Paid Character Name Changes

[Trouble]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=2512090701

$10

Good thing I like my name, cause I'm broke and can't afford to pay $10 change my name.

[Ragnoros]

Epic Fail. Way to erase another bit of the small semblance of community you have. Now no matter how big a douche you may be for 10$ it all goes away.

Unless they have public records of who changed their names to what. That MIGHT work. Doubtful tho.

[Kail]

You could already change your name whenever you changed servers.  As far as I can tell, they're just lowering the cost to doing so (if you wanted to stay on the same server, it took like a month to transfer your guy back, plus two transfer fees).  I'm not seeing this as a huge reason to get worked up, either in favor or against.

[Paelos]

Wow. That's a whole new level of following the easy buck to screw over your community. Some things simply can't be measured in revenues. You have to consider damages done to your overall reputation and the economic fallout involved. Who did they think the main market for this was? Upstanding people who have grown tired of raiding and playing under the same name on their main character for the last 3 years? No, it's the person who screwed over his reputation with a large group of people or got roasted on the forums and wants a clean slate to kill again.

Morons.

[SurfD]

Actually, i'm not terribly concerned about this.

See, server transferring with the intent of changing your name to avoid negative stigma attached to your character is pretty much the only really effective way to do so. Because tracking you to a new server could be potentially difficult, and assuming you wait a month to transfer back, most people are going to have forgotten what your gear / skills / etc looked like to put two and two together to make the connection.

Due to the way most WoW communities work, anyone stupid enough to pull off a big ninja and then hope to gain instant "ninja vanish" through a name change WITHOUT moving servers, is likely to be outed VERY soon due to the fact that your name is NOT the unique identifier that WoW uses to track your character.  If I have you on my ignore list, and you change your name, my Ignore list updates to reflect your NEW name, regardless of if you want it to or not.  This change is going to be noticed pretty fast by the people who are guaranteed to have /ignored the ninja just for such tracking purposes.

Add in the armory-detectives and it will be pretty easy to almost instantly point out that Joe-Ninja is now Bob-that-no-one-has-ever-heard-of-before-who's-character-is-exactly-like-joe.

[WindupAtheist]

My oft-mentioned game of choice has had this for years.  Of course, in that case it was more for the guy going "I just bought this awesome account but they didn't tell me the best character was named Hitlerqueef!"  Same reason they added paid sex-changes.

[Simond]

My oft-mentioned game of choice has had this for years.

So has EQ. I'm surprised that it took Blizzard this long, tbh.

[ShenMolo]

Server transfer's have a 3 month cooldown.

[Xanthippe]

Good move on Blizzard's part.

The disreputable people will soon be known for what they are.  A skunk still smells and has a stripe even if he's named Flower.

[jpark]

Epic Fail. Way to erase another bit of the small semblance of community you have. Now no matter how big a douche you may be for 10$ it all goes away.

Unless they have public records of who changed their names to what. That MIGHT work. Doubtful tho.

The ease of leveling wich gives each user countless alts - in a sense sabotaged community in the game at the outset.  It may not be that the WOW user base is as bad as we like to think per se - but the game mechanic giving little accountability.

Feel like a jerk today?  Grief on your alt.  So the name changing will not exaceberate this any further in my mind.

[Jayce]

Another thing that occurs to me: not being an open PvP game and having as many safeguards against griefing as WoW does, I personally haven't seen nearly the drama that accompanies games like EVE or UO or even EQ at its beginning, with its paltry defenses against smacktards who ninja and the like.

Now maybe I'm not as plugged in to the community as a lot of people are, but that just means the drama has to reach a high level for me to notice it, and I don't in WOW.  I'm not saying there aren't any griefing bastards that will use this to hide, but it will be the vast minority, and even then it won't work.

[ShenMolo]

I bet a large number of transfer candidates are looking to avoid the drama associated with leaving a guild to join a new one. Often times you find yourself tired, or annoyed by your current guildies, but leaving the guild and staying on the same server would be more trouble than it's worth drama wise. Now you can just change your name and apply somewhere for a fresh start. By the time anyone finds out what happened (if they ever do), it wont matter any more.

[Mrbloodworth]

No mater how you guys feel about it. People will pay for this. The price does make it so that name changes are not overly done.

[Chimpy]

I bet a large number of transfer candidates are looking to avoid the drama associated with leaving a guild to join a new one. Often times you find yourself tired, or annoyed by your current guildies, but leaving the guild and staying on the same server would be more trouble than it's worth drama wise. Now you can just change your name and apply somewhere for a fresh start. By the time anyone finds out what happened (if they ever do), it wont matter any more.

Name changes will not make you inconspicuous on your current realm, if you are on someone's friends list when the name is changed (a couple of people I know had forced name changes) the friends list still shows them, just with a new name.

Drama almost always ensues with transfers, because most of the time, the people who transfer do it in a pretty douchebaggerific fashion in my experience.

[stray]

I like options like this because I have a slight OCD issue.

[Dren]

So those complaining are worried that people that join epic level PUGs will ninija, pay 10 bucks and then rinse and repeat?  Really?

That's the only scenario I can see being a problem.  If you are in a PUG, it won't be for anything epic level 99% of the time.  People can't ninja loot other than ROLLING for things they shouldn't.  First time it happens, boot em from the group.  I guess if you are running instances with FFA.....that's just nuts.

If it is a guild run, use master loot.  Problem solved.  How can anyone ninja loot then?
If they complain, boot em from the group.  Further complaining?  Boot em from the guild so they can change their name and come back and try again.  Hah, I guess some might call that fun or effective.

I just can't see where anyone can be that much of a tool in a game that has so many in-game devices to stop the asshattery of old. 

[Calantus]

Yay! I've been wanting to change my rogue's name forEVER.

Now they just need to let us change races and features and genders.

[Selby]

Now they just need to let us change races and features and genders.

Why not change alliances while we are at it? ;-)

[Venkman]

Someday there will be another MMO that comes along, drags in millions of never-here-before newbs, goes through the same code issues and drama, the same personality crap, and eventually launches first paid character transfers and then paid name changes to the horror of the 5 people across the game that fear the trillions of evil players just got their clean slate, greatly exaggerating the potential impact because they themselves don't actually know anyone else. All on the forums.

And the above was largely said five years ago.

I wish there was a way we could group-categorize posts, between old rants and actual new events. I know which way things would heavily lean. Then maybe that wisdom would help us move on.

[Merusk]

Quiet you.  There's drama to be had!

[schild]

Someday there will be another MMO that comes along, drags in millions of never-here-before newbs, goes through the same code issues and drama, the same personality crap, and eventually launches first paid character transfers and then paid name changes to the horror of the 5 people across the game that fear the trillions of evil players just got their clean slate, greatly exaggerating the potential impact because they themselves don't actually know anyone else. All on the forums.

And the above was largely said five years ago.

I wish there was a way we could group-categorize posts, between old rants and actual new events. I know which way things would heavily lean. Then maybe that wisdom would help us move on.

Feel free to do it for WoW on the Wiki. I basically did for SWG.

[Trouble]

I have read there is a 3 month cooldown on doing it. Relax all ye who fear chronic ninja-looter name-changers!