Firstly, let me appologise if this question has already been asked. I did look but couldnt find the answer.
I know that at the end of the beta that characters will be wiped, and I think that is a good choice.
What I would like to know is will we be able to reserve our character names from beta so we maintain the names post release?
Name reservations are part of the pledge packages - so if you qualified for it, I’m sure at some point in beta/before launch you would. I’ve linked the current pledges.
Unless I have missed it we have not been given the details on how name reservation will work. Fair enough - we are still late in pre-alpha.
The best guess I have seen in previous threads on this topic is that they will *not* mix together the pledge reward of being able to participate in beta testing and the pledge reward of early choice of names. People with pledge levels entitling them to early name selection will not be required to join the beta test to get this benefit.
At some point after they have created the servers we will have available at release they will let us reserve names on these servers. With a high level of probability the same name can be used multiple times as long as each character is on a different server. It is not certain that only first names will be relevant - they could do what games like Neverwinter and FFXIV did (and many others I am sure) and have us pick two names and make only the combination unique. Thus there could be hundreds of characters with the same first name - note that this is not a path I would necessarily like but I haven't seen it ruled out.
They may or may not limit how we can reserve names. We may need to choose one server and not be allowed to reserve names on the others. We may have a limited number of names we can reserve. Or it may be a free-for-all and any of use can reserve as many names as we have character slots for.
I suspect the best guess is they will use the character creation system - we will be allowed to create characters early and as we do so the names will be reserved on the server where we create them. If so beta names will have no relevance at all.
Please note that not one thing in this post is canon - what I am *guessing* can be done and may be done but VR has not said and probably has not yet decided what *will* be done.
I remember EQ2 launching a character creator a few weeks prior to it's launch back in '04. Players were able to import all their premade characters which was a huge time saver once the game went live as I spent many, many hours playing around with the different settings for my main and alts.
/petition VR: Consider releasing a character creator tool for all us adoring fans a few weeks prior to launch.... pretty please? <3
Porygon said:I would love being able to create the entire character early. I almost never spend time creating because I'm in a rush toget into the world and get ahead of the masses.
This would be a wonderful convenience!
I like how FFXIV has a benchmark client that includes the full character creation. I might be weird, but I love just playing around in the character creation of MMOs - even ones I don't really play much, if at all - just to flex my artistic creativity in designing characters. xD
Heloisa said:I remember EQ2 launching a character creator a few weeks prior to it's launch back in '04. Players were able to import all their premade characters which was a huge time saver once the game went live as I spent many, many hours playing around with the different settings for my main and alts.
I remember this too. I didn't get to use it, because I was deployed at the time and it was already a few weeks after release that the boxes finally showed up at the PX, but still, cool idea/feature.
Rogue said:Too bad they didn't implement a more modern naming system with first.last or first.handle.
Brad's reply last Nov.
I think names are already incredibly important, and becoming moreso day by day. At TwitchCon we had so many people introducing themselves to other fantheons by their in-game name -- it is what it is -- your in-game persona, especially in a social community focused game like Pantheon is *everything*. This is why we continue to head down the road of assigning a first and last name to your character upon creation. Rushing to reserve names, finding out one you've used for years has already been taken, etc. just causes so much unnecessary angst and disappointment.
Just as RL civilization went to two names (and then 3+, I have a first, middle, and last of my birth certificate), so also must virtual civilization.
There is some downside... there could be 2+ other Aradunes running around, but at least you could be Aradune combined with a last name that together makes you unique. Not to mention how this could be tied into the Progeny system, etc.
The concerns I've heard range from 'I don't want to have to think of a second name', to how cool it was to get your last name at 20 in EQ, to UI/Chatting issues.
I don't have much to say in regards to the first. I do agree it was cool to get your last name at 20 in EQ and in fact the idea certainly wasn't mine -- MUDs had been doing that for years, since the late 80s at least. But I think we can offer titles and other ways to recognize and reward.
Lastly the UI issue(s) I think are fairly easily dealt with:
1. If you were logged in and there were, say, 3 Aradunes logged into the same realm as you, and you typed '/tell Aradune Hey man, let's meet up at the bridge', the UI would simply let you know with a pop up list the three people logged in and you would choose one.
2. Example 1 above, however, would happen infrequently, especially if it already happened at least once. We will have an Alias system for this and other reasons (e.g. it's not just to address the more characters logged in with the same first name issue). Essentially you can take anyone from from a Names List (note you'll be able to have multiple lists, say a friends list, an annoying persons list, etc). You can then assign an alias to any of those names. Like I said, this is to address more than just the 2+ names list -- say you have a person you chat with who insists his character's name is some crazy long authentic Sindarin name "Arkininathdunearinatha". I would immediately do /alias Arkininathdunearinatha Arky. Then when I do a '/tell Arky hurry up and meet at the bridge slacker!' it just works. He doesn't know you've renamed him/given him an alias, but your config does, and you no longer need to type or worry about his long name. Same with multiple people with the same first name. '/alias Aradune Mithara Stinky' and now you just use Stinky to refer to him (me?).
3. This greatly helps with realm/server transfers. No more issues there we hope. Will a name, first and last, need to be together unique not just across a realm but across all realms? Likely so, yes.
One thing to keep in mind too is that this is very much a CS issue, moreso than a dev or design issue. Frustrating people by not allowing them to have a name very important to them creates not only an emotional and negative scenario, mad rushes to try reserve names (were we to allow that), but it just gets worse and worse the bigger and more successful the game gets. So the player isn't happy, and then he or she communicates their unhappiness to a CS or GM, taking up valuable resources on our end as well.
I do realize the issue is controversial and trust me, we've given it a LOT of thought. It's something that has plagued CS since the early days of EQ, and it's only grown by orders of magnitude since then with so many more people playing online games where their online persona is very important to them, has a reputation, has sentimental value, etc. In fact, I personally reached out to my friend Rob Pardo (co-creator of WoW, etc.) and he let me know he wished they'd done it this way, that this was a huge issue with WoW, with not only a lot of frustrated people but a huge load on CS. They finally automated it to some degree, but had he a time machine, he'd also approach this issue similarly.
See post here - https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/3639/character-names-important/view/page/4
Other links - https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/4299/surnames/view/page/1
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2560/surnames-small-request
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/1923/identical-first-names
Edit: I wouldn't worry about name creation just yet as well. Way too early for it to be a focus, but in time I'm sure VR will be sure to let us know how it will be done. :)
Thank you Saicred.
I knew that having two names unique rather than unique first names was quite possible but I hadn't realized that they were leaning strongly in that direction.
Unique names across servers is something I had never thought was a serious possibility - apparantly I was wrong there.
All quite tangential to the question of *how* and *when* names will be requested by people with the option to reserve them early
