No names left, do we need to wait on GW3 to be able to play?

[Veprovina.4876]

21 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

The thing I find annoying (as a native English speaker) is that English should really be the same. A lot of letters are pronounced differently based on the word they're in or even where they are in a word - for example Pacific Ocean has 3 C's and they're all said differently. Accented letters could make that obvious, but instead you just have to figure it out by trial and error (because it's also not consistent across words).

 

Yeah, a lot of english pronounciation you kinda have to "just know". Like, there's rules, then there's words that totally disregard the rules.

For instance, if i wanted to phonetically write the english pronounciation of Pacific Ocean in my language, it would look like "Pasifik Ošean". All 3 distinct letters, no doubt about how to pronounce them. In english, you kinda just have to know, or be thought by someone on how to pronounce it if you don't.

 

[Rasimir.6239]

1 hour ago, Quench.7091 said:

The standard English keyboard isn't very good at providing accented characters, usually having the user typing out ASCII on a keypad, which may or may not exist on the keyboard.

You do realize that this game is available in not just one language, but four, right? Standard french, german, and spanish keyboards provide easy access to all the accents and umlauts our languages support, so allowing those languages' characters in names isn't exactly far-fetched.

[Quench.7091]

15 minutes ago, Rasimir.6239 said:

You do realize that this game is available in not just one language, but four, right? Standard french, german, and spanish keyboards provide easy access to all the accents and umlauts our languages support, so allowing those languages' characters in names isn't exactly far-fetched.

The game isn't in just one language, but four, so it isn't far-fetched to include the characters of those languages. Here on the English forums, where most people are probably using English keyboards, I'm giving my recommendation to use standard English characters.

[Witch of Doom.5739]

18 hours ago, Donari.5237 said:

I saw one person in the thread fret about getting timed out searching for a name and having to restart the character.  The easy fix for that is to choose the name first, making any random character you like, then delete and remake with care.  A deleted character's name is held for the account for 24 hours.  Granted it won't help if you are someone who gets inspired by the final looks of the character when figuring out what name will float over their head, but it is a way to avoid losing a lot of fiddling with sliders.

An even easier fix, if you already have at least one active character and can play the game, is to use the Friends tool in-game.  Type in the name you want and see if it's already taken.  Then create your new character.

[Teratus.2859]

1 hour ago, Genesis.8572 said:

Odd. I mostly see your name floating around when it comes to this particular complaint and pushing up the post count. The rest of the community seems pretty happy with how things are. Even the OP was fine once they realized that they could uses spaces. 🤷‍♂️

Not surprising 😛

My stance on this problem has not really changed since I first started talking about several years ago.
I've been vocal in tons of threads like this one over the years.
It's a common subject that keeps coming up for good reason.

1 hour ago, Genesis.8572 said:

Compared to other games, getting names in GW2 is a cakewalk. It's easy to get names in this game. My main challenge with names has more to do with the time I put into creating a name that fits the character rather than acquiring that name or finding that the desired name is taken. The former is more difficult for me than the latter and they are hardly the same thing. 

It really depends.. largely on the race and naming conventions and how important those are to you.
I'm sure I could make a ton of characters with awful gibberish names if I wanted to but I hate that and a character like that would not survive long on my account.

Names are important to me, they have to fit and they have to line up at least loosely with naming conventions. (such as singular only names for Sylvari and Asura which are the two most annoying races to make)
As i've said in previous posts it can sometimes take hours to find a good name.
On on more than a few occasions i've been timed out and forced to recreate a character from scratch because it took so long to think up a name that wasn't already taken.

1 hour ago, Genesis.8572 said:

I have been playing GW2 since the beta and have 20+ lvl 80 characters, but I also occasionally play WoW and SWTOR. Only about 2-3 years ago did I bother trying to "convert" some of my characters from these other games into GW2 counterparts. I got all the names was aiming for without any creative alterations. Same with my partner. I even made a new batch of characters around March 2022 for EoD, and SURPRISE! I got all those names too. 

Same.

I also have accounts on at least 20 other MMO's/Online RPG games and Gw2 is the only one with this name issue as bad as it is.

Some of those games work differently though and do not name lock like Gw2 does, but some do.
Naming conventions are also different in them and that also helps significantly.
That said I have had a couple of times in ESO where several names I wanted were taken but there was nowhere near as much time wasted trying to find an alternative in that game.

Something that does help out there though is the fact that EU and NA servers are completely detached from each other in ESO where as they are not in Gw2.
I have characters with the same names on both EU and NA servers in ESO.
In Gw2 however any name taken in one region is restricted in the other.
There are good reasons for this though and Gw2 has benefits from it that ESO simply does not.
That said though ESO allows you to have essentially two accounts at once with it's system, one on NA and one on EU.. although they cannot interact at all sadly.

[Game of Bones.8975]

On 4/3/2022 at 9:19 PM, Xelqypla.6817 said:

Mxyzptlk is a Superman villain. No vowels.

 

Xsalokh Sjanlf isn't a bad character name.

That's MISTER Mxyzptlk to you.

[Mungrul.9358]

I made a new character recently, 'cos I wanted another female Sylvari.

I couldn't get Jennifer Kale 😞

I did get Conifer Kale 😄

[GODh.3892]

I am using a system for my names... if the name was taken then its was probably done by myself 😅

Most of my names have 2 words:

* First word is a short word so that my friends know immediately that its me (less confusing than having to check the account name)

* Second word is a mix of race, gender and class (in no particular order), like masyra (male sylvari ranger)

Works like a charm for me... 😎

Edited April 6, 2022 by GODh.3892

[SexyMofo.8923]

Your account is the best name. Use that one. 

[Amanda Whitemoon.6173]

i just get creative, including single names, i have characters named  Senrida, Netaxxa, Tamidara, Deytla, Tusinsa, Yverai, Daylanya, sometimes it takes a while, but i do feel a certain satisfaction when i finally found a nice name being all creative

[Genesis.8572]

7 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Names are important to me, they have to fit and they have to line up at least loosely with naming conventions. (such as singular only names for Sylvari and Asura which are the two most annoying races to make)

That's an issue that you impose on yourself rather than one that the game imposes on you. 

 

7 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

I also have accounts on at least 20 other MMO's/Online RPG games and Gw2 is the only one with this name issue as bad as it is.

Say what? That is the exact reverse of my experience. GW2 is easily one of the best MMORPGs I have experienced when it comes to getting names. My partner also enjoys MMOs, and they couldn't believe how easy of a time they had getting names with this game in comparison with other ones. 

 

[kettering.6823]

12 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

Same.

I also have accounts on at least 20 other MMO's/Online RPG games and Gw2 is the only one with this name issue as bad as it is.

You completely misread the post of the person you quoted lol. They said they *didn't* have a problem getting their names from other games in GW2. 

Also yes it can take a bit of doing, but you can still come up with even single-word names. Only a few weeks ago I got the name 'Niadda' for one of my Asura. Very pretty! And I have a trick for sylvari players who want a single-word name: just search for Irish/Scottish/Gaelic/etc. names and then add an extra 'i' or 'n' somewhere (i.e. Aodhainn [Aodhain] or Muadhnnait [Muadhnait]). If you get creative and don't mind having a perfect 1:1 name, there's still a lot of nice options. 

I also name some of my sylvari after flowers or plants, mimicking a surname (i.e. Caoimhe Larkspur). Some sylvari want to imitate humans a lot, so it makes sense to me that they might give themselves a surname just for fun. 

Edited April 7, 2022 by kettering.6823

[GODh.3892]

5 hours ago, Genesis.8572 said:

Say what? That is the exact reverse of my experience. GW2 is easily one of the best MMORPGs I have experienced when it comes to getting names. My partner also enjoys MMOs, and they couldn't believe how easy of a time they had getting names with this game in comparison with other ones.

The OP already admitted that he was not aware that GW2 allows spaces in the names (a lot of games do not allow that), so his problem is already "solved" 🙃

[Teratus.2859]

15 hours ago, Genesis.8572 said:

That's an issue that you impose on yourself rather than one that the game imposes on you. 

It is, but that doesn't mean it isn't important to a number of people and how they enjoy games.
To me it is equally as important as having a choice of race and gender when I am given a character creation option and many games are even going beyond that these days.

15 hours ago, Genesis.8572 said:

Say what? That is the exact reverse of my experience. GW2 is easily one of the best MMORPGs I have experienced when it comes to getting names. My partner also enjoys MMOs, and they couldn't believe how easy of a time they had getting names with this game in comparison with other ones. 

As I said it heavily depends on the character, I rarely have issues with most races due to secondary names and such.
It's mostly Asura and Sylvari because of their naming conventions.
I don't use the same names in different online games either, at least not for the most part.
I prefer to make lore appropriate names in each one which is likely why I don't have this issue in other games.
I'm sure most if not all of my ESO character names would be available in Gw2 as would other characters in other games but they're also largely not appropriate for Gw2 either which is why I don't use them here.

10 hours ago, kettering.6823 said:

You completely misread the post of the person you quoted lol. They said they *didn't* have a problem getting their names from other games in GW2. 

No I got that 🙂 
My experience has been the opposite, my response was accurate.
 

10 hours ago, kettering.6823 said:

Also yes it can take a bit of doing, but you can still come up with even single-word names. Only a few weeks ago I got the name 'Niadda' for one of my Asura. Very pretty! And I have a trick for sylvari players who want a single-word name: just search for Irish/Scottish/Gaelic/etc. names and then add an extra 'i' or 'n' somewhere (i.e. Aodhainn [Aodhain] or Muadhnnait [Muadhnait]). If you get creative and don't mind having a perfect 1:1 name, there's still a lot of nice options.

Yes I know, I said as much before ^^
My argument isn't that it's impossible to get new names, it's just extremely tedious, difficult and sometimes a very long process which can be extremely frustrating when you just want to make a character and play but end up stuck on the character creation screen for sometimes hours trying to find a good name because your last 10-20-40-50-100+ names were all taken.

Looking up names like that and adding some extra letters is exactly my process, but it stopped being effective a few years back.
I have more success these days by taking multiple names and trying to merge them into a new name and then adding extra letters.
That's how I ended up getting my last few Sylvari names.
The most recent one being almost a month ago when I came up with the name Arrandair which was a combo of 2 different celtic names + an extra r.

I often get responses saying " just be more creative" lol but I can assure you there is a lot of effort on my part to get my names, and a lot of the methods people keep telling me to use are ones i've been using for a very long time.

10 hours ago, kettering.6823 said:

I also name some of my sylvari after flowers or plants, mimicking a surname (i.e. Caoimhe Larkspur). Some sylvari want to imitate humans a lot, so it makes sense to me that they might give themselves a surname just for fun. 

Plants and flowers are also a regular go to for me as well, though I stopped having luck with this one a long time ago as it's an obvious go to for a lot of people.

Though the surnames for Sylvari are one thing I don't like to use and no in game Sylvari have last names either.
Some do have a status or title though such as Warden or Assistant.
Personally I strongly dislike using those as well, and we have titles in the game to choose from which only makes it look silly if there is another one in my name.

[Genesis.8572]

21 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

It is, but that doesn't mean it isn't important to a number of people and how they enjoy games.

And I am one of those people, but it's still a self-imposed personal issue and not fundamentally a game one. Sometimes you have to accept that you won't get your first choice of names or that you may have to skirt around the norms of naming conventions. Naming conventions represent norms rather than rules. Reality throughout human history and cultures is full of plenty of exceptions to the norms of names. Your character is meant to be exceptional as well. 

 

21 hours ago, Teratus.2859 said:

As I said it heavily depends on the character, I rarely have issues with most races due to secondary names and such.
It's mostly Asura and Sylvari because of their naming conventions.

My Asura follow asuran name conventions. I do break with name conventions slightly with Sylvari ones, but that is because I enjoy last names for them that help bring out further elements of their character. Also it's not as if last names are entirely foreign to or unheard of with Sylvari: cf. Scarlett Briar. 

[Teratus.2859]

26 minutes ago, Genesis.8572 said:

And I am one of those people, but it's still a self-imposed personal issue and not fundamentally a game one. Sometimes you have to accept that you won't get your first choice of names or that you may have to skirt around the norms of naming conventions. Naming conventions represent norms rather than rules. Reality throughout human history and cultures is full of plenty of exceptions to the norms of names. Your character is meant to be exceptional as well.

True but realistically names are not locked in reality either.
Millions of people share their names with others, first and last names quite often so using reality isn't exactly a good counter argument.
Just search for your full name on any large social media platform, or even a google search and you'll probably find hundreds of others with the same exact name.

It's not a lore problem or an in universe issue it's simply an outdated system problem with the game, one that I simply believe doesn't need to exist anymore and is not only worth the effort to remove but actually beneficial for the game to remove at this point.
If you do the math on how many accounts there are in Gw2, even if all those accounts only had a singular character we're still looking at millions of unusable names.
Then factor in if they all had at least 4 characters, plus a believable number of accounts like ours that have more than 20.. probably a good few million at least.
Suffice to say that is a massive number of taken names whether you highball it or lowball it.
And with every new player or even new character on an older account.. it continues to grow with each one.

26 minutes ago, Genesis.8572 said:

My Asura follow asuran name conventions. I do break with name conventions slightly with Sylvari ones, but that is because I enjoy last names for them that help bring out further elements of their character. Also it's not as if last names are entirely foreign to or unheard of with Sylvari: cf. Scarlett Briar. 

I've only got the one Asura, with Sylvari names being as annoying as they are I just can't be bothered to make more Asura which are even more restrictive tbh.

As far as Scarlett goes though, Scarlet Briar was not her real name.
Her real Sylvari name Ceara was sigular like all other Sylvari names.
She took the name Scarlet Briar in part to rebel against the Pale Tree and her people and as a way of forging her own path and identity free from the influence of the Pale Tree and other Sylvari.. and even the Elder Dragon her race came from who was successful in corrupting her eventually and drove her mad via Nightmares, although Scarlet only knew this being as an entity in the beginning and did not realise it was the same Elder Dragon her race came from until she'd already lost her mind, by then it was too late, she was his.

[Genesis.8572]

1 hour ago, Teratus.2859 said:

True but realistically names are not locked in reality either.
Millions of people share their names with others, first and last names quite often so using reality isn't exactly a good counter argument.
Just search for your full name on any large social media platform, or even a google search and you'll probably find hundreds of others with the same exact name.

This moves the goal posts of the issue. The point is regarding in-universe naming conventions for the various cultures and whether one chooses to adhere to that or not. It's not about the realism of being locked into only one name. There are plenty of MMORPGs where you are locked into one name per server, realm, or whatever. 

Quote

It's not a lore problem or an in universe issue it's simply an outdated system problem with the game, one that I simply believe doesn't need to exist anymore and is not only worth the effort to remove but actually beneficial for the game to remove at this point.

It would be erroneous to conflate what is "actually beneficial for the game" with what is "convenientally beneficial for Teratus." 

Just because you find the system inconvient for your naming sensibilities and feel entitled to certain names doesn't mean that it's outdated.

Quote

If you do the math on how many accounts there are in Gw2, even if all those accounts only had a singular character we're still looking at millions of unusable names.
Then factor in if they all had at least 4 characters, plus a believable number of accounts like ours that have more than 20.. probably a good few million at least.
Suffice to say that is a massive number of taken names whether you highball it or lowball it.
And with every new player or even new character on an older account.. it continues to grow with each one.

I've only got the one Asura, with Sylvari names being as annoying as they are I just can't be bothered to make more Asura which are even more restrictive tbh.

If you do the math for how many accounts and characters there are in GW2 and how many new accounts and characters are created each day, it's pretty clear that you are exaggerating the problem. Yes, there are a number of taken names, but there are also MANY MORE untaken ones. You have to factor in the reality that not everyone cares about lore-conventional names. So you are only competing with a relatively smaller subset of those players who do. 

Quote

As far as Scarlett goes though, Scarlet Briar was not her real name.
Her real Sylvari name Ceara was sigular like all other Sylvari names.
She took the name Scarlet Briar in part to rebel against the Pale Tree and her people and as a way of forging her own path and identity free from the influence of the Pale Tree and other Sylvari.. and even the Elder Dragon her race came from who was successful in corrupting her eventually and drove her mad via Nightmares, although Scarlet only knew this being as an entity in the beginning and did not realise it was the same Elder Dragon her race came from until she'd already lost her mind, by then it was too late, she was his.

There is no "real name" about it. Regardless of her reasons, she chose to go by the name Scarlett Briar instead of her given name of Caera. That is her name. Furthermore, the Pale Tree doesn't mandate that Sylvari have single names. 

Edited April 8, 2022 by Genesis.8572

[Gibson.4036]

On 4/6/2022 at 11:07 AM, GODh.3892 said:

 

* First word is a short word so that my friends know immediately that its me (less confusing than having to check the account name)

 

I originally tried naming all my characters a variation of the same name for this reason. My guildies still didn't seem to be able to recognize all my characters as me.

I gave up and went back to being creative with them. 😄

[Gibson.4036]

With 26 available letters and up to 19 per name, you have 7.7X10 to the 26th power possible names to choose from. 😄

And that's not counting spaces.

[Rasimir.6239]

1 hour ago, Gibson.4036 said:

With 26 available letters and up to 19 per name, you have 7.7X10 to the 26th power possible names to choose from. 😄

And that's not counting spaces.

Don't forget accents and umlauts 😉 .

[Celtich.6472]

Is OP using his api key as a username? 😳

[Gibson.4036]

5 minutes ago, Celtich.6472 said:

Is OP using his api key as a username? 😳

It does look that way.

[Teratus.2859]

2 hours ago, Genesis.8572 said:

This moves the goal posts of the issue. The point is regarding in-universe naming conventions for the various cultures and whether one chooses to adhere to that or not. It's not about the realism of being locked into only one name. There are plenty of MMORPGs where you are locked into one name per server, realm, or whatever. 

Hey, you brought realism into it not me 😛 

The point ultimately isn't in universe naming conventions, that's simply a factor I brought up that contributes to the problem for me, and a number of others who've brought it up in the past.
The problem has always been the annoyance that many people have had at finding names they want, regardless of their naming methods.

2 hours ago, Genesis.8572 said:

It would be erroneous to conflate what is "actually beneficial for the game" with what is "convenientally beneficial for Teratus."

Well if the game comes out on steam and receives thousands of downvotes and complaints because people get stuck on the character creation screen due to inability to find names, thus resulting in a lot of potential players lost thus revenue lost etc ultimately resulting in the steam release being a whole lot of work for little reward.. then I'll gladly say I told you so. 😛

My motives are not for myself, the problem is an annoyance at best for me, though it does occasionally affect my desire to buy another character slot and make another Sylvari or Asura, but that's not my loss at the end of the day.
 
I'm more concerned about this problem eventually turning people off the game., ergo hurting the game.
There are a number of reasons i've heard from online communities and real world friends that have turned them away from Gw2.
The name problem is not the most common, but it's one that does come up quite a lot, even on these forums.

Easily one of the biggest however is the gaping hole in Gw2's main story due to the absence of living world 1 which is finally being addressed after all these years, albeit too little too late for some people.
A lot of people have argued against re-adding LW1 over the years because they couldn't see past their own selfish constant want for new content, thought LW1 was bad anyway and many didn't care nor even consider anyone else who never got the chance to play it when it was live.. which for quite a long time now has been the majority of Gw2's active playerbase.

3 hours ago, Genesis.8572 said:

Just because you find the system inconvient for your naming sensibilities and feel entitled to certain names doesn't mean that it's outdated.

The fact that it's outdated mean's it's outdated.
Most MMO's in the reasonably near future will not have this pointless restriction, that I'd put money on.
 

3 hours ago, Genesis.8572 said:

If you do the math for how many accounts and characters there are in GW2 and how many new accounts and characters are created each day, it's pretty clear that you are exaggerating the problem. Yes, there are a number of taken names, but there are also MANY MORE untaken ones. You have to factor in the reality that not everyone cares about lore-conventional names. So you are only competing with a relatively smaller subset of those players who do. 

I won't deny there are still names out there, but "MANY MORE" Eh, probably not as much as you think.
I'm sure people who don't care about having gibberish names will be fine though.

I won't deny it will hit people like me first, hell it already did years ago and has only gotten worse since.
As I keep saying, every new player, every new character contributes to it.
It's something that will only continue to grow until the day Gw2 ceases to exist.

Maybe it won't impact the game as negatively as I fear it will, or maybe it will.
Either way I don't want to risk loosing a single player over something so unnecessary and avoidable.

3 hours ago, Genesis.8572 said:

There is no "real name" about it. Regardless of her reasons, she chose to go by the name Scarlett Briar instead of her given name of Caera. That is her name. Furthermore, the Pale Tree doesn't mandate that Sylvari have single names. 

It's not specifically stated whether the Pale Tree names each Sylvari or whether their names come from the dream, either way all Sylvari have a name when they are born into the world and every one of them is a singular name.

Scarlet may have adopted a new name and identity to reject everything she was, but that doesn't erase who she was nor her true given name, which was even used against her before her death.
Scarlet was the anomaly, the result of a damaged and broken mind.





 

[Rumpus.1234]

Regardless of technical constraints this is a very silly argument for allowing duplicate names. Quickly glancing through Asura NPC names or Sylvari NPC names brings up many titles ("Explorer X") or epithets ("the Corsair"), let alone canon instances of characters who choose their own new identity, and what could be more creative than that?

[GODh.3892]

1 hour ago, Celtich.6472 said:

Is OP using his api key as a username? 😳

Nah, API keys are much longer (72 characters)...