I just don't get it (name rant)

[Draggar]

OK, so Draggar De'Vir was rejected because De'Vir might mean something on the lines of 'the virus' in German (yet DeVir is OK).

I'm fine with that.

How could (Level 65 btw)

Exarch Heyeu Pull'Myfinger

Get accepted by a GM? Since it has the ' in the name, it was petitioned ot a GM and accepted.

Nice to see one sided yet erratic enforcement of the rules.

I know, it's a :dedhorse: , but it's still annoying.

[Katalaeia]

Cmon, all you have to do is take a look at all the legolas variations running around to realize they don't give two whits about the name policy (no names from popular fiction or homonyms thereof, forget what rule that is).

Disclaimer: I don't mind names from fictional works, as long as you get the name right and don't massacre it. If you can get it right, it's usually little known fiction and wouldn't be offensive to anyone. But cmon, Legolllas, Leggollasss, Llegoolaas, etc...*boooring*. Same for Bilbo, Drizzt, etc. It's also better to pick a minor character from a fantasy work, because the name usually sounds really good and you don't look like you're trying to be the star of the show.

And if I see another bard named Brittneee Speeeers I'm going to scream.

Though when I was told that a GM probably wouldn't change the name "Hotnsexy" because it didn't violate the naming policy and because it was "only a bazaar trader" I basically gave up reporting offensive names. They don't care.

[Frerin the Smith]

I have met one person who knew where "Fror" (my main's name) came from. I was flabbergasted. You have to really know the appendices of LoTR to know that off the top of your head. But he knew who Fror was, who he was the son of, and how he died.

His name was "Gwindor". Guess where that name comes from?

[Quichon]

De'vir was a Drow family in the ever-popular series that brought us the umpteen-zillion Drizzt clones. They could be basing their refusal on that copyright.

[splunge]

My name comes from Monty Python. Almost no one ever gets the reference. I like it.

[Cherryflavour]

My name? See sig. Nuff said.

[Itek]

They do NOT care about enforcing the naming policy.

Not only do they NOT care, they ACTIVELY discourage Guides and GMs from enforcing it unless absolutely required. (I was booted from the Guide Program years ago for actually enforcing the policy they gave us.)

I've posted about this before, search posts by Itek and you'll find it.

But there is a MAJOR caveat to the naming policy. Once a toon hits 35th level they DO NOT EVER change the name unless it violates rule 1 or rule 2. "Reputation"

So if you can slip a name by them for 34 levels... you are home free.

Oh, and since the majority of naming enforcement falls to Senior Guides (normal guides don't have a name command, GMs now are not server resident and could barely be bothered before when there was an official "server-GM") the naming policy varies from server to server, and from year to year as the Server Managment Group evolves.

i.e. On my play server they have, in the past, enforced the rules. Whackyweed Pipesmoker eventually became Whacky.

i.e. On my guiding server they enforced the "can't badmouth the CS staff" rule, and patted me on the back for my actions in that incident, but shied away from enforcing the "can't have a religious connotation name" rule, to the point of kicking me out. (By the way, both those naming violations happened in under an hour.)

YES I am still bitter about it. 29 months later. Took me almost a year to start really playing EQ again.

[Sulkano]

There's a guild named De'Vir on Fennin....go figure.

[Saleani]

Surnames with ' or ` in them can currently be issued by senior guides and GMs. Seniors cannot change first names. Maybe they used to, but they cannot now. Regular guides are allowed to issue surnames only for weddings/divorces, and they have to witness the other surname. Maybe in the future, your local guide may be able to give you whatever surname you want. Who knows.

Frankly, there are enough broken things in the game that the name police should take a break. Yes there are some real bad ones (like tittytwister or asspoker or any number of variations of sexual acts legally defined as sodomy in many states), but there are more than enough people who lose whole characters to bugs, or spend 4 weeks waiting for a reimbursal because someone has a stick up their rear due to names. Take a look at the naming policy. There are a number of categories for bad names. And pretty much as Itek says, if it violates rules 1 and 2, it gets immediate attention (immediate sometimes means sometime this month ).

There are also some people in this game who intentionally and deliberately screw over other folks. Like intentionally training and killing the turn in mobs for someone's ring 10 battle. Or deliberately training raids in BoThunder to ninja the loot from the tower bosses. Or deliberately training raids in BoT because they won't let the buttmucher join in the Agnarr raid. The person doing all these has merely been suspended for 1 week. Not banned. No matter how many hours of many peoples evenings or weekends get messed up as a result. Note: Narandi's head is no-rent. The turn in mob takes 3 days to repop. I wonder how many folks have to quit EQ before something happens. Don't get me started or I can really rant on about this. All I can do is vote with my wallet. If the game becomes unplayable due to a couple jerks deliberately trying to make a blue server red, I won't pay for it, and neither should the hundreds of other people affected by the clowns.

Yes, one of my characters has a dorky name, that day I rolled it up, I could not get a random name past the name filter, so anyone who runs unix webservers looks at my ranger's name and laughs (it is the name of a directory found on unix based webservers). Roleplaying name? Nope. Would I lose a wink of sleep if it got changed on me? Nope.

[cattywumpus]

From what I have seen in game if it will get SOE in trouble (wether from copyright lawsuits or bad publicity) it will get changed. Otherwise you're on your own.

De'Vir is a copyright protected name and was probably altered for that reason. Names with overt sexual or racist tones likely will get the axe too. Stupid names GMs will likely not bother with unless they are in a bad mood and want to take it out on someone.

I agree that enforcement is spotty and irregular but with the current state of customer service from SOE I doubt that will change.

[Rissenn]

.

I play on FV server where RP is preferred. During the last 3-4 months the number of "d00ds" seem to have multipled, KS and griefing increasing and the shouts of "dude, WTF R U doing?" and similar abbreviations keep coming.

Just a few of the names I have seen and petitioned have been:

Imwith Stupid
Kitikar Cottonpicker (erudite..see where the last name is going?)
Manghina (mangina....*sigh*)

All I can say is WTF?

I mean, how hard is it to pick a name with a "feel" to it? If I see a name like "Fatboy Eatsalot", that will ruin my experience of the fantasy world. im sorry, but I think a non NO DROP server where RP isnt preferred would take care of this problem.

I also think this would become the worst griefer and d00d server ever in existance really, really fast.

[Eumerin]

Originally posted by Quichon
De'vir was a Drow family in the ever-popular series that brought us the umpteen-zillion Drizzt clones. They could be basing their refusal on that copyright.

Its also the last name of one of the possible party members in the popular Baldur's Gate CRPGs (not the Dark Alliance games). Viconia De'vir is a female drow cleric that, provided the player saves her from a lynching, can join the party in both Baldur's Gate I and Baldur's Gate II.

[Eoghnved]

I had a problem with the name on my main character. He was supposed to be called Eoghnved but the game kept rejecting it. I eventually named him Eogh Nved and it got through. The only reason anyone could come up for the rejection was the ghnv consonant string registering as unpronounceable.

[splunge]

My question is this:

Whats the big deal about picking a name from a book?

Lets say some yoyo picks the name Frodo and plays it in EQ and sneaks by the GMs and gets to 65.

Whoever is in charge of the Rings books copyright finds out and gets said panties in a wad and sues SOE.

Wheres the loss? Any judge would laugh and say 'How did Sony harm you in any way?'

Usually any trademark infringement lawsuits are because someone is faking another persons good name to make money or, to ruin their rep, and someone is actually being harmed.

[Dunthor Warsmith]

Originally posted by splunge
Wheres the loss? Any judge would laugh and say 'How did Sony harm you in any way?'

I'm no legal expert, but my guesses would be:
1) Defamation to the franchise, but unauthorized acts by the SOE's "Frodo" being applied to people's impressions of the Tolkien "Frodo".
2) Violation of trademark (and copyright?), by having unauthorized Tolkien material as an aspect of your commerical product, which may draw "Tolkien customers" to the SOE product and away from authorized Tolkien products (there is a hobbit MMORPG in the works).
3) Potentially some simple violation of copyright, although I'm not overly strong on non-digital copyright law.

Anyhow, just my thoughts. Then again, I'm the type of person that ifnds modding an EQ UI to be a violation of the EQ EULA, but SOE doesn't seem to care enough either way to either modify the EULA's modifying code/reverse engineering/3rd party modifications sections or to persecute UI modders ... something similar might ultimately be true for the derived names - they're technically violating, but not in a manner worth actually dealing with.