Guild Wars 2

I don’t know if this is exactly the best place to put this, but I didn’t see a better place, so sorry in advance if this isn’t the correct forum. I’m wondering what the requirements are of a Display ID (ie, Kryptik.8093 for my account). I’ve seen people with arbitrary spaces, varying lengths, and capitalization, but no unicode.

What are the minimum and maximum lengths ( without the unique .####)?
What characters are allowed?

I’m asking for validation on a guild website so that we can make contact with applicants whether they are online or offline via Mail. You cannot send mail to a n offline character name, and an incorrect display ID wouldn’t do much good either.

I could not find this information anywhere else or I would not ask the; not the wiki, not any other faq page or any community driven site. I’m assuming I should probably put this on a wiki page, if I can get the answer here.

I send mail to offline characters often…the online/offline status is of no consequence. As long as you know the character name, or the account name, mail is no problem. =)

Well, at the time I asked that question I thought that I could only add offline users by their display ID, because I’ve had trouble previously. I was testing it on users I know by user and multiple character names, online and offline. I found you are indeed correct.

Since I can indeed contact people that are offline with their character name alone the reason that I am asking is solely for the purpose of guild security, ease of administration, and familiarity. I want myself and others to know a guild member by their display ID.

If/When there is a problem that needs taking care of, I don’t want to have to go to the game and remove someone from my friend’s list, add them back, and then compare the list to find out who the person is, or have a similar situation just to add someone that applied that found our website through another website. If someone deletes a character before I am able to add them, it would make them impossible to contact them.

I would like to validate it so that a user at least cannot input an invalid display ID. I understand this may seem like a question that is requesting somewhat sensitive information, but I assure you the reason I ask is simply for my own guild’s recruiting purposes via our website (which I am currently developing), and automation/ease of administration. I’d like to avoid recruiting completely random players in map chat that exert no more effort to show interest than a message that could be produced by a gold spammer. Likewise I’d like to enforce several rules for my guild and maintain a certain social atmosphere and guild structure, which I believe must be represented in web services outside of the game. Having accurate display ID’s would make this much simpler.

Kryptik.8093:

Well, at the time I asked that question I thought that I could only add offline users by their display ID, because I’ve had trouble previously. I was testing it on users I know by user and multiple character names, online and offline. I found you are indeed correct.

Since I can indeed contact people that are offline with their character name alone the reason that I am asking is solely for the purpose of guild security, ease of administration, and familiarity. I want myself and others to know a guild member by their display ID.

If/When there is a problem that needs taking care of, I don’t want to have to go to the game and remove someone from my friend’s list, add them back, and then compare the list to find out who the person is, or have a similar situation just to add someone that applied that found our website through another website. If someone deletes a character before I am able to add them, it would make them impossible to contact them.

I would like to validate it so that a user at least cannot input an invalid display ID. I understand this may seem like a question that is requesting somewhat sensitive information, but I assure you the reason I ask is simply for my own guild’s recruiting purposes via our website (which I am currently developing), and automation/ease of administration. I’d like to avoid recruiting completely random players in map chat that exert no more effort to show interest than a message that could be produced by a gold spammer. Likewise I’d like to enforce several rules for my guild and maintain a certain social atmosphere and guild structure, which I believe must be represented in web services outside of the game. Having accurate display ID’s would make this much simpler.

I’m not smart or computer savvy but even I can come up with far more nefarious reasons for having this info.

Kryptik.8093:

Well, at the time I asked that question I thought that I could only add offline users by their display ID, because I’ve had trouble previously. I was testing it on users I know by user and multiple character names, online and offline. I found you are indeed correct.

Since I can indeed contact people that are offline with their character name alone the reason that I am asking is solely for the purpose of guild security, ease of administration, and familiarity. I want myself and others to know a guild member by their display ID.

If/When there is a problem that needs taking care of, I don’t want to have to go to the game and remove someone from my friend’s list, add them back, and then compare the list to find out who the person is, or have a similar situation just to add someone that applied that found our website through another website. If someone deletes a character before I am able to add them, it would make them impossible to contact them.

I would like to validate it so that a user at least cannot input an invalid display ID. I understand this may seem like a question that is requesting somewhat sensitive information, but I assure you the reason I ask is simply for my own guild’s recruiting purposes via our website (which I am currently developing), and automation/ease of administration. I’d like to avoid recruiting completely random players in map chat that exert no more effort to show interest than a message that could be produced by a gold spammer. Likewise I’d like to enforce several rules for my guild and maintain a certain social atmosphere and guild structure, which I believe must be represented in web services outside of the game. Having accurate display ID’s would make this much simpler.

Along with the addition of the .####, I’d presume the display ID follows the character naming rules.

Gaile : Sounds like Kryptik wants it for making a guild website signup form.

Pedra.4381:

I’m not smart or computer savvy but even I can come up with far more nefarious reasons for having this info.

If you’re not that computer savvy, don’t make random accusations that I have any malicious intent. If I did indeed want to obtain this information for any other purpose I would simply buy another account and sit at the account registration form and continuously feed it an invalid username while testing the constraints of the display ID. I have asked Chris Whiteside this question before and he told me to post it here and on the wiki. I figured here would be a good place to start.

I believe I should illustrate the reason I am asking this…

I want a player to find our website from in game messages, with or without PMing the recruiter. I want a player to find our website from other wesbites (guildwars2guru.com, gw2guilds.org, etc.) and be able to provide me with accurate information to contact (and recognize) them in game regardless of whether we’ve had contact before or not, or what character they are currently on.

I do not want guild members confusing The Intimidator (the character) with The Intimidator.3576., nor The Intimidator.3765. I want to be able to keep records for my own personal use, guild security, and social atmosphere of close, easily recognizable members.
Also, I do not want myself or any memebrs that take on leadership roles spending a significant amount of their time on procedural tasks, such as explaining the same rules over and over and over to recruits. Likewise, I don’t want them inviting, copying a username into a website, setting the user to the proper group, etc. I’d much rather just have everyone that really cares about their gaming environment to submit an application on their own time and allow us to recruit them through playing the game. I want to be able to enforce rules without much dialog. A rule is a rule is a rule. Everyone agreed to them when they applied, they should know them, so there is no argument or discussion to be had about gross violations our very simple and limited rules.

I have already tested the guild name and character name constraints and IF I had some other use for it (a phishing attempt perhaps?) I don’t see how I would benefit from asking what the display ID’s constraints are. If that were the goal I could easily have just NOT ever contacted Arenanet here to ask for assistance in making my preferred game play environment easier to achieve. So, if that is the case and the information is sensitive and you do not wish to disclose it I will assume that the current regular expression I have for accounts will suffice. I am just asking as a favor. It’s not me demanding anything or trying to conceal the use of it. The web address it will be located at is: http://sleepisfornoobs.com There is NO other intention than to provide a superior web service for my guild.

Rajani Isa.6294:

Along with the addition of the .####, I’d presume the display ID follows the character naming rules.

This is an intuitive assumption, but wrong. Character names can include one of several (about 20 something) unicode characters and force the first letter of any word to uppercase. For example, a display ID can be TogoChubb.3984 (I did in fact ask for permission to use this display ID), but a character name could never include a lowercase character in the middle of the word. Also, because I’ve only played with very very few European players I don’t see lots and lots of European display ID’s. In gw1 there were varying sets of characters that were available depending on where the game key was purchased.

Pedra.4381:

I’m not smart or computer savvy but even I can come up with far more nefarious reasons for having this info.

If so you should go change your account info every time you post because the only info he is asking for from applicants is exactly what is displayed next to every one of your posts and is also available in game to anybody who sees you with little effort. That said its much easier to keep accurate roster records if you dont have to manualy transcribe each persons unique ID by hand. All he’s asking for is a way to cull applications that are clearly impossible due to being invalid options. He could get this info either way once in contact with the person but it would be more effort on his part.

Kryptik.8093:

…Also, because I’ve only played with very very few European players I don’t see lots and lots of European display ID’s. …

I’m European, but there are many European names that don’t use their countries native set of letters. I don’t know why I should show off my origin anyway. It’s my real christian name, that I tend to use, whenever possible for a display name in games. For characters and account names I prefer different settings. That satisfies my own security needs.

Kryptik.8093:

Pedra.4381:

I’m not smart or computer savvy but even I can come up with far more nefarious reasons for having this info.

If you’re not that computer savvy, don’t make random accusations that I have any malicious intent. If I did indeed want to obtain this information for any other purpose I would simply buy another account and sit at the account registration form and continuously feed it an invalid username while testing the constraints of the display ID. I have asked Chris Whiteside this question before and he told me to post it here and on the wiki. I figured here would be a good place to start.

Kryptik, while you are a prolific writer, reading it seems, is not your strongpoint. I’ve accused you of no wrongdoing.

I’m sure you have a stellar reputation.

Pedra.4381:

Kryptik, while you are a prolific writer, reading it seems, is not your strongpoint. I’ve accused you of no wrongdoing.

I’m sure you have a stellar reputation.

I felt the need to respond strongly that I have no malicious intent, because the point was brought up, and I directed at you because it was you that raised the point. I inferred that it was implied. If that was not your intent I’m sorry for responding so strongly.

In any case, I would just like to prevent users from submitting invalid display ID’s to my guild application. I understand it is still possible to receive an incorrect display ID, but I believe most people reading this post are missing the point of what I’m saying probably because I am longwinded.

I want people to inquire about our guild in a public venue that anyone can see. I want people to apply to our guild in a medium that our entire guild can participate in. I do NOT want to waste time doing such procedural tasks in game. Guild Wars 2 is for playing, not managing.
I feel that the website I’m finishing is important to provide this structure, and one of the keys to the website’s success is going to be procedural automation and information consistency/unity. If we have information that needs to be related to other information, say two character names, how do I relate that on my website without some governing username? I can’t. So, I’ll either use a website specific username, their email, or their Guild Wars 2 display ID. It makes the most sense to use their Guild Wars 2 display ID. Using anything else will be confusing to identify an offline user by their display id (in game) and reference it to the website.
I could just manually enter their own display ID myself, but that is not automated and does not particularly help me. It creates more work and allows for more errors because the account owner is not manually entering his display ID. Capital i can easily be confused with lowercase L. You can /w ,type a character name into the recipient box and it will autocomplete making it possible to copy/paste, but it won’t autocomplete an account name if you haven’t whispered them or they are no longer online. I could end up with an incorrect username if I typed it this way or would require more analog, procedural/bureaucratic user interaction.

Beyond that, assume that we don’t catch invalid display id’s: that allows incorrect (misspelled/miss-typed that are still technically possible display ID’s) display ID’s as well as invalid display ID’s. There’s nothing that can be done about an incorrect display ID, but allowing invalid display ID’s to pass validation is asking for more potential problems contacting applicants and administrating the guild.

The process would run quite smoothly if, for example, a new player joining Darkhaven that no Z4 member has spoken with yet applies to the guild, fills his application, and awaits a reply. As he’s awaiting, the guild can have an internal conversation and those with permission can make public comments, all attached to the application as opposed to mail correspondence that only one user can see. The user can be invited to the guild easily via their display ID if it is correct, or asked to provide the correct one, publicly.
Having public records of procedural tasks helps to minimize childish bickering, biased drama, etc, gives guild members personal responsibility, and also makes it easy to catch mistakes of any kind.
However, having the administrator entering it manually cuts this check/balance in half and even makes it hard in some instances because of the capitalization constraints. Other benefits basically amount to being more recognizable in guild roster and parties as well as forum posts and any other website authored content. It would all be referenced visibly and immediately to their display ID which makes for a tighter social community.

At this point I would just like to know: what is the minimum and maximum length of a display ID not including the .####?

Presumably, Anet is being cryptic about this because not all the gold in game mail spammers have figured out the ins and outs of the naming system. Putting an official word out would make it easier for them to randomly generate in game names for their gold spam mails.

Sure, I’d just like an answer. If I’m not going to get any information I’d like to know so I can try to get more information on my best guess or get an answer I can use.