Guild Wars 2

According to the tooltip at https://account.guildwars2.com/account , “The four-digit code does not appear in the game itself unless another player chooses the same name, in which case both your name and the four-digit code will appear.”

Nonetheless, in-game mail requires players to be identified with their four-digit code, Guild Rosters list players with their four-digit code, and hovering the name of any player in the party interface element, or in the contacts pane, or in the chat pane (provided the player is in your party or guild) will show the account name with four-digit code included.

I for one am fairly certain that my account name is unique, and many of my guild members whose names are displayed alongside a four-digit code have sufficiently abstruse names that I doubt anyone else has chosen the same.

I understand that in the rare instance of a conflict, that code might be necessary, but for that extreme case, shouldn’t you just have a tab-completion or a “did you mean Bob.1234 or Bob.5678?” confirmation on a message/invite/etc, so we don’t have to go through the agonizing process of remembering a four-digit code for someone we haven’t talked to in ages who may be playing on a different character now and we totally forgot to add them to our friends list before they left the guild?

Thanks.

I invite friends by toon name and usually they get the invite no matter what alt they are on. IE I invite Bobs Charr but bob is on his mesmer(Bobs Mess) and he still gets the invite.

you only need the account name(and digits) to invite someone if they are not online AFAIK

The toon name is on the reservation system and it is therefore unique gamewide. The email-address is considered to be unique as well.
I have not read anything about the accountname. Thus I will believe until further information comes along, that accountnames are NOT unique. At least not without the digits.