Guild Wars 2

One of the arguments that we’ve heard about not having an account-wide Commander Pin is that servermates won’t be able to identify and follow their favorite commanders. It made sense at the time, and I was OK with that.

I know who I’m willing to push a line for and who’s sending us on a fool’s errand based on name. I have a commander pin myself (usually I run as a secondary commander since I’m still learning). Fortunately I like my name, so I’m not planning on changing it, but there might be other commanders who want to and risk losing their following.

Additionally, with the name change, makeover kit, and tons of dye options, a below-average commander could completely rebrand him/herself to gain followers. I’m all for second chances, but taking the time to train would be a better fix for these people.

So, have any commanders changed their names yet? Or perhaps you want a fresh start as a commander and are considering it? I’d be interested to hear your experiences.

Has it been verified that a name change would remove a player from your followers or contacts list? If not, then adding a favorite commander to one of those lists might be helpful, though you’d probably wonder who that new name belongs to when a change happens. Still, the account name would not change so that may be enough to connect the dots.

Ah, I hadn’t thought of that solution, Deb. Definitely a workaround, but it would become a bit cumbersome to figure out what all the commanders’ account names are and then track any changes that way. If the name changes and I haven’t memorized the commander’s account name, I won’t be able to connect the dots.

Ideally there’d be some way to communicate this change with the WvW population of a server, though I can see how that’d be weird. I love the idea of being able to change names, but it comes with drawbacks to building communities.

I agree there are problems inherent to allowing people to obscure their identity, even if it’s just a character name. When this option became available on another game I played, paired with the ability to move from server to server, just as you suggested it became a haven for people who did everything from being verbally obnoxious to cleaning out guild vaults. I would hope AN has looked at all the potential pitfalls before designing their approach, but I guess that remains to be seen.

Debsylvania.7396:

Has it been verified that a name change would remove a player from your followers or contacts list?

negative
my account and names were changed by anet moderators, didn’t do anything to follower list. I changed toon names myself after the contract came out, didn’t do anything to the lists either.