Careful With That Name

Posted on Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Filed under Characters

Arbitrary has a cute post up about Boss names in Lord of the Rings Online, asking the developers to take a little more care in naming their big bads. Why? Because we all know that, as gamers and particularly as MMO gamers, we LOVE to shorten names. My favorite example she provides is her kin talking about going to visit The Mistress…

It got me thinking that we as players should also take note. If you haven't noticed yet, your guild mates will reduce your name to one syllable (because talking is hard) and it likely won't be a sensible one. They'll grab the first 3-4 letters in your toon's name and convert it into your new name, whether you really want to be known as that 4 letter word or not.

Personal example: My typical RPG name while growing up was Rashnu. I don't remember where I got that name, but it stuck with me. When I started playing MMOs, the name came with me as well. Through a combination of not-so-interesting circumstances, I had to settle on Rasshnu in WoW, the second s added to allow the game to take the name. As it turns out, I was being called Rass or Rash most of the time, until one enterprising 14 year-old in our guild noticed that "ass" was in my name, and from there out I was called "ass" by my guildmates. Almost made a paid name change worth it… almost.

Moral of the story: Be careful when you name your character, or you might just be an ass.