Guild Wars 2

I guess asd the title says, how about the option to name or check name availability before character creation?
Just if you have a character in mind it would be nice to check if the name is available or what is available before creation.

Absolutely agree – I have full control over what my character looks like, but my name is entirely dependent on what names have already been taken – too often I get through character creation and then get frustrated 20 names deep and type something silly.

Locking in the name during character creation (they already lock names for 24 hours after deletion, so presumably they can lock a name during the creation process itself, perhaps with a timeout). Then I can choose my face/hair/etc. to match what name I’ve settled on, rather than choosing my look and finding an open name to match.

Before beginning character creation, could you check if a name is in use by adding it to your friends list?

While not optimal, you can do this:
1) Create a character but skip all steps to end, then pick your desired name and create character. Now you know that the name is available.
2) Delete character. Your name is now reserved for 24h.
3) Spend as much time as you need over the next 24h to create your proper character.

Or ‘Skip to the end’, choose name, if it’s valid, create character, delete character, name reserved for 24 hours, create character at leisure. Voila! Chosen character name before creation.

Good luck.

Go to your friends list before character creation. Type in name you want to check. If it’s taken you’ll get that name added. If it’s available you’ll get a message that there is no character by that name.

I’m not sure how that^ handles names the filter won’t allow. It can be odd, sometimes.

You can also /whisper. If the name is taken, you’ll get a “user is offline” message. (In four years, I’ve had a live person available less than 1% of the time — sigh, yes, I do more than 100 name checks/year. The search for ‘good names’ never ends.)

If the name is available, you’ll get an error message. “The e-mail address you entered was not found.” (etc) (The error message is itself, an error, but no mater: it is a sure sign that the name is available.)

I’ve used the ‘create random character with the name I want, delete them, create character I want’ method before and it worked well for me.

As an added bonus you can check out how it looks in game (I don’t know if that affects anyone else’s choice but it does for me) and what your friends and guild members might shorten it to.

The make and delete approach is much better since that avoids a race condition.