Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed

"Jed" in this story would be me.  It is just a name but it is my name.  It annoys me whenever I start on a new server I can not use my name.  On the PTR I am flagged to change my name.  On the tournament server I had to change my name.  I do not care if someone else is using it.  It is my name.  Make them change their name.  Their name does not matter to me, my name does.

It might sound selfish and it is.  Why should I give a crap if someone else is also named "Jed"?  I do not care.  If the game chooses to care then make them change it.  My name is my name and I am sick and tired of being forced to change my name to appease someone else that has no right using my name. I will not make a bastardized version of my name using stupid symbols or accented letter.  It is my name and there is no reason I should need to deviate from it.

Some names I do not mind changing but as a writer and a life long role player (even if I do not role play in wow, yeah, weird, I know) my name is my name and has been my name for a very long time.  My main character's name is a name I created for a book I wrote 12 years ago.  That is my claim to that name.  It has never been used in any other literature anywhere that I know of, ever.  It is a creation of mine therefore is it, without question, my name.

Okay, rant over about people stealing my name.  Lets get to the point I wanted to get to before I turned all grumpy elf again.  The point is that names are limited.  At least if you want a decent name that sounds like a name and not some stupid name like "droodheals" or "ikillu" and crap like that and not names that use other characters in place of letters so it can appear they have the name that was already taken.

Names of that style usually come from one of two things.  A retarded person that thinks "ikillu" is cool or someone that got so frustrated trying to find a decent name that was not already taken that they were forced to just take anything.

I wondered why people can not have the same names.  I mean, look around you, how many Mike's do you know, or John's?  A few, maybe even a dozen or more if you get out a lot.  I can easily name off the top of my head 10 different Mike's I talk to on a weekly basis and another 5 or 6 John's.  People have the same name.  Why can't they have the same name in game?

They say it has something to do with saving the data and people getting confused by two people with the same name.  I have a small solution for that.  Just limit the times the name can be used and not limit the name itself.  Like if I make a Night Elf Hunter and name it "Jed" and someone wants to make a Blood Elf Paladin and wants to name it "Jed" they would be allowed.  One on each side, now you effectively doubled the amount of non retarded names that people would need to use because all the good names are taken.

Want to take it further?  How about a Dwarf named "Jed" too and an Orc and a Troll and a Human, and so on.  One of each race, now you effective can use "Jed" 10 times.  See, we are expanding the amount of times a name can be used.  Maybe even more if we can go further, one of each race/class combo can have a name.

They always use the excuse that people will get confused with who is who if people have the same names.  This would help with that.  Or maybe just add another field if they think that people will get a Night Elf Hunter and a Dwarf Hunter both named "Jed" confused.  Add a field for last names.  How awesome would that be for role players?  I am sure they would love it but so would many others.

If you are a role player you will most likely have a name combo that will be distinct enough that you can use it on every server and if you are not a role player then you would not really give a flying crap what your last name was as long as your first name was the name you wanted.

Lets say you wanted "Jed" to be your name and it was taken, so you can make "Jed Clampett" but if there was another Beverly Hillbillies fan on the server you could make it "Jed Smith" or "Jed Jones" or "Jed Johnson" or "Jed Robinson" or... well, you get the idea.  This effectively means that you can have 100s if not 1000s of Jed's in the game and none of them will be forced to use stupid ass symbols in their name and none of them will be forced to have to change their name.  Maybe in extreme cases, like my "Jed Clampett" example, where a name from pop culture comes into play there will still be issues, but at least now those would be limited by a great deal.

Either way, we should be allowed to use our names as we want them and I will never have to deal with some other asshole using my name somewhere. Blizzard has been doing lots of little things to make the game better and are simple additions, the return to graveyard button, dungeon maps, and many other things that where simple as hell to add and should have been added when the game was first created so why can they not add something like this?  It is as simple as simple can be.

And I can make the idea even better for Blizzard.  Name change fees would only apply to first or last, not both.  More to sell.  I can see it now, to join "Awesome Guild" you need to change your last name to Awesome.  So people will be changing names left and right.  Personally, I would never join a guild that named themselves Awesome Guild or change my name to be allowed to join a guild but to each their own.

Either way, limiting names is a bad idea all around and something that needs to be fixed.  Not just because I am a grumpy elf that hates people stealing my name but because I am a grumpy elf that hates trying to figure out how to say efgerhyy over vent.