Guild Wars 2

I wanted a norn character named “Frost Bite” and because of the French useage of the word “bite” it was disallowed.

Neither can I use “Frostbite”, “Frost Biter” or “Frostbiter”.

This restriction caused some vampires from GW to have their monster text censored,
and now perfectly reasonable names are censored in GW2, which includes several pets with the Bite skill…

I am not French and I can only view this censorship as bizarre.

Please remove this naming restriction on all servers but FR ones.

*edited for better understanding.

I think I’ve seen mention that it means ‘male anatomy’ in French, thus is bad.

An American company censoring words of American usage, go figure.

Yeah, their naming restrictions are wonky. I was trying to name a character “Shujaa the Lost”, but apparently “Shujaa” is bad. Thing is, “Shujaa” means things like “hero”, “courageous”, or “brave” in Swahili or Islam. And, as far as I know, it doesn’t mean anything in English, so I’m a bit confused as to why this name is being restricted.

I’m sat here at home (I live in a place called Skittenthorp, UK) supping on a glass of Kittenburns Port and having a good laugh at the idiocy being shown by the PC brigade and this stupid name censoring business. Currently reading a book about a famous British highwayman called Kitten Turpin inbetween watching reruns of the Kitten Van kitten show on TV.
I’m pretty sure you could find an obscene meaning to any english word in the multitude of other languages on this earth, so why not cut tothe quick and just ban english ?

I just google it.. I’m curious, do you know what Frostbite is? It might be because it’s a medical condition?

yes, I am well aware of what frostbite is, thank you.

There’s a certain amount of name censoring that I can kinda understand. Specifically using explicit curses for a name would be really stupid anyway. But trying to nail down references to… Medical conditions? This doesn’t make any sense, Anet.

Qelris.6901:

I just google it.. I’m curious, do you know what Frostbite is? It might be because it’s a medical condition?

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frostbite

Are you implying that frostbite is somehow offensive? And that’s the reason for it being restricted?

[Edit]

Bite is very vulgar? I guess french canada has different meaning than french from france, or there is something I’m ignoring, because it’s not even close to be vulgar..

Verge and lul means pe—-? Verge? It just mean you’re right on the edge of something. As for lul, lol, never knew that.

[Edited by CC: Quote removed, circumventing swear word filter]

Any particular reason we should sort out names for every possible language? That’s just silly. Bite, Verge? If we start removing perfectly valid english words because some french person might be offended….or vice versa….

Thomanson.4765:

Any particular reason we should sort out names for every possible language?

Because this game is played all over the world?

Omega Mayhem.7163:

Thomanson.4765:

Any particular reason we should sort out names for every possible language?

Because this game is played all over the world?

And we have different servers for those who would rather not see these silly Americans and their silly words. I can’t imagine it’d be difficult for them to manage these name restrictions based on where in the world the server is.

IMO game companies would do well in mass-slaughter games like we’re playing (not to mention the ERP altho I don’t see much RP in GW) to just go ahead and let the dreaded “M” rating happen.

On the other hand, when it comes to naming, if you compromise you can find a name that’s permitted and acceptable to you.

Reality: if Frost Bite were a permissible name, you couldn’t have it anyway cuz it would have been reserved by one of the other 2 million accounts long long ago.

GDK the White Hawk.2604:

Omega Mayhem.7163:

Thomanson.4765:

Any particular reason we should sort out names for every possible language?

Because this game is played all over the world?

And we have different servers for those who would rather not see these silly Americans and their silly words. I can’t imagine it’d be difficult for them to manage these name restrictions based on where in the world the server is.

That doesn’t matter because players can freely transfer to any server, so the name restrictions have to be global.

As true as that might be, mulch, I’m not sure that means we should just give up. This is still rather ridiculous, and I’d rather like to be able to, at some point, actually make a character with the name that I initially wanted. This is totally something that could be, in some way, changed, so we should keep this going.

Omega Mayhem.7163:

GDK the White Hawk.2604:

Omega Mayhem.7163:

Thomanson.4765:

Any particular reason we should sort out names for every possible language?

Because this game is played all over the world?

And we have different servers for those who would rather not see these silly Americans and their silly words. I can’t imagine it’d be difficult for them to manage these name restrictions based on where in the world the server is.

That doesn’t matter because players can freely transfer to any server, so the name restrictions have to be global.

So, on server transfer, screen names and give name changes to character’s whose names don’t conform with that server’s restrictions. ‘s completely possible to do, I’m sure.

GDK the White Hawk.2604:

Omega Mayhem.7163:

GDK the White Hawk.2604:

Omega Mayhem.7163:

Thomanson.4765:

Any particular reason we should sort out names for every possible language?

Because this game is played all over the world?

And we have different servers for those who would rather not see these silly Americans and their silly words. I can’t imagine it’d be difficult for them to manage these name restrictions based on where in the world the server is.

That doesn’t matter because players can freely transfer to any server, so the name restrictions have to be global.

So, on server transfer, screen names and give name changes to character’s whose names don’t conform with that server’s restrictions. ‘s completely possible to do, I’m sure.

Sheesh, you won’t let this go.

Deal with it… name restrictions are global. Use your imagination and come up with something creative in a name.

God forbid someone on the planet gets offended.

So much carebearing in MMO’s nowdays

Omega Mayhem.7163:

GDK the White Hawk.2604:

Omega Mayhem.7163:

GDK the White Hawk.2604:

Omega Mayhem.7163:

Thomanson.4765:

Any particular reason we should sort out names for every possible language?

Because this game is played all over the world?

And we have different servers for those who would rather not see these silly Americans and their silly words. I can’t imagine it’d be difficult for them to manage these name restrictions based on where in the world the server is.

That doesn’t matter because players can freely transfer to any server, so the name restrictions have to be global.

So, on server transfer, screen names and give name changes to character’s whose names don’t conform with that server’s restrictions. ‘s completely possible to do, I’m sure.

Sheesh, you won’t let this go.

Deal with it… name restrictions are global. Use your imagination and come up with something creative in a name.

(I hope you realize that sort of comment only give me more desire to continue)

Whether or not it is a particularly big deal or something that can be worked around, the only way the topic can be considered by Anet is if they see that it is one.

And impairing creativity is why this is an issue. (Note that I’m not the Frost Bite guy.) Claiming that someone lacking creativity by wanting to use a name that is inexplicably restricted is a faulty argument at best.

Qelris.6901:

Bite is very vulgar? I guess french canada has different meaning than french from france, or there is something I’m ignoring, because it’s not even close to be vulgar..
Verge and lul means pe—-? Verge? It just mean you’re right on the edge of something. As for lul, lol, never knew that.

Google the definition of “verge” in French if you don’t believe me. We almost never use that word btw. About “bite” it’s the popular word if you prefer. Although personaly I think it’s very vulgar. “lul” I didn’t know either. I read on another forum that someone wanted to name his character Lully but it was impossible because it’s partly censored, so he asked why.
About this multilingual filter we had the same problem in Perfect World (a chinese MMORPG). And players were also massively complaining about it. But we found a very easy way to edit the file text containing all the censored words (unpack one of the big game files, edit the .txt, repack, done). So if we didn’t want to see a particular word censored in /world, /map,… chat we just had to delete it from that list.

I was logged on and pressing finished by 9:01 pm the night before headstart began, and I still couldn’t get my 1st or 2nd choice for name.

What you can do is have the same name you wanted, but add a surname. Or spell it creatively. For example the OP’s Frostbite, try Frostbeit Frostbyte Frostbhyte etc.

If they did happen to free up a blocked name, you’d have the same disappointment again as someone else snags it before you, seconds after server-up, regardless.

2 million accounts, 5 slots each. EVERY decent name with correct spelling was taken long ago. Not to mention the millions more names reserved for GW1 account holders.

Regarding potentially offensive English words does this go both ways?

For example is the name Randy censored, even though it’s a perfectly normal name in America, because it’s (mildly) offensive in the UK? What about bloody? Bugger? kitten?

(I guess I’ll find out if I hit post and these are all changed to kitten.)

Edit: There we go, apparently on the forum only the last one is censored. If anyone is curious it begins with a W and means ‘one who prefers his own company’.

Okay… But can anyone tell me what the deal with “Shujaa” is?

Here are your answers:

1) Frostbite is banned because Anet bans every harmful medical condition.
For all you know your next player’s sister could have died of it and it wouldn’t be cool to remind him.

2) Shujaa is a famous anti-death row activist, political names are not allowed either.

It doesn’t take a lot of effort to make a name that doesn’t remind of anything bad or offends anyone or relates to some IRL incidents/people/politics etc.
Just drop the axe and go make an harmless name if you want to play GW2, else don’t play it.

That strikes me as somewhat strange, but I guess I can see the political name thing… Depending on how stringent it is, though, I’m surprised there are any names at all. :P

Ya kinda don’t have to be such a… censored expletive about it, though.

The name of the game is Guildwars 2 not Carebears 2. If someone named their character John, and I had a pet named john that died, should it be censored so the person doesn’t offend me? or a less ridiculous example is if someone named their character Toothfairy, and my great grandmother was a victim of the tooth fairy serial killer should it be banned?

People die from tooth aches, head aches, and 100000 other things. Should the words Cold, or Flu be stricken from the game?

No…

Has anyone considered that Frostbite is the name of an existing or planned ingame enemy and ArenaNet have kept it reserved for that purpose?

So, the forum just went down while I was replying and I lost my post…

Here are your answers:

1) Frostbite is banned because Anet bans every harmful medical condition.
For all you know your next player’s sister could have died of it and it wouldn’t be cool to remind him.

Wrong answer.

I tried to name my Hyena Mr Bitey and had no clue what was wrong with it. Now I at least have an idea (though I thought the French word was bitte).

I have seen enough trolls in my time online to know exactly why some names can be banned. During the kittenushima disaster a couple of years ago, I saw a few people come online with names like Tsunami. All of them were level 1 and all of them were spamming chat with distasteful remarks about the disaster. The same thing happened after Hurricane Katrina and I’ve also seen it after tornadoes. I happen to think that names like Tsunami, Hurricane and Tornado can be very good, if unorginal, for some characters… but the trolls are why we can’t have good things.

What I do find annoying, though, is when perfectly innocuous words are banned because they might cause offence, but offensive words that have no other meaning are perfectly acceptable. Thinking that if the word “bite” is a banned name that these words must surely be on the list, I just made a new character. Apparently the name Abo Boong perfectly acceptable. While the word “Abo” can be debated (it is the contracted form of Aboriginal), and actually is used as a name sometimes, that doesn’t change how offensive it is. There is absolutely no defending the use of the word “boong” because it’s a worse racial slur than “The N-Word”.

I am appalled that I am unable to name a character/pet Mr Bitey, but Abo Boong is perfectly acceptable.

well said, Sokar…

thanks for highlighting the ludicrous naming convention surrounding the word “bite” and it’s derivatives,
as this thread was intended.

the flip side, as you say, is that other far more offensive words are allowed
(being in australia for a while once, i am aware of the example you give)
thus making the censorship both random and biased.

Silenthill.2017:

If someone named their character John, and I had a pet named john that died, should it be censored so the person doesn’t offend me?
…

From Dictionary.com:

john
? ?[jon]
noun Slang.
1.
a toilet or bathroom.
2.
(sometimes initial capital letter) a fellow; guy.
3.
(sometimes initial capital letter) a prostitute’s customer.

So no…I’d expect you cannot name yourself John.

It’s worth pointing out, too, that neither abo nor boong are censored on the forum… but I’m willing to bet one or two thirds of the name of a famous Australian racing car driver (and I believe an American reporter as well) is censored on the forum and a banned name in-game – kitten Johnson.

EDIT: Wait… Johnson isn’t censored despite it’s use as a colloquialism? This is making less and less sense. That driver’s birth name was Richard, by the way, but he has used the normal shortened version of the name for over 50 years… and it’s the name of his company too.

The censoring on the forums is more insane than in-game.

“kitten” A baby cat/rabbit
“kittenakke” A Japanese mushroom
“oh for kitten’s sake" Really bad words

Why kitten? Why not just “#$@#%!” everything, or censored/black box. Why not have a filter that sorts words so a sentence can still have coherence:
“I don’t believe this garbage”
“What the heck/hell?”
(But heck and hell are okay words for the filter…)

The filter system is lazy and oversensitive. Checking to see what smattering of syllables spliced together make naughty words from all over the world when there are players having far more problems with the game itself.

Looks like necros with names which want relevant to death and disease are gonna be disappointed :P

Sankofa Jimiyu.1567:

The censoring on the forums is more insane than in-game.

“kitten” A baby cat/rabbit
“kittenakke” A Japanese mushroom
“oh for kitten’s sake" Really bad words

Why kitten? Why not just “#$@#%!” everything, or censored/black box. Why not have a filter that sorts words so a sentence can still have coherence:
“I don’t believe this garbage”
“What the heck/hell?”
(But heck and hell are okay words for the filter…)

The filter system is lazy and oversensitive. Checking to see what smattering of syllables spliced together make naughty words from all over the world when there are players having far more problems with the game itself.

Butchering the romaji version of the Japanese language is disheartening as you can’t use certain languages in their pure form in certain districts (as in gw 1) or certain servers ( IME doesn’t work on NA or EU servers), and we do not have any ASIA servers. I haven’t seen any non latin character based languages users on GW 2 probably because of this.

God forbid you had a couple of Japanese friends in GW 2 and they can’t even use their localization properly let alone communicate with them/you (if you/they could) . As the English pronunciation form (romaji) of their language is censored and the Asian characters themselves are not supported either.

Note: I am being hypotheitical here…

The above poster’s shi……..ta-ke (how its pronounced yet how its spelled in English is what causes the problem) example proves this problem clearly.

Seeing ANET is owned by NCSOFT (a Korean company) You’d think they’d catch this oversight?

ai-shi…..te-ru (I love you) is another one.

Edit: now that I think of it, most Japanese computer users are more inclined to use Romaji instead of Kanji/Kana to communicate as its much easier on non native spears to communicate /understand that do not have a wide knowledge of individual characters. As I met a Japanese girl once in GW 1 that confirmed this. She rather use the Romaji form rather than attempt to remember each and every symbol/character, yet doing so will have to cause her to risk ban by circumventing the word filter for every “shi” and t- syllable in her language.

How is this fair? I had this question in GW 1 as well.

They did localize GW 1 for Japanese, but it still had this word filter problem in American English and international districts as everyone is going to go to the most populated districts/servers and not be segregated by their own region then realize they can’t even communicate if they could.

Trust me, I seen it in PVP (even though Asian characters were allowed in pvp as you were not governed by your district’s restrictions yet they still didn’t bother to communicate aside from calling targets).

I think it has more to do with ratings and localization. You have to pass localization to get certain ratings. If it isn’t, oh well, just make a different name. I understand the confusion, but at least it is only a few things.

They need to be more considerate to certain individuals and not a one size fits all boxed-in approach to things then.

You notice I purposely circumvented the kitten thing just to prove my point ( it did this in GW 1 as well with symbols).

Omega Mayhem.7163:

GDK the White Hawk.2604:

Omega Mayhem.7163:

Thomanson.4765:

Any particular reason we should sort out names for every possible language?

Because this game is played all over the world?

And we have different servers for those who would rather not see these silly Americans and their silly words. I can’t imagine it’d be difficult for them to manage these name restrictions based on where in the world the server is.

That doesn’t matter because players can freely transfer to any server, so the name restrictions have to be global.

That’s a ridiculous statement. That’s like saying we can no longer use the word “bite” in the U.S. because French people come here to visit.

If you’re going to play on foreign servers, expect to experience their customs and colloquialisms. If a French person doesn’t want to see the word “bite,” then they should stay on their own servers where they can have their own rules.

Well, this is what the self centered, band wagon, bad attitude culture that has developed in recent years gets you.

They have to be that tight on the name restrictions because every abusable name out there that is hateful, rude, or offensive, will be used.

Meinke, the consensus is a lot of this stuff shouldn’t be filtered. Seriosly, why is Frostbite or any derision of it filtered? In the long run, they are all just words given meaning by the people reading them. One word to me means something vastly different to someone else. You can’t please everyone so why even try?

Just throwing this out there, but if you desperately have to have a name, why not get creative?

I’m assuming the name Frostbyte would no longer be censored? And it would no longer be offensive. Just a random thought….

If you want the meaning to remain intact why not Frostmaw, Frostchaw, or Frostchomp?

If you don’t like those you can vary it a little by making it something like Frosttear or Frostwound.

It’s not like they took away you ability to have that name. They took away your ability to have that name phrased that way….

Just accept it, some words are going to be offensive to other people out there.

I saw a post where a guy wanted to use his real name, which happens to be Anus. But he is not allowed to use it in a game name. I’m guessing you can assume why….His name is a foreign language but censored for American words. Do you think that’s okay?

Or do you think that people running around with names that would be offensive in English is okay?

They censor both ways. You don’t get to have names that are offensive to other languages, and they don’t get to have names that are offensive to us, that seems entirely fair to me. But maybe it’s not fair your looking for….

Come on, we all know complaining is much easier then creativeness.

The funniest thing I have seen with the filter is an Asura NPC calling the Inquest folks a bunch of kitten-eyed so and sos, and the language filter filtering it out of my chat box. Didn’t realize I had the filter on until then.

Just throwing this out there to all the “be creative” people. It sounds a little funny when you need to be creative due to bizarre restrictions and not because you choose to be. Why do people need to pick a creative name just because an innocent word they want to use is blocked? Seems a little backward to me. And frankly, some people just aren’t creative. So it sucks to be them? Nah, that’s not right.

I do understand and agree that there are plenty of available names. But I also think there are some strange restrictions.

zaxziakohl.5243:

I saw a post where a guy wanted to use his real name, which happens to be Anus. But he is not allowed to use it in a game name. I’m guessing you can assume why….His name is a foreign language but censored for American words. Do you think that’s okay?

That’s not the same thing. At all. And you know that.

In case anyone is still wondering at why the OP wasn’t allowed his name, here is a post from just a few days after launch.

It also answers people’s concerns much better than our… ahem… CC has managed.

There is over 1000 different languages in the world and a lot more different dialects and there is also slang. I can bet that every word (or same part of it) you can think of is offensive or have meaning associated with inappropriate things in one of these languages.

Personally, I find letter “s” pretty offensive. Just look at these curves.

BTW There is option for profanity filter, and you can set it to none. I think it uncensor chat, as i saw sb saying kitten on it without censorship. So it’s not working on censored names?
I mean if you name your char and it will get censored, the name change to censored one in database, or the game simply censor it ad hoc on screen but in database it’s still original?

In second case, the censor is client based so everyone can have different censorship words depending on their language. And there is propability to disable any censorship. I mean button like: “My heart is hard as rock, and i declare to take no offence from any kitten words either from my language or foreign ones”

Tenicord.9803:

Just throwing this out there to all the “be creative” people. It sounds a little funny when you need to be creative due to bizarre restrictions and not because you choose to be. Why do people need to pick a creative name just because an innocent word they want to use is blocked? Seems a little backward to me. And frankly, some people just aren’t creative. So it sucks to be them? Nah, that’s not right.

I do understand and agree that there are plenty of available names. But I also think there are some strange restrictions.

Just because the word is innocent to you, doesn’t mean it’s innocent. If you followed your thinking you could have names that are foreign strings of cuss words, simply because you don’t understand them, so they are innocent. If someone has a name in a foreign language that calls you a woman who sells herself for money on a dimly lit street corner and eats protein filled cream sauce (think about it) but you don’t understand it, that doesn’t mean it’s not offensive, it just means you don’t know that it is offensive….

@ Shroom Mage, it is the same thing…if you fail to see that, then I can understand even more why ANet has to do the censoring instead of trusting their playerbase to do it.

@mapokl they cannot just censor names the way they do chat because a name is paramount in being able to communicate. Imagine trying to send an in game mail to someone whose name is Im a —-—-r. It doesnt’ work. Yeah you could turn the censor off to do it, but that defeats the purpose no?

How hard is it for people to understand that just because you don’t find it offensive, someone else might. This game caters to SEVERAL major different language groups. Maybe chat can be censored based on language, but names can’t be. Everyone is integrated together. Are you telling me if you go to a different country and say random stuff that if you happen to call one of them an unmentionable they won’t take offense just because you dont know any better? The world doesn’t work that way.

Ignorance is not an excuse. Not in the eyes of the law, why should it be anywhere else? Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t know my name was calling you a (insert word here) so that makes it okay?