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Change Display Name?


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@Just a flesh wound.3589 said:

@"scarryjack.3512" said:three years ago, i stopped playing because this issue bothered me. it was holloween when i registered and i typed "scarry.jack"
because everything i came up with was used
. then i played 8 characters to level 80... with .scarry.jack <--- as my monicer. very annoying. if they don't want to change it, that's their choice. so was leaving the game. oh well.

Not true. For example there are two Mea.xxxx that have posted on the forums, a Mea.5491 and a Mea.8967

Yeah, I made a second account with the same name and just have a different number

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  • 6 months later...
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Hey, plus point for finding a relevant thread and post there instead of creating a new one. Luckily, the thread you found has all the info and links you need to answer your questions. They have their policy about this and they declared it several times over now.It's called Display Name. The clue is in the name. You should choose one that you are comfortable with being... you know, displayed.

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They cant just fix the code. If they could, they would. There are also policy considerations hich you will have noted from the aforementioned threads.

Could support transfer from one account to another? Prob yes, but that opens up a whole bag of precedents and problems including exploits snd establishing if you are the owner of both and time taken to duplicate the info. They do it for one, they do it for others snd suddnly support times increase due to something completely unnecessary.

You say nothing is certain and whilst i sympathise, taking anets response as final in this instance would be wise

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@Randulf.7614 said:They cant just fix the code. If they could, they would. There are also policy considerations hich you will have noted from the aforementioned threads.

Could support transfer from one account to another? Prob yes, but that opens up a whole bag of precedents and problems including exploits snd establishing if you are the owner of both and time taken to duplicate the info. They do it for one, they do it for others snd suddnly support times increase due to something completely unnecessary.

You say nothing is certain and whilst i sympathise, taking anets response as final in this instance would be wise

So if I want another diplay name, I have to create new acc. (making the: do not break customer account / keep history of the acc policies irrelevant)

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@Gatyx.2945 said:

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:If you are interested, you can read the Dev (Lead GM) posts on this topic on Reddit.

Good luck.

TY, I red them.

Read your whole wall of text but couldent find what your reason for wanting the change, I see nothing wrong with Gatyx.

@Gatyx.2945 said:

@Randulf.7614 said:They cant just fix the code. If they could, they would. There are also policy considerations hich you will have noted from the aforementioned threads.

Could support transfer from one account to another? Prob yes, but that opens up a whole bag of precedents and problems including exploits snd establishing if you are the owner of both and time taken to duplicate the info. They do it for one, they do it for others snd suddnly support times increase due to something completely unnecessary.

You say nothing is certain and whilst i sympathise, taking anets response as final in this instance would be wise

So if I want another diplay name, I have to create new acc. (making the: do not break customer account / keep history of the acc policies irrelevant)

Since your old account will still be there with the same display name I dont see how the (making the: do not break customer account / keep history of the acc policies irrelevant) can happen in anyway.

You got a new account your old account aint broken, deleted history or otherwise.

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Here’s a couple Reddit posts about changing the display name, for those who haven’t seen them yet

Dornsinger: 10 Dec 2017

Generally we do not offer display name changes ...because of a very hard and fast rule: Don't Break Your Customer's Account.

Changing display names can break your ability for social interactions in the game. And by break, I am speaking of users whose display names were changed in 2014 who still are broken today. The way display names are handled, we only change them in very specific circumstances and often even then only on a case-by-case basis after checking the account's age and situation. We always warn users, even if we do offer the change, that things could break. And the worst is: There is no way for us to 'unbreak' things. once broken, you're stuck and nothing we do will fix you.

... If we change your display name, we risk breaking your guild, your in-game mail, your ability to interact with the trade post and your whispers. In an MMO, we'd risk dooming a user to not being able to interact on any of the common social channels for days, weeks - or years.

If it's something like a first name, chances are we deny. You can always ask to have your ticket be escalated and have a supervisor review it. But if we say no to a display name change, we say no because we are likely to utterly wreck your game account. And we simply do not want to risk that, as we cannot un-wreck.


.Dornsinger: 10 July 2018Sorry, but we do not change display name on request because "I no longer like it" or "I got bored of it". Changing a display name utterly wrecks your game account, and the amount of time it remains broken can be anything from 2 weeks to years. We changed a user in 2013 who never recovered full use of their whispers, in-game mail, guild functions, and trade post interactions. There is no way to fix it for us, and 'going back' to a display name does not work.

If a user has their RL name in the display name, we make the change if asked, however, the game account could end up being no longer usable for regular social interactions. Basically: Anything a display name touches in the game could break, and we have no means of ever fixing that.

I'm very sorry. We've been looking into ways of making it work over the years, but so far have not found a safe way that does not break things.

(Naturally, if someone uses an offensive name, we force one name change. That the account may break is a risk that will have to be accepted. The alternative would be to close accounts with offensive display names, which we do if the account was clearly made to troll.)

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@Gatyx.2945 said:

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:If you are interested, you can read the Dev (Lead GM) posts on this topic on Reddit.

Good luck.

TY, I red them.

So, you are saying you don't care if you can never use the Trading Post again, or chat with others, etc.?Alas, even though you would like to play the game broken, most would not; and the policy is made for all the playerbase.

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I wanted to change my account name some time back. it wasn't clear to me during account creation that I couldn't change it or even what it specifically was. it would be nice if this was clarified at the time of creation.

editI didn't know for example that the account name was the handle used for forum interactions. this would be useful info at time of account creation.

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I agree that the rules about names are obscure. Plus: before launch, one of Gaile's statements about left some ambiguity, which is why I ended up with a display name that is, well, rather ill-conceived. Plus, as @Steve The Cynic.3217 points out: a display name shouldn't be a key field in the database. The key should be some sort of unique identifier that the system chooses. That was a mistake they made in GW1 and somehow replicated in GW2 (even though it causes similar issues there).

Regardless, things are as they are, not as we wish them to be or as we imagine they should have been if we were in charge.

  • Display names are fixed
  • And, well, that's the end of it, unfortunately. :(
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@kharmin.7683 said:

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:That was a mistake they made in GW1 and somehow replicated in GW2 (even though it causes similar issues there).I thought this was done intentionally in order to allow the connection of the account across both games (HoM, GWAMM, and such)?

To my knowledge, they never explained why.

However:

  • The two databases are distinct (we know this from the desync between HoM points/GWaMM earned in GW1 and what is recorded in GW2: GW1 has to be online for GW2 to know the status of those GW1 accomplishments)
  • We were able to choose our own display and account names for GW2, different from whatever was used for GW1.
  • It would have been possible to use a system-created "key field" for GW2 and link that to GW1, even if what we see would only have been the display|account names we chose.

Even for GW1, it was an odd choice. I'm sure they had reasons for doing it the way they did in both games; it just doesn't make sense to me from the outside. My speculations might be entirely off and even so, it's odd that they let themselves be stuck in the same situation for both games, in which we players get to choose display names and yet even they can't choose to change them without causing big issues. They know that people make inappropriate choices, they know people make mistakes, they know that there will always be legit reasons that people (or they) need or want to change how an account is recognized. So why didn't they build to allow them that option?

Regardless, whether I'm correct that they could have done differently, whether they should have done so... that's all moot. The situation is now that they cannot change the display name without mucking things up and we just have to live with it.

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@Tzarakiel.7490 said:I sometimes see players that use their license key as their display name. Usually happens with people who buy from resellers. Does ArenaNet change those upon request, or are they forever made to show their biggest Guild Wars mistake to anyone they ever join a party with?

FYI: It's not their, or anyone else's, Serial Key; it's a UNID. It has nothing to do with where the game was acquired. And yes, CS will assist with displaying the correct Display Name.

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  • 1 month later...

I wish it were possible but certainly not worth breaking my account over! For other MMO’s this account name was just for login purposes and in-game I would only appear as my various characters, so I chose something obscure and used it here too, but it’s weird when people refer to as VDAC.

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@"89D1709F-DBE1-702E-E4AA-1A83EC993273.3072" said:Yup. I never even got to choose my display name, it was given to me the instant I registered my GW1 key, since I started that before GW 2. All bought from the Anet website. And I can get the name changed, customer support is great about this bug, but with all the same risks and conditions explained above.

You can change it!Per their rules you can change it if it was issued that, just send them a mail, requirements are here. https://help.guildwars2.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000728148-I-Want-to-Change-My-Display-Name

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@Nox.6785 said:

@"89D1709F-DBE1-702E-E4AA-1A83EC993273.3072" said:Yup. I never even got to choose my display name, it was given to me the instant I registered my GW1 key, since I started that before GW 2. All bought from the Anet website. And I can get the name changed, customer support is great about this bug, but with all the same risks and conditions explained above.

You can change it!Per their rules you can change it if it was issued that, just send them a mail, requirements are here.

He/she stated (quoted above) that the CS Team is willing to change it for him/her; he/she has opted to forego this because of the possible drawbacks/bug changing a Display Name entails.

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@"89D1709F-DBE1-702E-E4AA-1A83EC993273.3072" said:Yup. I never even got to choose my display name, it was given to me the instant I registered my GW1 key, since I started that before GW 2. All bought from the Anet website. And I can get the name changed, customer support is great about this bug, but with all the same risks and conditions explained above.

In your case, your display name CAN be changed. I had the same issue and Support allowed me to choose my current, normal display name.

Please note that I knew about the possible bugs and issues I could encouter, so to prevent them I decided to not make a character or do anything with the account until after the display name change. Under this condition, I have not had a single bug with it. Everything works fine. But I guess it may be different when you already have characters, unlocks, trading post entries or guild memberships (etc.) linked to the old display name.

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  • 5 months later...

I wonder why would it not be possible to just add a mask to your display name. I understand being unable to change it as it causes bugs, despite being a weird coding decision, but like Cynical said the system would use an invisible tag which, in gw2 case, is visible, so why not add a mask to it making our current display name as it is but invisible behind a new, easy-to-alter name whose only purpose is to be visible to players? It wouldn't be much different from a character name.

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