113440-playernames-tells-server-arch-wildstar

== Content ==
			
The entire design paradigm of playernames and server structure needs to be reconsidered in MMOs, and WildStar is on the right track.
 
Neither players nor developers look forward to server merges. Devs because it's bad press for population and the workload in moving sensitive player data. Players because they don't want to lose their very important playernames. The guy named Buster on Server A doesn't want to lose his name to a second Buster on Server B just because the population of A was chosen to get moved. It's a coin flip and feels pretty unfair; Some players on SWTOR went through as many as 3 forced name changes as their servers were uncontrollably merged and consolidated down, and lost their identity repeatedly. Once is enough for some people to quit. and nobody wants to go from Casey to Cásey and then never get private whispers or tells again because of alt-coded letters.
 
In the real world there isn't a cap on popular names like Buster or Jenny. We can have as many Mikes as we want without forced EDITS because we have middle and last names to help tell the difference(along with address, government issue ID numbers like Social Security or various licenses, etc) between individuals. I think it's great that we have the global handle system in place to chat across servers and friend people no matter what character they're logged in as, but there's still a cap on names per server, and on the forums with poster's names. Is this something that can be addressed going forward into the megaserver architecture?
 
From an RP perspective a lot of people would like optional middle or last names to stand apart or cement relationships with one another. Unfortunately I can also see it being a confusion issue for the game because both players have to consentually agree to share global handles, so between strangers the game has no idea who to send a /whisper to if there's 20 Jessicas. Since we already have obvious /ignore privileges to block offensive users and content, is there any way we can share global handles a little more easily and automatically? Ultimately it would be nice if it led to a state where we could have duplicates of names and it not be a system issue were the mail system has no confusion about what item or letter goes to whom. Is it TOO complicated?
 
By comparison with other games:
SWTOR has first and last names, first names are the primary identifier of a player's identity and LAST names can overlap, but not first names.
World of Warcraft identifies by a first name only, but has additional infrastructure that adds an @servername to the end to differentiate yourself from same names on other servers for the purposes of whispers and mails. There's also a global name for battle.net to facilitate cross-game communication.
Diablo 3 just does not care. You can name characters Frank as often as you want, and the game can tell the difference behind the scenes with your battle.net name(name#1234) with any friend invites through mouse menus.
 
I think there's great systems in place in Wildstar, but if there's room to I'd certainly like to see some improvement to open up names from a first-come, first-serve mentality. I'm not sure what else or exactly how much has to change under the hood to facilitate this, but it would be great if there's a place for it to open up with megaserver design still under construction. Considering how much MMOs copy from each other, it would be awesome to see a real change so that we move out of that era for ALL games, where some mook takes a name I like and I have to add accent marks or another letter so I look like an idiot.	
----
			Buster Casey EDITS poster's content TOO often, what a mook......well then. My job is done here.	
----
			Hah, wow, I can't believe I didn't catch that the first time I read it.	
----
			I made the original post aware of the last name system coming with megaservers, if that wasn't apparent. I'm hoping that it would be possible to share/overlap last names as well as firsts. Re-reading my own post, I wondered if I might seem behind the times in news.	
----
			
They could take Star Trek Onlines approach and have it be in game name @ character handle.  So mine would be something like Mike@wildstarnewbie.  Above my head in game it will say Mike along with my guild name and titles.  But when i talk in chat it will say Mike@wildstarnewbie: hai guys whats up.  STO has the option to turn off the @handle portion if you chose to.  When you are typing someones name in the chatbox to whisper them or to put them on ignore or whatever if there is more then 1 Mike then it will start to show the possible matches in the chatbox.  So typing out M-I-K-E-@-W will show the following:  Mike@wildstarnewbie  then underneath that Mike@wonderbread  and under that Mike@wutyoulookinat  and so on and you are able to click on the one you want.  When you mail stuff in STO you can either use toon name Mike@wildstarnewbie in the recipient box or you can just type @wildstarnewbie.  Either way it doesnt matter because the mailboxes in STO are account wide.  I can hop on my toon named Mike@stonewbie, mail something addressed to mike@stonewbie and hop onto John@stonewbie or any one of my toons on that account and claim that mail item.
 
EDIT: ohh and another thing that STO can do too is your character name can have spaces.  The mandatory character name can have spaces, dashes and apostrophes. But they also have an optional name that is first middle last.	
----
			I do agree with global names though (Taking a note from one of NCSoft's other MMOs). @Name . and you could send tells to the global directly without figuring out the characters. Though we will see how the last names play out once the servers hit	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I do agree with global names though (Taking a note from one of NCSoft's other MMOs). @Name . and you could send tells to the global directly without figuring out the characters. Though we will see how the last names play out once the servers hit
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I do agree with global names though (Taking a note from one of NCSoft's other MMOs). @Name . and you could send tells to the global directly without figuring out the characters. Though we will see how the last names play out once the servers hit
----
			
We have this thread going for feedback, concerns, and questions about the coming megaserver change (which includes the name changes) - https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/111868-megaserver-feedback-thread/
 
So, I'm going to lock this one up and ask the discussion move over there.	
----