitting into the lore of the game ?

I will say – the naming “restrictions” forced me to think outside the box and get creative and I’m really happy with the results. I know based on a lot of the first names I tried to pick that my first choices were pretty awful. All the really obvious names being taken was really a good thing – it made me actually think about what I was going to name them instead of being the 689th Brunhilde or whatever.

If you want any links to websites or help, let us know.

I think we should be able to use our Account name in things like Guild chat – I have too many alts and don’t expect people to keep track of them all. :P

Ceallach.8740:

I am super picky, too – but you just have to keep looking. I have even re-rolled a few alts a few times because I ended up not liking their names. What are your goals for a name ? Do you care about fitting into the lore of the game ?

I will say – the naming “restrictions” forced me to think outside the box and get creative and I’m really happy with the results. I know based on a lot of the first names I tried to pick that my first choices were pretty awful. All the really obvious names being taken was really a good thing – it made me actually think about what I was going to name them instead of being the 689th Brunhilde or whatever.

If you want any links to websites or help, let us know.

I think we should be able to use our Account name in things like Guild chat – I have too many alts and don’t expect people to keep track of them all. :P

Great response. I would actually love help + websites, but I also don’t think I should expect someone to suddenly come up with what I’d like. You know?

Also, I don’t really care for following Lore when naming my characters.
I was just looking for a Warrior name I’d like, but then out of boredom I made a Thief Charr and I was having fun just slicing at the beginning area. Although I don’t think I will play a Charr, as in my fantasy world I wanna be a person. x)

But yeah, I am currently looking to name a Warrior and a Thief. I have used the site that was mentioned earlier here, and I think it has a lot of cool names, but nothing really clicked in my mind.

Ceallach.8740:

I think we should be able to use our Account name in things like Guild chat – I have too many alts and don’t expect people to keep track of them all. :P

I’d rather not have it show our account name, even if it just in guild chat then it can cause confusion when you talk in /p or /g. Plus people can have the same account name just different numbers and I’d rather not see a bunch of numbers in chat.

I thought about it before and came up with the idea that we use the nickname feature. Since we can give our friends a “nickname” in our friends list I feel we should be able to see that nickname in place or their character name in chat. Nicknames can appear in “quotes” that way we know it is a nickname not a character name.

If they did give us the option for seeing “nicknames” instead then I wouldn’t mind also adding a “note” feature in our friends list. Since some of my nicknames are “Billy AC,” “Jenny fractal,” or “Bob giant” with a note feature I can just give them the nick name of Billy, Jenny, and Bob and have notes by their names to remind me what they like doing or why they are in my friends list.

I play another game where you have a “permaname” on your account, and you can change your display name to anything you like, even if another person has it.

People will get around the permaname issue by saying to another player’s friends “Hey, it’s me bluestocking my other account got banned/I forgot the password/I made a new one for no reason – can you give me free stuff?” I caught a guy impersonating me once, but luckily no one was fooled because he couldn’t type a complete sentence to save his life.

The other thing people have figured out is how to make their name a command string that can crash a server because they even allow you to use symbols. So that’s fun.