Rane

All of a sudden this was thrown up on the frontpage and forums (WoW Forums -> Paid Character Name Changes Are Here). Paid Name changes for $10 per name change (no other limitations seemingly announced):

Naturally, it's the new buzz on the official forums which makes it somewhat entertaining to read on a lazy friday morning. That said, this really came out of the blue (no pun intended) and I was surprised to see no new topic was made yet to discuss this.

I imagine a similar option will be introduced in the EU for about 10-15 euro and I will probably take advantage of it. Will you and why or why not?

 

• sadris

It seems cheaper to have someone report your name for "trademark violation."

 

Opioid

Or, barring that, delete your character, have someone make an alt with that name, then sob to a GM about how its the worstest thing you ever did and that you want your epics back and you know restores are limited but pretty pretty pleeeeease!

Wham -> reload -> rename

 

Rane

Ah yes, the old "I will have my friends report me, surely if they get 5 reports my name will be changed!" trick. Seemingly similar to the even more ancient "I will delete my character "by mistake" and have my friend on another account create a level 1 with the same name. They will have no option but to give me a full name change!".

If I were you I'd stop assuming GMs are stupid automated robots like that. I frequent both the EU and US GM forums and it's laughable how many people believe this still works. In the first case, people still get denied because Blizzard decide this based on their policy. In the second case, what is a lot more likely is that either the level 1 gets a name change (likely with an extra letter thrown in) and the deleted character is either restored normally, or given the same extra letter treatment.

Along with requests to have PvE-PvP transfers, name changes have been among of the largest amount of requests made regarding character appearance. With Paid Name Changes introduced, it may be fair to assume they would also be considering said PvE-PvP transfers. Then as well with new hairstyles coming in in WotLK, who knows what further character alterations will be introduced over time? Because it certainly seems like Blizzard is reconsidering their stances a lot.

 

Fingers

Surprisingly there are some names they just won't change no matter how many times you /report it. This is a good thing since, dollars to donuts, /report was very likely being abused in this manner. Also, If you transfer servers and no one has your name but you want to change your name, you now have an option. Another nice little capitalistic stroke of brilliance on Blizz's part to make more money and fill a need. I wish more MMO companies thought this way.

 

• Tibor

That seems like an exceptionally dangerous game to play for a name change, Opioid. I wouldn't chance a main, or even well-tooled alt, on the whims of a GM character restore.

Next, or maybe after PvE-PvP transfers, I'd like to see Paid Race Changes... I'd definitely pay $25 to get the Michael Jackson treatment.

 

Ryley

Well, for what it's worth, that's how I got my Shaman's name changed to Bilco, when it used to be Ryley. I also know of a few others on Blackhand who have done the same thing, so I suppose some GM's are stupid.

As to the question in the OP, I will be paying the 10 dollars to change my name back to Ryley, as it's generally confusing because half the people in my guild refer to me as Ryley and the other half as Bilco, I just need to wait for the feature to open up to Blackhand.

Edit: Stupid me, didn't even notice you were the OP, sorry about that!

 

mikebro

There is a 90 day cooldown on it. I'm impatiently awaiting for this to be mis-used, like an entire raid of common/rhyming names. If I do actually use it, it will probably be for something silly like that.

I wonder how this will work with friends lists and arena teams. When you change servers Armory isn't that great at tracking it, my old 5v5 has like 3 people that transferred to other servers but were never removed from the team. And of course, will peoples friends list auto-update to the new name or will it not to leave one who changed names more anonymous?

 

JamesVZ

If it works anything like the test server, you'll still be able to /friend the old name and see when they come online or go offline.

 

• Tibor

One of my friends recent had a forced name change, due to a ToS violation (he had weirdly accented characters in his name). One day he was Syñ on my Friends List, then next Cinne. Chances are pretty good the friends list Friends List module stores unique player IDs, then displays Player(playerId).name(). That's pretty rudimentary database design.

 

Pasco

It is not really hard to create a level 1 char with your name on the new server before the transfer.

 

Rayeth

This to me sounds like Blizzard has finally put a price on ninjaing.

But seriously, I hope that my friends and ignore lists will change automatically when people do this or else I am totally boned. People with names that contain any non-standard character should be forced to do this immediately imo.

 

Pachwa

From Nethaera:

A sad comment on our country: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fbpZXivv-M&e

 

Whitemane

And amazingly enough your question was answered two posts above your own!

I wonder if Blizzard is going to change their policy on forced namechanges now that there is an alternative that will line their pockets.

 

◊ Vectivus

I guess I question who this benefits:

a) the legitimate player who has built up a reputation around his/her name? or
b) the nuisance/troll/ninja/eBay'd character who wants to shed their skin every 3 months.

I know a few people who will take immediate advantage of this, who have completely legitimate reasons for doing so - just flat-out don't like their names. That's fine.

In the long run, though, besides an easy money grab, who does this change really help?

 

• Whiteknight

Blizzard.
I'm almost certain this change is about reducing their product support costs - PSS is usually a huge cost for a company like bliz and if name change requests really are that common, an automated way for players to buy it would cut out that cost almost entirely. That saving probably vastly outweighs the income from the service.

 

MeCh

Everyone on Mal'Ganis has to change their name to GurgthockXX.

In other news, this sounds like a huge boon for rp servers.

 

Fringe_Worthy

Now, if you could pay to change someone else's name... that would be a profit center for Blizzard. And anyways, I suspect the cost is mostly there just to control how many people do it. Because to change names... it has to be worth $10 to you. That should chop off most of the 'Need more umlaught' joke crowd.

 

Glayde

Probably prompted by the number of characters named after Dumbledore who are requesting name changes.

 

Asheneyes

Excellent.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

Sweet now Chocula can change his name to Champchamp so in 2.3 his full title will be like it is on test, Champion Champchamp Champion of the Naaru

 

◊ Vectivus

He should meet the Tauren Warrior on The Underbog, Conqueror Conqueror.

 

Darlal

Major Major Major Major?

Anyway, this has some nice legitimate uses as well. One of our raid leaders is a warrior named Raid (when he rerolled his mage in order to be more useful to the...you guessed it...raid). He likes the name, but due to bliz's programming you cannot use his names in any sort of macro. As he is our MA, it's annoying that I can't make assist macros for him (try /assist raid ... bliz doesn't like it). To make matters worse, he needs to be manually clicked on to invite to groups (/invite raid has the same issue as assist). His unit frames work generally well, but sometimes random functions die, once again due to his name. Now that his feature is available (we're on the first round realm list), perhaps I'll be able to talk him into another name.

 

◊ Kurisu

I find this funny because we said the same for one of our old druids, his name was Champ and he only grinded for Champion for the title so we called him Champion Champ, Leader of the Pack (even though he was a resto nut but was an officer).

 

Keline

I know a lot of people that are unhappy with special characters in their name (é, â etc) that would gladly accept this service. Names like these break chatlogs, armory stuff and so on, it's not just cosmetic