Guild Wars 2

Our guild named Potentially Offensive [POOF] was subjected to a random name change to Abracadabra Alakazam [POOF]. We all noticed it last night and are deeply affected by what has happened. This is because we are proud of what certain members have done, appearing together in a picture with Colin Johanson on the Guild Wars 2 twitter from PAX . We are just asking why our guild name was changed to something completely random as the name itself was not offensive in any way (only potentially). My co-leader Afro Dude.8423 has created a placeholder guild so the name will not be stolen.

POOF at PAX
POOF at PAX2

Here is said images of us at PAX

Thanks,
jjc.4863

This is something you would need to discuss with the CS Team, as it is not a Game Bug. Top of Page – Support – Submit a Request.

Good luck.

Hey, POOF co-founder here, I just wanted to chime in with my two cents because our name actually had a lot of light-hearted meaning behind it, and many of our members are upset and confused as to why we had our name changed without any warning.

We started out as a group of refugees from a dying guild, and many of us had become close friends, so we sat around in mumble one night trying to decide on a name for a new guild. The fact came up that many of us had been doing trivia in Lions Arch (before mega server on Tarnished Coast) and we’d started a trend of only asking questions on Asura Mesmers all with the name Poof (Cause mesmers, you know, poof around and such) We’d actually gotten known around the server for our trivia and prize-giveaways and so it was only natural to base our new guild around the word POOF. (Also, it was kinda adorable to see a Dr Poof [POOF] and Inquisitor Poof [POOF] running around.) A few night’s worth of discussion and the gem "Potentially Offensive was thrown out. It was perfect. It abbreviated into our tag, and perfectly matched our light-hearted occasionally adult humor. No one ever did anything to outwardly offend anyone within our guild, and we have strict rules on conduct with random members of the guild wars community, since we were founded on the pride of being upstanding server-members. We are quite proud of our member-base and I’ve met some of my closest friends through this guild. We’d really love a reconsideration of the name change, since many of us are rather upset that our name was changed regardless of the fact that it wasn’t offensive or violate the Guild Wars 2 naming policy found here:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-naming-policy/

We’d really, truly appreciate a reconsider.
Thanks.

Well at least your guild just had a name change so it could have been worse. Other guilds have been disbanded for name violation.

But as others have said the only way to get a chance at having the name change reverted is through making a support ticket.

Wow it’s actually a pretty creative guild name you guys came up with and I can’t see how it would actually offend anybody or how it breaks any rules. I really don’t see why anybody felt it was necessary to change it on you without your consent and to something completely random no less. I hope you guys get your name back.

If im not mistaken poof can be considered an offensive term for homosexual individuals.

spelling may be different

DonQuack.9025:

If im not mistaken poof can be considered an offensive term for homosexual individuals.

spelling may be different

But then they would have changed the TAG, and not the actual name. The tag is the same.

yea but it may have been the combination of “potentially offensive” and {POOF} afterall poof is a relatively common word.

I guess I could see that getting misinterpreted..(I’m American and had no idea poof had any sort of other connotation since I’d never heard it used before) but they only changed our name…not our tag. it just seems so strange, because say your guild was Potentially Offensive [ODOR] or something like that. It’s all very tongue in cheek silly…and I couldn’t see them force changing something like that. That’s the kind of guild we are, and it is really sad to see the clever (in our minds) name that we came up with gone, and replaced by something we don’t identify with or have any attachment to. Some of us poured over 300gold personally to get us going in the beginning, and you’ll find many of us with gem store carpets, back flags, guild banner tonics and kites, proudly representing our guild.

also…our full guild name was called out on the official guild wars 2 Twitter when we brought our heroes banner to PAX, seems like they wouldn’t have called us out if our name was a problem.

What made it feel weird is there was no communication with ANet at all. They just changed our name without warning; it was a complete surprise

jjc.4863:

What made it feel weird is there was no communication with ANet at all. They just changed our name without warning; it was a complete surprise

From previous threads they don’t warn ahead of time when they change guild names or display names. Even character name changes don’t get a warning. Those people are blocked at log in and told to change the name before they can get into the game.

The strange thing is, someone had to report your guild name and then support had to agree that it was against TOS. So someone was offended by it, enough to report it, though I don’t see it myself.

jjc.4863:

What made it feel weird is there was no communication with ANet at all. They just changed our name without warning; it was a complete surprise

Yeah, one very unfortunate thing about ANet that I noticed both through reading through the forums and from recent personal experience is that they’ll go ahead and do things without any notification to the people it affects, unlike any other MMO I have ever played before. Which I actually don’t understand why this isn’t a big thing because even on free to play MMOs usually if you are accused of having done something wrong or you are banned, usually you will get an email explaining what has happened and in full detail why this has happened.

Instead, players log in, only to find that they have been blocked, and because of a glitch that is supposedly being working on, they might not even be told why at that moment, unless they request to know why in a support ticket.

I feel like this is a practice that ANet should really consider working on finding a better alternative for.

Mind any mods that might be reading that this is constructive criticism I am giving and is not intended to be inflammatory in any way shape or form.

Whether you agree or not, be happy all you got is a name change. Most usually, guilds are disbanded, not given a name change. All in all, your Guild is pretty lucky.

kaat.8237:

Whether you agree or not, be happy all you got is a name change. Most usually, guilds are disbanded, not given a name change. All in all, your Guild is pretty lucky.

That doesn’t make it any more right, in fact it is sort of alarming that guilds are just up and deleted by staff members without warning or notice and then accounts are blocked without any explanation until it is requested via support (which is a very inconvenient process for somebody to go through, especially if it turns out that they were not in the wrong.)

If I purchased a car for example and suddenly the manufacturer replaced it with a truck without warning because they didn’t agree with the car’s design, i’d be upset. I bought a car and I don’t like trucks and even though I bought a car, I ended up with a truck. Although guilds aren’t quite physical investments, they are still investments of time spent in the game to develop a specific community. Although I find your guild’s original name in no way even slightly offensive, I’m sure there are people out there who would take offense; people take offense at anything and everything in this crazy new age.

IMO ANet should have sent an ingame message to all guild members explaining that they needed to change the guild name and/or tag, and given the guild the option of a guild name/tag change instead of doing it for them without their consent.

I really like your guild name (Potentially Offensive) tbh and hope you are actually able to get the original name restored.

I thought it was impossible for Anet to change a guild name.

Thanatos.2691:

If I purchased a car for example and suddenly the manufacturer replaced it with a truck without warning because they didn’t agree with the car’s design, i’d be upset. I bought a car and I don’t like trucks and even though I bought a car, I ended up with a truck. Although guilds aren’t quite physical investments, they are still investments of time spent in the game to develop a specific community. Although I find your guild’s original name in no way even slightly offensive, I’m sure there are people out there who would take offense; people take offense at anything and everything in this crazy new age.

IMO ANet should have sent an ingame message to all guild members explaining that they needed to change the guild name and/or tag, and given the guild the option of a guild name/tag change instead of doing it for them without their consent.

I really like your guild name (Potentially Offensive) tbh and hope you are actually able to get the original name restored.

That would be a good example, if Anet sold the guild tags. The issue is, they created the ToS, and everyone agrees to it when they start their game. This carries over to their guilds. If you create a guild with an offensive name, Anet can do whatever they want to correct this issue since the guild creator wasn’t mature enough to create a name that was appropriate for the game.

Your example should have been that you bought a car, and put on a bunch of illegal mods, and the police took your car, and you were left with nothing, because you chose not to follow the laws.

You name your guild ‘Potentially Offensive’, so you must have known it was potentially offensive to call it that in the first place. [POOF] is a chiefly British slang term for homosexual and is not a nice name to call someone. However, I can see the reason behind them re-naming and calling your guild after a magician’s magic word because now the [POOF] part means to disappear in a cloud of smoke, which is nice.

You guys knew it was potentially offensive, so don’t act so surprised that it got changed, and as someone said, be grateful it was a name change and not a disbandment like other offensive guilds get.

Edit: As a side not, I would have changed the spelling from [POOF] to [PUFF] too.

Actually a more accurate analogy would be if you put a (for this purpose let’s assume it’s a gray area in the law where it’s not illegal but the cops aren’t 100% sure)
Mod on your car and then you went to a place where a bunch of similar minded people as well as cops gather and the cops were totally cool with it and then suddenly some other cops in the future were like “hey man, somebody didn’t like your mods so while you were asleep we went and replaced your mods with confetti and duct tape but we let you keep the label that was on it.”

@penelopehannibal.8947 & Ellieanna.5027

That was never the intention though. As Alennia outlined above, our name was derived from our mesmers porting about, plus as something tongue in cheek & fun. I’m sure that most people would agree that Potentially Offensive as a name carries no derogatory or foul meaning. If anything, it would have been our tag that got changed, going by what you said. Not the name.

There’s a list here on Wikipedia of words with different meanings between American & British english:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_words_having_different_meanings_in_American_and_British_English

Should a RP’er get banned because they used an alternative word for a male rooster to describe priming a gun for firing? Just because it can have other connotations that someone else mistakenly thought they meant?

Heck, “joint” in American English can refer to the connection of two objects / bones, a business, or drugs. Perhaps every guild with “joint” in it should get changed because they could potentially be offensive? :P

Taking context out of the equation, should a guild be forced to change their name, even if they have something benign like “Potato [SPUD]” if someone finds it not to their liking? Should Anet appeal to the lowest common denominator at the expense of the community at large?

The car buying analogy is not correct. It is not your car, the car belongs to ArenaNet. The more accurate analogy would be this:
ArenaNet gives you permission to drive their car with some limits outlined in the terms of use that you agree to before you can drive the car. You then take ArenaNet’s car to a paint shop and have it decorated with something that could be considered offensive by some people. So now you are driving ArenaNet’s car, with their logo and name prominently displayed on it, with these potentially offensive words written on it as well.

If you were ArenaNet, what would you do? So instead of taking the car away from you for violating the terms of use (aka the Ban Hammer or guild dissolution), they fix the paint job so that it is acceptable to them and give you what is basically a second warning.

Now for the OP and members of the guild that had its name changed, if you do not agree with ArenaNet’s decision, you should submit one ticket to Support and discuss it with ArenaNet there. Plead your case to them directly. Who knows, if you approach this correctly and discuss it reasonably with them, ArenaNet might reconsider and change the name back. But that discussion really needs to be with Support directly.

LyricDawnhagen.7803:

The car buying analogy is not correct. It is not your car, the car belongs to ArenaNet. The more accurate analogy would be this:
ArenaNet gives you permission to drive their car with some limits outlined in the terms of use that you agree to before you can drive the car. You then take ArenaNet’s car to a paint shop and have it decorated with something that could be considered offensive by some people. So now you are driving ArenaNet’s car, with their logo and name prominently displayed on it, with these potentially offensive words written on it as well.

If you were ArenaNet, what would you do? So instead of taking the car away from you for violating the terms of use (aka the Ban Hammer or guild dissolution), they fix the paint job so that it is acceptable to them and give you what is basically a second warning.

Now for the OP and members of the guild that had its name changed, if you do not agree with ArenaNet’s decision, you should submit one ticket to Support and discuss it with ArenaNet there. Plead your case to them directly. Who knows, if you approach this correctly and discuss it reasonably with them, ArenaNet might reconsider and change the name back. But that discussion really needs to be with Support directly.

And to add on to this, get with your guild first and come up with a list of acceptable alternatives on case they deem the name in violation and won’t change it.

Olvendred.3027:

I thought it was impossible for Anet to change a guild name.

Apparently that’s no longer so – at least with the NAME. Tag might still be out of bounds though.

Rajani Isa.6294:

Olvendred.3027:

I thought it was impossible for Anet to change a guild name.

Apparently that’s no longer so – at least with the NAME. Tag might still be out of bounds though.

Perhaps that’s why the tag was left alone, as an alternative to disbanding the guild. With a lot of recent changes to the game that CS tools haven’t caught up with yet, all CS agents may not be on the same page when it comes to situations like this.

Also, to an outsider, “Potentially Offensive” can imply that you are aware of the offensive interpretation of “poof,” and at least one player was in fact offended by it. It doesn’t matter how long the name has been in place, and CS is not the same as the devs or marketing departments. They will investigate player complaints and it’s CS who decides what action to take, not the devs. So it doesn’t matter if others at Anet weren’t offended, they were not involved in this decision.

That said, if you appeal the decision through CS they may reverse it and restore the guild name. You’re lucky though, I have seen at least one thread where a guild was disbanded because of an offensive name.

Afro Dude.8423:

@penelopehannibal.8947 & Ellieanna.5027

That was never the intention though. As Alennia outlined above, our name was derived from our mesmers porting about, plus as something tongue in cheek & fun. I’m sure that most people would agree that Potentially Offensive as a name carries no derogatory or foul meaning. If anything, it would have been our tag that got changed, going by what you said. Not the name.

There’s a list here on Wikipedia of words with different meanings between American & British english:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_words_having_different_meanings_in_American_and_British_English

Should a RP’er get banned because they used an alternative word for a male rooster to describe priming a gun for firing? Just because it can have other connotations that someone else mistakenly thought they meant?

Heck, “joint” in American English can refer to the connection of two objects / bones, a business, or drugs. Perhaps every guild with “joint” in it should get changed because they could potentially be offensive? :P

Taking context out of the equation, should a guild be forced to change their name, even if they have something benign like “Potato [SPUD]” if someone finds it not to their liking? Should Anet appeal to the lowest common denominator at the expense of the community at large?

Yes, names that have both an offensive and a non-offensive name still get looked at. You or the guild leader knew what Poof means otherwise it wouldn’t have been called it “Potentially Offensive” – and guilds only get forced a name change when other players report them, so your guild has obviously offended someone.

If you scroll through all the topics relating to forced name changes in the Account Issues section of this forum, virtually all of them say “I didn’t mean it in that way, it actually means this..” just as you have done.

penelopehannibal.8947:

Afro Dude.8423:

@penelopehannibal.8947 & Ellieanna.5027

That was never the intention though. As Alennia outlined above, our name was derived from our mesmers porting about, plus as something tongue in cheek & fun. I’m sure that most people would agree that Potentially Offensive as a name carries no derogatory or foul meaning. If anything, it would have been our tag that got changed, going by what you said. Not the name.

There’s a list here on Wikipedia of words with different meanings between American & British english:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_words_having_different_meanings_in_American_and_British_English

Should a RP’er get banned because they used an alternative word for a male rooster to describe priming a gun for firing? Just because it can have other connotations that someone else mistakenly thought they meant?

Heck, “joint” in American English can refer to the connection of two objects / bones, a business, or drugs. Perhaps every guild with “joint” in it should get changed because they could potentially be offensive? :P

Taking context out of the equation, should a guild be forced to change their name, even if they have something benign like “Potato [SPUD]” if someone finds it not to their liking? Should Anet appeal to the lowest common denominator at the expense of the community at large?

Yes, names that have both an offensive and a non-offensive name still get looked at. You or the guild leader knew what Poof means otherwise it wouldn’t have been called it “Potentially Offensive” – and guilds only get forced a name change when other players report them, so your guild has obviously offended someone.

If you scroll through all the topics relating to forced name changes in the Account Issues section of this forum, virtually all of them say “I didn’t mean it in that way, it actually means this..” just as you have done.

Actually they explained how they came to name the guild what they named it. Just because Poof could be interpreted the wrong way doesn’t mean it actually is offensive, to them all it was was an abbreviation for their tag,

By that logic for considering names offensive, if your guild were called RottenPotato, and I took it offensively because Potato is often used to refer to a certain group of people (I doubt you don’t know what I’m talking about)
They would pretty much be obligated to change your guild’s name because of it’s offensive nature BUT that would pretty much mean the in world item Potato would have to be removed somehow because of the offensive nature of the word Potato, they would have to change the in game name of the item to “root vegetable” or something of the sort. BUT OH WAIT, Vegetable can be offensive too so we can’t do that.

We might as well just go around claiming that everything offends us, there will be no more content left.