Posts with tag character-names

Having recently written a Breakfast Topic asking you what your main is and another asking about WoW gender choice, it can hardly come as a surprise when I start asking you about another major part of your WoW identity. How did you choose the name for your first character? Exhibiting a characteristic level of creativity (i.e., none), I chose an adaptation of my own name. Well done, me! So then once you roll alts, how do you name them? I have stuck to my adaptation of my name model, adding in various permutations and multiples of them. There are a lot of nicknames out there for Olivia, fortunately!

Do you have a naming convention that allows friends and guild members to easily recognize your alts? Or do you like to completely change it up for every new character? Or perhaps you wanted to emphasize some element of your character, so maybe for a paladin something to do with the Light. If you're a fan of lore, maybe you've taken the time to research your chosen race or class's history. Maybe you've decided on a name that reflects a sort of signature ability, like DoTs for a warlock. Or maybe you've decided on a theme that appeals to you, like authors or cartoon characters or types of swords. Do you have names saved on your server, awaiting future expansions or new alts?

If you're trying to find a name, we here at WoW Insider are here to help -- we're good like that.

I should add, I didn't name my undead warlock Dottymcdotface. If you want that one, it's all yours.

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Last week, GuildOx shared with WoW Insider the top 10 character names by class in World of Warcraft based on the new data pulled from Blizzard's awesome new APIs and information sharing services. If you're not familiar with GuildOx, these guys catalog and rank top progression guilds in WoW and parse lots of cool information. Now, GuildOx is back with the top 10 names by race and faction, proving that the era of creating punny names on World of Warcraft is far from over. We'll first take a look at the Alliance races and then hit up the Horde.

Human

• Palatinus
• Percivale
• Tyrael
• Fordragon
• Thrasius
• Crixxus
• Sangrial
• Gavinrad
• Dalson
• Kikyo

Human names are tough to "pun up," as it were, because they are pretty much just us. Would you name your own children with punny-sounding names or ironic references to video games? Actually, don't answer that -- some of you with kids named Donkey Kong are going to get mad at me. Actually, when I do have a daughter and I name her Samus, I'll come back and read this paragraph and regret everything I've ever said.

GuildOx, one of the premier services that ranks, tracks, and parses the top guilds and their progression in WoW, has been using Blizzard's new character APIs to some pretty hilarious ends. After mining out 11 million character names, GuildOx has sent us the most popular character names by class in World of Warcraft. As you'd expect, the pun meter is off the charts. You'll laugh. You'll cry. Your immersion will be broken. Let's have a look at the most popular names in World of Warcraft.

Warriors

• Glitterstorm
• Cleaveland
• Ragebar
• Brostorm
• Cleaveage
• Ragestarved
• Sunderwear
• Executie
• Skillstorm
• Sunderpants

Warrior characters love using skill names or the rage mechanic in their names. I'm actually a culprit of this phenomenon, except I like to think I was clever about it. My Night Elf warrior, for the brief time that I was raiding on the Alliance side of things, was named Rageleaf. It was awesome. Stop judging me.

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

Strolling through Dalaran, you see all sorts of characters with all sorts of names -- everything from Knaush to Xxarthasxxlol. But have you ever stopped to wonder why a character is named the way he or she is? There might just be a significance that you miss.

For example, my priest, Flintte, was named after Flint Fireforge from the Dragonlance series; I wanted a recognizable dwarf name, and with my having no creativity, I named him after the dwarf (though of course, Flint was taken, and so I had to modify it). Once I started raiding, no one could correctly pronounce my name over Vent; they always called me "Flintee" or "Flinette." So when I decided to roll an alt shaman, I named him "Flintee" just to confuse my guildies. (It worked.) And then I named my warlock "Flinnte." And my DK "Flinete." And pretty soon, I had a roster of characters all with names differing by a letter or so.

Anyone who knows me on my server can instantly tell who I am, thanks to my naming scheme. What started out as an unoriginal allusion to a novel became something that defined all my characters. Except Bellboy, who also has a significant name. When I played in the pit orchestra in junior high school, I was dubbed "Bellboy" by the conductor, since I was the percussionist.

Even randomly selected names can have significance. I know someone who just used the name generator to name her character, and then she got curious and looked it up. Apparently, the name they gave was her first name in Gaelic (she also happened to be Irish), and so that started a Gaelic naming trend for her.

So what's in a name? Why did you name your characters the way you did? Tell us in the comments.

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Anne Stickney is subbing for a very busy Michael Gray. Anne enjoys roleplay and was delighted to fill in. This has nothing to do with any grand schemes involving Mr. Gray or the eventual theft of his puppy. Promise.

One of the questions I'm asked most often in regards to roleplaying has nothing to do with lore, or story development, or character concept. Instead, it revolves around one of the first things you do when you create a new character -- naming it. RP servers run a little differently than your typical PvE or PvP server, and have their own set of unique guidelines for naming in addition to the policies that already exist. These additional naming guidelines are:

Non-Medieval/Fantasy Character Names

This category includes:

• Any Non-Medieval or Non-Fantasy names (i.e. Slipnslide, Robotman, Technotron).
  
• All normal naming rules (which can be found at http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=20368).

If a player is found to have such a name, he/she may:

• Be assigned a randomly generated name
  
• Be given the appropriate additional penalty if the name violates standard naming rules.

Generally speaking, most people playing on an RP server will report a name that does not fall under these guidelines -- and if a case is made, your name can be changed. So how do you create a name that fits? Luckily, all of the races in World of Warcraft have a few particular naming conventions -- traits are common to the NPCs already existing in game. Today we're going to go over these conventions and suggest some ideas and resources you can use to get a name that is unique, and won't get you reported.

Well wouldja look at that -- hidden in the just-released Patch 3.2 notes are a whole slew of UI changes to check out.

• Auto-completion for character names in mail, chat, and pop-up interfaces can now be enabled (and disabled) from the interface options. I believe auto-complete was already in there for mail, but now it'll be everywhere, and/or you'll be able to turn it off if you've sent things to the wrong place in the past.
• Names are getting a color option according to class, so if "Lolpaladins" is really a Death Knight, you'll know right away.
• Casting bars near a portrait's target will show whether the spell is interruptible or not. Some boss casts are not interruptible, so now you'll know with a glance.
• Druids will be able to see mana bars even while shape-shifted, which probably won't change gameplay much, but will be nice for bears and kitties.
• Item comparisons (like the ability to check other gear for slots while hovering over that gear) are now available everywhere -- hover over an item with Alt pressed to see what's currently equipped in that slot on your character.
• Macros and scripts can no longer target totems by name -- bye bye totem stompers.
• The quest log is getting a small revamp: it'll be "double-paned for more easily viewing quest information." We're not quite sure what that means (you'll be able to look at two quests at once? It'll break out the list of accepted quests into its own full-size window?), but we'll give you a look as soon as we see it on the PTR.
• Vendor prices will now be listed on items even if you're not at a vendor. This was a pretty common feature already, thanks to Auctioneer, but now it'll be built into the standard interface.

Keep in mind that these notes are still subject to change -- what's listed here may never make it to the live realms at all. But it seems like there are quite a few changes due in Patch 3.2 are designed to streamline the interface and incorporate a number of elements from common addons.

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the resources they need to get acclimated. Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic.

Your character's name is literally the essence of your World of Warcraft experience. Think about it: from the way you think of your character (a roleplaying personality, a tool for gaming achievements, an expression of yourself) to the way others see you, your name plays a defining role.

While Blizzard indulges in the occasional sly riff on pop culture and even pays homage to the WoW community when naming NPCs (non-player characters) and items, you may find yourself dismayed by the results after attempting to do the same with your own characters. The way we see it, character names are like tattoos – and what seemed like a great idea at 1 a.m. on a Saturday night might not smell so fresh in the harsh light of day.

Naming characters can seem overwhelming to a new player, especially if you're creating a character on an established server where many popular name combinations have already been claimed. Let's cover the basics of finding an appealing name that won't wear thin or break any rules.

Sylphine suffers from a problem that's very close to home for me: her character's name is often pronounced incorrectly by others in game. And while it's close not only because I routinely mangle names on the podcast (both accidentally and sometimes, I'll admit, for comedic purposes), but my own name is of questionable pronounciation. When I was creating my very first character ingame, I was stumbling around for a creative name, and I ended up going with a variation of the word I saw on the "Random" button in front of me: Rande. Truth be told, I have no idea how to pronounce it -- I guess I prefer "Rand" over "Randey," only because the second sounds so close to "Randy," so usually I'll just go what whatever someone says in the game. But I can see Sylphine's issue: it's probably a pain to spend so much time on a name only to have it wrecked daily.

And of course, this epidemic isn't only connected to character names -- being that this is a virtual world where text is the usual form of communication, it's very common to see place names and NPC names mispronounced more often than not.

In the end, you just have to do what I do: try your best and hope you get it right. And from the other side of it, don't be too angry when people mess up your name. There are 12 million of us out there, and nobody's going to get everything right.

If you've ever been fascinated by the MMORPG statistics provided at sites like the Daedalus Project, here's something right up your alley; the WoW Armory Character Distribution widget, programmed to comb both the U.S. and E.U. Armories and capture data on the popularity of character names across race, class, faction, and sex.

The project is still in the testing stage, and it's a bit finicky about how you enter character names. Make sure you're always hitting the submit button and not using your enter key, as otherwise the widget will keep searching for the last name you looked for instead of your new query. Its creator, Emilis, also wrote to warn that it uses live information from both armories and will occasionally be slow as a result. I imagine it might also be inaccurate if either Armory is having problems.

The widget is tremendously fun to play with and has yielded some rather interesting results even with the completely random names I keep trying. "John" and "Mary," as you might expect, are overwhelmingly Human toons, whereas the greater share of people playing a "Sergei" and "Yekaterina" are Draenei. 3 people with a "Brutus" are actually playing female characters, and 1 person with a "Laura" is playing a male character (Emilis notes that gender-bending names are surprisingly common, although from what I can tell so far this seems to be a lot more true of male names for female toons than the other way around). Most people with a "Killer" are playing a Hunter, Rogue, or Warrior. Characters named "Bank" are mostly Human Warriors, but "Banktoon(s)" are mostly Orcs. And, yes, most of the people playing a toon named Legolas are Night Elf Hunters. Are you really that surprised?

Thanks to Emilis for writing in!

Xella found an extremely fascinating change in 2.3 over on LJ-- Warden Iolol is no longer known by that name. Instead, he is known as Warden Moi'bff Jill. He claims that a "secret vote" was passed around, and that his name was changed.

Secret vote? The only place I know of where Iolol's name got mentioned negatively was in our own "Forum Post of the Day" about worst NPC names, and the forum post that accompanied it. Of course, there could have also been a "secret vote" somewhere else, and I don't remember Iolol drawing all that much ire-- the most hated names, if I recall, were Nutral the flight master and Haris Pilton.

And of course "Moi'bff Jill" ("my best friend forever, Jill") isn't that great a name either. Although I guess going the way of Corki (who got shipped off to live with the Night Elves) wouldn't have been that much fun, either.