Wensleydale

I'm waiting for the $40 "Take Your Character to the Hair Salon" announcement so I can get a new do, and stop having to pass on head armor that doesn't cover my bald dome.

 

PSGarak

Haircuts are coming in WLK, assumedly with an in-game fee rather than a RL one.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Opioid

They should add epic haircuts for completing end-game PVE content or accomplishing a title at the end of an arena system. It would really help people stand out.

 

Akomos

Epic haircuts.

The imagination boggles.

 

Rane

I'd kill Vashj if it unlocks snake hair.

 

Oaken

I believe they have only talked about remodelling your hair not necessarily your other features although they've also said they haven't finalized details on that so who knows. It could be a gnomish hair salon and plastic surgery unit.

Er, I'm not sure it said that. I think they are simplying locking your old name for a period to ensure no confusion (no name-swapping for example and new transfers to your server would be prevented from having that name for a while). If somebody had a name you wanted even if they are now inactive I'm not sure you can take their name. You'd probably only get it if they'd moved off server. I think I recall somebody telling me that City of Heroes used to retire inactive names though (so if you stopped playing for a long period and came back you might have to rename your character on login because somebody had taken it in the meantime) so its always possible Blizzard will do the same.

 

Tyrn

I can envision it as a flamboyantly metrosexual duo, consisting of a Gnome and Blood Elf, named Amma gnome Smith and Flabio respectively. after charging an ingame fee, you are able to access a "poke/graft" device, that alters your toons appearance to what you desire. The device also has a chance to proc a "Moonstroll or a Elekkman" mishap.

No real reason not too. I would not mind fixing the face of one of my alts for a gold fee.

http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/8412/tar2fv0.jpg

 

Ziggurat

I'd kick in another $50 to be able to re-take my old name being used by a guy with a 1+ year inactive account

 

Symbul

Yeah. Don't make mail alts/green dragon summon alts with "really funny" names and then end up rerolling to them. I mean hey I was already in Brill and level 3. Why not just keep going?

Can't wait to fork up the $10.

 

Gryzemuis

Why does this have to be a paid service ?

The technical implementation of changing names is very likely a very small feature. The real work has been implemented ages ago, as GMs could change names from day 1. So all they had to do was implement a webpage for the customers, and a connection from that webpage to the database with names.

I see nameschanges as a simple service. It doesn't cost them anything to change a name. It is automated, after all. In fact, I am sure it saves them money to have this automated feature, as it will reduce workload on the GMs.

So why charge $10 ?

I also think transfers should be free. Sometimes transfers can increase your gaming enjoyment. It is in Blizzard's best interest to keep their customers happy. We already pay our 13 euros/month. Why try to milk them more ?

There is potential for abuse with namechanges and server transfers. But making it a paid service doesn't prevent the abuse. It is the 3 month cooldowns that are a small attempt to prevent abuse.

I've played Vanguard for 2 months. There's lots of bad things to be said about that game. But one thing that struck me was the following. Sony had the player database viewable via a website. Much like WoW's armory. To view that database (or make your character visible to others), you had to pay an extra 1 or 2 dollars per month. (First month was free). I really disliked that. A simple service, already in game, I'm already paying my subscription. And now they want an extra easy buck for a lousy service that should be part of the overall product ? It pissed me off tremendously.

Same thing with Blizzard now. They do very little to keep population and faction balanced over servers. They rely on people paying extra money to transfer off. And maybe later pay to transfer back. Now they want you to pay for a simple namechange. What's next ? We have to pay for the armory ? You can buy a Black Temple key for $20 ?

 

Valerian

I'd say the primary reason to charge for it is because they can get away with doing so. Charging for things that actually affect gameplay/balance isn't going to fly. But charging for things that are fluff (like the TCG pets/tabards) is pretty easy to get away with and is just extra income. Its smart business.

 

Evalara

The reason for the fee is to put downward pressure on the volume of requests. The revenue is just icing.

 

Beliandra

Agreed. Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue if you said to WoW's 9 million players "hey guys, you can all change your names if you go to this page on our website"? I shudder. The fee is to enable people who really want to change their names to do so, whilst those who might be inclined to do so "for the lulz" will be discouraged.

 

◊ Kalman

See also: PTR character copies.

 

Beliandra

Charging a token fee for a PTR character copy is starting to look like an attractive idea.

 

◊ Cadfael

That's the Anti-moron mechanism. Imagine it would be free. How many more variants of Legolas, Gimli et al. would we see if the day is boring for Johnny Moron.

How many more shadow-, dark-, holy-, heal-, x-, -x, whatever names. With this fee attached, chances are that some rethink their name-choice and correct a mistake they did. With no fee, it becomes the playground for the not so bright ones to see who can come up with most stupid name.

 

dr_AllCOM3

That wasn't what he meant. PTR copy is free and heavily overloaded, just because people can without thinking about it.

 

spiderella

This is the first thing I thought of when name changes were announced, so I did some research. While 'Legolas' alone is unusable (some foresight from Blizzard), I was unable to discover any derivative like "Ligolas", "Lagolas" etc. that was not used on armory. Elflegolas and Legolaself were both very popular.

 

Beliandra

Exactly. It's heavily overloaded. It takes days to copy a character. The test servers are heavily overloaded. Serious attempts at testing are extremely painful. Hence my comment. If a token amount (say, a couple of dollars) was charged for a PTR character copy, how many people who wish to seriously test a patch would be discouraged? Not too many, I'll wager. Far fewer than the proportion of people who just want to clown around on the test server.

I was always tempted to create a spectacularly inappropriate character with a name like that. Like a grizzled Dwarf priest whose name was a riff on Legolas. Or a female Tauren druid named Drizzzzt. Of course if I'd ever gone through with it, I'd probably be one of the customers lining up to pay $10 to change a joke name that was only funny for a day.

 

songster

For a while my banker was a drunken dwarf hunter called Legless

 

CaptBooyah

Its about time that brought this in and I am overly surprised how they've neglected it for so long. Must be some sort of release thing where if they release too many products at once, ppl dont bandwagon them to death at the start.

"oh wow! they're bring in XXXXX for warcraft! I cant wait to get a chance at that... been waiting so long.. better make sure my credit card is paid up.."

I'll probably change one of my characters name to something more 'ARPEEish' but the rest Im sort of happy with... esp my undead warlock 'zomgbie' who is almost 12 days /played without a report. Not sick of that joke name yet thankfully =]

 

Dustwhisper

I want to call my character for CaptainAwesome to bad it's to long. Guess CaptAwesome or CptAwesome will be chosen :P It's a good thing, a bit stupid to price it at $10 and I wish they'd allow longer names as well.

 

• Greybone

I really don't see what this thread can bring in terms of valuable discussion around this topic after the first page.

Edit: Nope, didn't think so

 

Nayt

My original name from Sargeras is still taken on Detheroc by a lvl 19 Rogue who's armory has never been active. And hasn't played in (I assume) over a year, any way to petition this? I don't really care, but it would be cool to have my old name back

We decided that we're changing our names to variations of our officers names.

"When Nate's in town a feast is down."
Pizza, Gold, Contests and Myself
Twits about School, Dating, Partying and Jackassery
Hunter / Priest / Shaman / Warrior

 

Jessie

Even though I sometimes regret naming my main after a character from Saved by the Bell, I doubt I would take advantage of this service for my paladin. It was pretty annoying at the beginning of TBC sorting out which shaman matched to each previous main, since nobody bothered using a similar naming convention. If I use the service, it will probably be for my alts with silly names.