115940-carbine-employee-first-names-locked-on-megaservers

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I saw this thread in the PTR Bug Reports forums. Someone tried to create a character named "John ....." and was told the name "John" was in use. I just tried it myself and couldn't make a character with the first name of "John" either.
 
The reply was:
 
 
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This is due to employee names being reserved -- someone must have reserved the name John and that means that across all our environments, no one can use that name.
Sorry for the inconvenience!
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A lot of people are asking about this, so I'll give some feedback on it.
 
The problem is programatically figuring out what denotes a name and what doesn't.
 
Let's say there are 3 characters:
Bob (no last name)
Bob Smith
Bob Where
 
Now, you want to send a whisper to one of them, and you say:
    Bob Where are you?
 
Who am I talking to?  Am I talking to "Bob", or am I talking to "Bob Where"?  Or am I trying to talk to "Bob Smith" and just forgot to type the last name?
 
Now there are many ways to resolve this issue.  I personally feel that the simplest solution is often the best, it's the easiest to understand and communicate.  The easiest solution in this case is to make everyone have 2 names.  All other solutions (that we thought of) will make the rules of communication unnecessarily difficult to understand.
 
We did discuss this for several days back and forth trying to decide the best way to resolve the conflict.  Including sticking with the current 1 unique name rule, and just forcing people to change their names if they weren't unique or first.  But when we looked at how many players that would affect, we decided that the least painful was to allow people to keep their names, and gain a last name that some people have actually been asking for since beta.  This was the decision that allowed the most number of people to keep their first name that they really like that didn't add things like account name, or some account number identifier that you couldn't set to your last name.
 
If you truly don't want a last name, I'm sorry.  Perhaps for those of you that don't want a last name, just put the name of your old server as your last name.
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I can't believe no one has discussed this conflict yet? I know somewhere in one of the recent pinned threads is another dev response talking about same first names being used and the addition to last names needed, but I can't find it (PLEASE SOMEONE FIND IT). And they also used "John" as an example for a first name.
 
First off, ya'll doing this is contrary to what ya'll told us in that, no one can reserve names and having the same first name doesn't matter as long as prefix/surname different.
 
I realize this is on PTR, please let us know this is not how it's going down live? Please??? We are but hours away and I really want to see a smoother naming process than launch.
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			...*facepalm*	
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			so basically the actual first names of everyone working for carbine are global banned?wow...	
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			Many of these shouldn't be an issue for Megaservers. We just completed a change to this system today.	
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Many of these shouldn't be an issue for Megaservers. We just completed a change to this system today.
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so basically the actual first names of everyone working for carbine are global banned?
 
wow...
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			Thanks Pyaray, that's good to know. :)	
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^Agree and ty for updating us!
 
*still pissed she can't use Pyaray Worshipper* lol ;)	
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			Is anyone still having problems with names? I'm trying to create a character with [something] Meerkat, but it won't go through. I've changed the first names over and over, but I get the "Aww shoot" message. I think it's the second name of Meerkat that is not available, which I don't believe should be locked (?!).	
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			Since one of the many possible permutations would be "Screw Meerkat" and variants far less tasteful than that, I'm pretty sure "Meerkat" being restricted in the first and second name slot is not an accident.	
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I just created characters named "Bob Jones" and "Bob Smithers" on the PTR. However, I tried "Kira Jones" and got a no go. I thought it might have been a problem with the same last name, but as it turns out, the first name "Kira" was the problem. The name "Eric" also is a no-go. As is "Thomas". "James," as well. "Smith" too - you can't use any of the names as either first or last names.
 
I don't have the time to go through every name, but, damn, this is going to be a major fiasco if it goes to live.
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