Character naming policy

[Itek]

Naming policy from SOE is INTENTIONALLY vague and enforcement varies from person to person.

SOE / Verant wrote a "naming policy" and then deliberately did not enforce it in any kind of consistent manner.

SOE has one only to say they have one, they never had and still have no intention of even attempting to enforce it in any impartial way.

So ... um... yeah ... your mileage, especially with naming policy... will vary.

[Elyssanda]

So ... um... yeah ... your mileage, especially with naming policy... will vary.

4 letter FIrst names are still getting through.
named a toon after my son Jlee this past week... (his name on birth certificate is J. Lee)

[Itek]

Cool, how about 2 and 3 letter surnames. I have reasons for NOT changing the surnames on any of my toons. (They all have the same surname, four letters, and it's a family name for me and my wife.)

[Rawckett]

Hmmm, I don't remember what your surname is. LOL. I'll have to check it out if you log on again

[Lillanu]

Hmmm, I don't remember what your surname is. LOL. I'll have to check it out if you log on again

EQPlayers says it's Tocs

[Kahmon]

I think there is a minimum character limit of 4 characaters

I think that only applied to anyone outside Fires of Heaven. Somehow Sony let them do whatever they wanted including having some charactors with 1 letter names.

I've also seen someone on my server with Jk as their surname so I think the minimums are 4 for first names & 2 for surnames.

[Itek]

If I "quote" myself a third time in a single thread I'll have to assume people have me on /ignore.

Senior Guides (which no longer exist) and GMs can change any name to any other name for any (or no) reason. They are NOT limited, filtered, censored, or checked against the rules.

It was COMMON practice if someone had an inappropriate surname to give them a " " surname. (This was before you could change your own surname.) Then they would HAVE a surname, be unable to change it by creating a new one, and it would be a blank space. They would have to petition to get a new one and then a live person would have to rule if the new one was ok. (And they'd check the account record and see if the account was prohibited from EVER AGAIN even HAVING a surname on ANY character.)

The standard practice was "we don't change first names after level 35 for reputation reasons" but for truly nasty names things could be different.

So if someone in a big powerful guild power-level'ed a toon with a name that would get me banned from EQTC-boards past 35 a GM might, and I mean MIGHT, have been annoyed enough to alter the name to a single letter. But still to the best of my knowledge it's not possible for a PLAYER to assign themselves a name / surname of less than 4 letters.

There was a thread on the "official forums" about a toon with a bad name. It was petitioned and the CSR gave the canned response and nothing was done about it. (The toon still has the name on EQPlayers at last check.) But the word-filter on the forums **SMURF**ed the name as a bad word. (If you swear on those forums the filter puts **SMURF** in place of the profanity. )

Naming enforcement is a crapshoot.

[Aryse Andenter]

In going on nearly 7 years of almostly daily play I've never seen anyone with a name less than 4 characters. And very rarely just four characers.

The guy with LD as a surname had GONE LD and then managed to come back. It's a bug. Semi-frequently people will have AFK or LFG tags they 'actually' no longer have floating behind their name hours later. (Easy to tell it's a bug. The guy LFG who doesn't show up in /who all lfg, because he's in my group. The one AFK but who doesn't spam me with "afk messages" when I send them tells.)

GRATS on finding a name you like.

There is at least one toon with the surname LD. He has had it consistently for quite some time. He does not show up as linkdead in a zone list.

I suspect that some GM just gave it to him following their usual inconsistent policy. There are quite a lot of surnames that you can't create yourself but can have a GM give you, due to type of characters (` requires a GM I think) or filters and stuff.

[Itek]

/sigh

possible ... but odd ...

I -frequently- see people with "surnames" of AFK and LFG and LD who do not show up as any of those in the /who list relevant.

Which is pretty freaky ...

Since I have /shownames 1 (first names only) except when I make a special effort to turn it to /shownames 4 (everything) for screenshots and the like.

i.e. they are bugged, that's not their real surname

As my sig clearly explains your mileage may very. And the GIST of what I've been trying to say is "naming policy isn't so much a policy as a complete joke."

[Artemisia]

I know that first names need to be at least 4 characters. I wanted a 3 letter first name, it was rejected, I petitioned and got it, result? Toon vanished from char select screem :-( took 4 days to fix. Strange though as there used to be a GM on ZEK called The Executioner.

Then with surnames it's all great fun, I have had a toon since 1999 and her surname I also wanted for another toon, take, petition for a ' get a remove your name immediately as it looks like a title *boggle*
short and sweet of it, I wrote to CS, and told them you cannot approve my surname for 6 years (written exactly the same) when a GM approved it and then decide I cannot have it. GM should either allow both or not have approved the first one either in 1999
Result: surname approved and allowed.

Then again I told CS that if they allow "she who stands on corners", "she who takes her armour off" and variations of the sort (infringement of sexual reference) then it was silly to not allow my surname.

This was 4-5 weeks ago and guess what those with the hairy dangly bits and she who stands on corner are still ingame.

(I changed the names as not to sounds vulgar but you get the meaning)