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Blizzard Made Me Change My Name
First of all, the reason that my account is in violation is that my name contains a title prefix. It took dozens of inquiries to get that explained. 'Cmdr' is the problem. I'm told that since the game has an internal honor system with titles, my name is not allowed. Never mind the fact that 'Cmdr' is not one of their titles. Never mind that countless other titles abound in the game: Mr, Sir, Sensei. Am I in violation of their policy? Probably. Is the policy stupid, meaningless, or inconsistent? I think so, but that's not really why I'm writing this.
I've been using 'CmdrTaco' online for around a decade now. It predates the existence of this website. It has followed me from game to game, both local, networked, and massive. My only problem with it is that as Slashdot grew in popularity, I started finding places where an impostor has taken it. I was excited when I was able to get it in Warcraft. It's like a warm blanket. It's stupid I know, but it's mine.
But Blizzard chose to take it from me. Now let me be clear: this is certainly their right: They own the dice and the board and the rulebooks, and I only play in their world. But If the US Government told me to change my name... let's say Congress passed a law making it illegal to have a first name that is a verb (Don't laugh, the White House cease and desisted The Onion!) Well I guess 'Rob' would have to go. My friends would still recognize me: I'd still have the same face, address, and social security number. I'd just have a cool new name like "Captain Fantastic Malda". With a name like that, the auto mechanics would never try to rip me off!
In this virtual world, two levels gives me a couple new pieces of armor, and suddenly I am unrecognizable to anyone who may have run an instance with me. In guild chat, I am a total stranger to people I may have chatted with for months. My history with other players has been erased. It almost makes me wish that I spent my first 45 levels ninja looting!
It's not like Blizzard decided to change gameplay dynamics. I spend a lot of time working on the Slashdot moderation system, and I never have any problem changing any "Rule" in the system if I believe it will improve the overall functionality of the whole system. If blizzard wants to make my mace have 5 less DPS and 3 less stamina because it's unbalanced, well I can accept that. Balancing gameplay is really hard. But in a massive multiplayer game, your name is different- that isn't about balance, it's about identity.
A friend of mine actually quit Everquest over a forced name change. His name was Marilyn Hanson and while fighting something he was disconnected without warning. When he returned, his name had been changed to a randomly generated one. When he asked GM, he was told that he could not have celebrity name. When my friend asked who Marilyn Hanson was, the GM could not answer, but instead just said arguing wouldn't matter. My friend quit EQ that day.
I don't think I'll quit WoW over this, but I will take away some lessons. The GM I talked to had a nickname of something like Lathanian. I found this disconcerting. If you were arrested by Officer Snuggles or found guilty by the honorable Judge Lawtron, it's hard to take that seriously. In this case 'Punishment' is being dealt. A real human is wearing a shroud of anonymity and handing out the bitchslap to a total stranger. That really makes the whole experience even more dehumanizing. In a massive virtual world, we're still people.
You don't see names and faces, which is why you'll see a 60 corpse camp a 30. When you don't see the real person on the other side, the tendency is just to forget. You expect it from opposing factions- but it feels different when it's the GM. Personally this is something I struggle with in my work too. You deal with a hundred support requests and it starts becoming abstract. Unreal. Virtual. I doubt it's much different if you work at the support counter at a retail store, but I think it's easier to forget when the only communication is chat.
Second, the GMs at blizzard really have no power. I asked for contact information. For email information. For names. For an appeal. To talk to a supervisor. And the best they would give me was the generic help phone line or a mailing address. Like with a stamp! I was told that almost every question I asked was unanswerable in game. I gave an email address but they never emailed. They wouldn't even tell me what was wrong with my nickname until after a half dozen inquiries of why. You have really no recourse against a GM. That scares me.
Lastly, I didn't really realize that I was so attached to my nickname. It's not because I'm "Famous"- We have a lot of readers, but these days very few actually know who I am. And of those, the percentage of people who play warcraft, and are alliance, and on azgalor... well it is very tiny. As CmdrTaco I probably had a total of 5 people actually recognize my nickname (and nobody ever gave me gold because they read Slashdot!). As Violated, nobody ever will recognize me for my day job. But that's really not what bugs me. I was really attached to my name. This character bounded through Azgalor slaying monsters and meeting new people. Now that character is erased and another character stands in its place. Same armor. Same class. But different somehow. I like my nickname. I wish I had it on every system I used. I'm annoyed that someone else registered my nickname on gmail before I could. It's always the first name I try when a system asks me to create an account. I feel strangely possessive about it. I doubt I'm alone in being attached to a pseudonym. And I feel kind of stupid admitting it.
Anyway, I've said my piece on the subject. And just to be clear, I'm not really mad at Blizzard. I think what they did was needless and inconvenient, but not evil. Their policy may be silly, but I still was in violation of it, so I guess I got what I deserved. But I wonder about others. And not just in Warcraft, on any online forum. I wonder about our attachment to virtual names. And if nothing less, it will make me take changes in Slashdot a little more seriously next time.
I'm not sure about names but the whole Warden issue made me rethink the whole Wow thing. The bottom line is that this game is Blizard's to create policy however they see fit. If you don't like it, talk about it. If the cons outweigh the pros -- it's a no brainer, but otherwise it makes for a good discussion about our online rights and who can control your online identity. Then again... I might go by God online. Does that mean people should worship me?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
... to my coworker. He had a game name which was pronounced like "car bomb" (He recounted this to me verbally, so I'm not sure how it was spelled) and was forced the change it. The irony? He actually used Blizzard's in-game random name generator to come up with the name. Oh well. I like WoW, so I'll still be playing.
Believe me the irony of this experience was not lost on me. As it happened, and while I wrote this article I thought a lot about the similiarities of what I do, and what the Blizzard game designes, and what the GMs over there do.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
Completely unrelated, but there's an interesting story that happens in just about every Navy that uses the title "Sailor" for enlisted personnel. (So far I've heard second hand reports from both the U.S. and Russian Navies.)
:-)
Every so often a fellow enlists who's last name actually *is* Sailor in the native language. More often than not, this drives his superiors nuts as they have to address him as "Sailor Sailor". Since he isn't an officer they can't give him an honorary promotion to prevent confusion, so more often than not he gets his first promotion free just so everyone doesn't have to deal with with the double name.
(Note that in the U.S. Navy, the actual rank and name tends to be "Seaman".)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
This is a pain I know all too well .
I have been kicked from chat rooms and had an account halted on UO for the same reason as the guy on EQ .
My name is satirical , not a troll and I am not pretending to be the president of Cuba
Fidel catsro comes from a sketch I was writing about turning Communist leaders of the 20th century into small fluffy animals who were trying to take over the world.
I had decided to go with catsro . I had the choice of Chairman Meow , Pol cat
I am very attached to this nick name , and really get annoyed if i am forced not to use it
(Though I very much doubt Casrto would ever use his real name whilst playing Ultima online)
on a total side note
I have had several questions posed to me about my Human rights record , these people were serious and got really angry.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I see violations of the naming policy all the time on my "Normal" server, Eonar. Frankly, there are too many to realistically enforce on all servers everywhere. Those that do get picked out feel (rightly so) that they are being picked on.
IMHO, only Role-Playing servers should have a strict naming policy. The only enforcement on other servers should be for profanity/crudeness. No "IfckedUrMom" or somesuch.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
No prefix?
Guess the obvious solution would be:
* TacoCmdr (postfix)
* TheCmdrTaco (infix)
* Taco (nofix)
* AlmightyCmdrTaco (dogmatix)
I think that the real meat of the issue got overshadowed by your commentary on your personal experience. What happens to our virtual identities? What happens when you can't have the name you've built? The same thing happens on AIM and other sites. When you are forced by circumstances to develop a new name, something changes. I'm hoping the discussion here will start to address issues like prospects for a global name registry or a solution to this issue.
I too have had several poor experiences with GMs.
To be fair, every time I have actually msg'd with one, I have felt an undercurrent of frustration from them as if they are mostly powerless, and may even agree with my plea.
I am leaving the game, however, because there isn't a way to 'go up the chain' which is probably due to the scale of the game, but diminishes my enjoyment nevertheless.
I have one character who cannot train first aid with silk bandages, though she meets the requirements, and the GMs will only say that it _must_ be a mod. Funny thing is, with no mods I still have the same problem.
When client side lag issues rear an ugly head around the next corner, and issues abound, it's "unavoidable" -- truth? I think so, but it diminishes the fun factor.
I have had a character who lost 20g due to a glitch, and know others who have had similar problems, and the response from the GM was, "This is due to an installed mod. Disable all mods." No redress, no _possibility_ for redress, nothing.
The fact is that this is a huge game, and probably unmanageable in these terms. Fine. I accept that, but even the appearance of an appeal would help salve the sores of frustration.
Sad to say, much of the fun is gone for the frustration. I might have stayed but for this: every time there has been a GM problem, I have been given the same answer: we do not do X as a matter of policy.
Goodbye Stormwind.
-[joke removed for your safety]-
Slashdot used to run quite a few opinion and rant pieces written by the editors. Probably the most well-known of these is JonKatz's "Voices from the Hellmouth" series of essays on his thoughts on the whole high school shooting thing of the late 1990s.
Yeah, this hasn't happened on Slashdot in quite a while, but honestly, I'm glad to see it happen again, and I hope that this means it will happen more in the future.
Of course, I think the reason why it ended in the first place is that the comments section for every single opnion piece that Slashdot ran was filled to the brim with slashbots' knee-jerk rants and flaming of whichever editor wrote the article, to the point that the opinion pieces brought Slashdot comments sections to a new low in that absolutely no intelligent discourse would happen whatsoever.
Given that your flame of CmdrTaco hit "+5, Insightful" so quickly, I have a feeling that things haven't changed much since the first time the slashbot crowd killed opinion pieces on Slashdot. So yean, even if I want them back, I admit they probably shouldn't come back.
Abuse? Hardly, my friend. Rob created Slashdot. Rob feels personally maligned by a large corporation, and with no success in pleading his case with Blizzard, he's taking the next logical step: publicize the issue.
I respect that this is Rob's playground, and since the subject matter does fit within usual Slashdot fare I do not see how this is "abusing arbitrary power," no matter how livejournalish it may be.
Nathan
"The Editor I talked to had a nickname of something like 'CmdrTaco'. I found this disconcerting. If you were arrested by Officer ScuttleMonkey or found guilty by the honorable Judge CowboyNeal, it's hard to take that seriously."
/. staff go about their business in exactly the same fashion that the WoW staff do. Feels different when it's someone else with the pseudonym, eh?
I find it hard to take Taco's complaints seriously when he and the rest of the
"Speech is not an abuse of power and Slashdot is his journal."
Actually Slashdot is owned by VA Software Corporation.
They just keep Taco around to put a human face on the advertisements for Apple and Google that they post around here.
We actually have a well written faq entry that tries to address that very thing. Just because I'm pro linux doesn't mean that I'm against something proprietary. I love video games. I love movies. I love music. I have no problem paying for things that I enjoy. I can still believe that freedom of speech is important. I can still believe that open source is better than closed source. I see no hypocrisy in this. I'm quite pragmatic- especially about closed source and video games. For gameplay reasons, you need to obscure implementation details of some types of games.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
I thought this was suppose to be a discussion on how we are attached to our virtual names and not a let us all bitch at Blizzard post but instead it seems to be a let us all Bitch at CmdrTaco for raising a serious question about online identities. Yes, WoW is just a game but just like everything else that is online there are people behind the characters we see on the screen and we sometimes forget that being used to doing what we will with the AI of non online games of the past. I am attached to certain nicknames I use in the virtual world and like CmdrTaco I do get bummed out if they are used by someone else. If there was such a problem with his name why did they not just make their software check some sort of rules for naming or in fact say something 5 months ago to him. It is sad that most GM's are not accountable for what they do. There is noone to turn to if they abuse their power. Blizzard would be wise to implement a supervisor GM model you could call to resolve some problems with GM's themselves. As far as using /. to bring up an interesting topic I say it's about time we discuss something other than the same old DMCA, MS vs Linux or BSD and how Google is taking over the world. Thanks CmdrTaco!
So you don't think the fact that "taco" is a slang term for female genitalia had anything to do with it at all? That would have been my guess.
Well, after you stated your comment it was quickly at a +5 insightful moderation. Now I can see it with 20% troll and 10% Overrated (with just 4, Insighful). Lets see how the moderation system works here... maybe those "secret powers" make this comment go down to oblivion
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I'd write more, but I'm fairly busy these days. And honestly it's hard for me to write unless I feel something personally. I don't want to just phone it in.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
I don't see why Blizzard should have to apologize. Their naming policy has been set since the start of the game, and Taco's name clearly violated several parts of it (no titles, must be pronouncable, must not have several "words" stringed together). Ignorance of the rules is no excuse.
I can completely understand. I chose IkkonoIshi because it is a string of letters that is both easy to say, and not likely to be repeated. When I play games that let you have multiple characters; I always prefix the name with Ikko so anyone will know which characters are mine. Should someone decide that "Ikko" is some sort of title, and change it then I would find it very difficult to continue to identify with that character.
Also the whole idea of titles being banned is stupid. Who determines what is and is not a title? What if some obscure book had a title named "Ikko" for someone who placed books under furniture legs in order to level them? Would that make me in violation?
To be fair I'm not exactly sure how long it took. 10 minutes maybe? The GM apparently had to talk to his supervisor before telling me it was the prefix that was the problem. I type pretty fast, so it might have been 8-10 lines of me asking various questions, it might have been like 25. I also explained to the GM that I was a journalist, and i would like to write a story about attachment to on-line identity, and asking to get contact information with someone with some authority so I could get some quotes or feedback for this article. I don't know if he wasn't taking me seriously, or if he thought I was just trying to threaten him. None of that was my intent, but as everyone who communicates via a chat system knows, subtleties of communication are often lost when translated to line-by-line text ;)
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
"A real human is wearing a shroud of anonymity and handing out the bitchslap to a total stranger."
I read an account written by somebody concerning major issues with his credit card and billing. Everybody he talked to at Blizzard, even in the billing dept, went by some kind of game name like "CoolElf" or "Doomslayer". I thought it was very very strange.
When you, as a human being, call a business over an issue you deserve to talk to a human being with a real name. But with Blizzard even their customer service reps hide behind fantasy names.
You can have your name back. Just create a new character with the name "cmdrtaco" or whatever it was that just got changed. The folks at Blizzard will happily abuse their power, but they're too stupid to be consistent. Case in point:
A friend of mine was forced to change his name. He was a paladin named "HolyWarrior". After some amount of chafing and resistance, he found it was because someone complained that it was offensive, invoking terroristic imagery or something. Two weeks later, he has a new name, and sees a newbie running through the Auction House named "HolyWarrior". Note the past tense, he did quit the game over this.
Suffice to say, they'll make you change your name, but they won't do something intelligent like implement a database of names that are illegal. Hence, you can keep creating your favorite illegal/offensive name, and just use it until someone notices, rinse and repeat.
Of course, that is probably what happened. Someone complained about your name, because they wanted it. Now it is free, since you don't have it; so anticipate seeing someone using it in the near future. This is worse than someone beating you to your own nick on gmail... They actively stole your nick, by skillfully wielding the incompetence of others...
P.S. If you want to see if your
name is in use, instead of not
permitted, try sending mail to that
name in game... Game Mail will let you
know if there is no such character.
To be fair, my main currently is a Horde Mage and azjol-nerub. I'd actually agree with your point about alliance- there are many similiarities between horde and alliance (each side thinks the other is unbalanced) but the alliance seems to feel it stronger.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
Rob,
Don't let it get you down, man. I mean, c'mon, try living in the real world with a name like mine. I'll let you ponder that for a while. Ok, enough, you don't need to get any more images. Anyway, I'm rather attached to my real name. It is, after all, mine. But, when I tried to sign up to Orkut, they wouldn't let me use it. Nope. The username 'yocum' is verboten because of those last 3 letters, in that particular order. What's a guy to do? Move on, there's more important things in life than a stupid username.
Cheers,
Dan
I think with online games we need a second global ID tied to our account regardless of character. This would have no restrictions on name and once set could not be changed(perhaps have a check before hand for lewd names). This name would be visible from the character sheet or some other not so obvious method, no matter which character you were playing on which server. This way regardless of new characters or name changes, everyone could see it was you. This would also make reputation that more important, as people would blacklist the Global ID name, not a specific character name.
Sadly this comes as no surprise to me. Due to a bug I was kicked from the server (while my net connection was fine), on immediately reconnecting I found my my WoW character lost tens of thousands of XP (de levelled!), lost gold and had the quests I'd done still marked as completed (so I couldn't repeat them to get back the XP).
I very politely contacted support 4 times over next week and a bit about this issue, including contacting GM's in game and via the site, pointing to there AUP/EULA agreement which explicitly says they will try to reinstate character data, items and gold in such an event (which was clearly due to a software fault) [ unless, it states, the rollback was part of a forced server roll back, which it was not. ].
Eventually, each time the GM responded with a poorly written reply which made no sense (as if he didn't speak English particularly well and / or hadn't read my ticket at all) saying they 'Don't reinstate characters when there has been a server roll back'. Though I got no response back from interim support query I had made via the web site. I indicated they hadn't done a server roll back at all of course, but they kept replying with the same old canned response.
Faced with the choice of grinding mobs for XP to re-level, re-rolling or quitting, I quit.
Bizzard, like SOE, employ some (not all, I'm sure) very poor quality support staff and GM's, that act seemingly randomly (enforcing rules on a whim, merrily ignoring some blatant abuse - even if it's reported multiple times by different players) and abuse customers in a way that, if they behaved like that in any other industry they'd be fined by watchdogs and/or have legal action taken against them by consumers and consumer groups.
Some of the customers are rude, abusive punk kids I'm sure (and I have very little sympathy for them should they get kicked off - which sadly they rarely seem to) but if you treat customers like scum by default, they will abandon you for the competition the first chance they get.
You'd think, given what we've seen happen to SOE, Blizzard would have noticed that (and how much gamers distrust and dislike SOE - the antics of some of the support staff there are legendary, with repeated tales of abuse by GM's and players calling for them to be sacked following repeated abuse).
You'd think, at the very least, they could employ support staff who can actually read and write English.
Of course the network performance (particularly for some of the servers, the ones in a separate data server in Paris) really, really sucks here in Europe - after ~6 months away I just rejoined so I could play with people I knew recently as that's what every one is playing and it's poor for everyone on our server (to the extent you just can't play sometimes - not helped by the fact that if it goes south on Friday afternoon, you're screwed till Monday morning). That's assuming you can log in (not due to server queues - due to the unreliable login system we seem to have).
I'm sure if the Penny Arcade or GU guys had a problem like this on the US servers there would be a huge stink about it, but the media don't cover it and we don't really have any gaming community representatives of our own to draw attention to it.
Problem #2: These games require naming policies of some kind that are non trivial to automate. Since they are non-trivial to automate, there will always be people who slip through. Even if you have a human monitoring each new name (Everquest used to do this), Borisyeltsin may slip through because the human monitoring name approval that day happened to not known who Boris Yeltsin is.
In this specific case the core issue wasn't that CmdrTaco was not a valid name, or even that it was changed, it's that it was changed at level 45, after 100s of hours were invested in the character. This makes the impact of #1 very real.
In WOW name petitioning is basically a form of griefing. There is no review process for names. I've seen people who have petitioned and spoken with GMs (who obviously saw their names) and then weeks later their names were changed because someone petitioned them, their name was reviewed, and then changed. All name petitions come from players essentially. Why did the other 10,000 people who saw Taco before not petition? Probably because they weren't jackasses, and the guy who petitioned was.
I don't have a perfect solution but it seems like the best one is a combination solution:
The grandfather-clause policy would apply to a player's name after some period of time (say 48 hours of play time and one week of real time have passed). It would basically say, by this point a number of humans have seen you and have not complained about your name. Your name was reviewed by customer service. At this point while we can still change your name, we recognize the social impact, and as thus will be more lax in applying the policy.
---
I support spreading santorum
CdmrTaco
If read it quickly it'll pass and most everyone who knows you will recognize it.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
For months my Orc Warrior on Archimonde was named Dg. About 2 weeks /played into level 60, while I'm busily grinding AV reputation, I get spontaneously booted from the server. I log back in to find a "change your name" dialogue. Not wanting to lose ALL the associations I had made over 60 levels and more I go with something similar: Dgwut.
This old name, it wasn't offensive. Never have I heard a single complaint about my name. The reasoning I get for my forced name change? "Gibberish." It wasn't pronouncable? Are you fucking KIDDING me? Why the hell is Blizzard forcing RP-esque naming conventions down the throats of players on PvP servers, who ARE NOT ROLE PLAYING.
Somebody I know was in a similar boat, name was Copyright. He got a forced name change, when there's a Alliance Paladin of some fame named Trademark that had been running around for quite a bit longer.
Jeez, man! Should he have written "'''impostor'''" so you could see that the word "impostor" was meant to be ironically entitled?
Malda's is a good and interesting account (ok, maybe not front page material for some, but I liked some of Jon Katz's rants too), and this particular point is not as bad as you make it out to be. The feeling of attachment to a nickname is very common.
I know about this feeling firsthand: I have been using the aka 'Candyman' in offline life since co-workers gave it to me (with a name like "Candeira", I was also called all the variations of "Candy*" during the years before Barker's film). I too feel like anyone who gets "Candyman" before me is some kind of impostor, as I am sure anyone who has been using the nickname and finds I have taken it before them feels I am the impostor.
If anything, CmdrTaco was stating the obvious from a personal perspective, but he was definitely not being contradictory, using some other person's nickname, or mispelling "impostor" as "imposter". As to hypocritical, you can call him that when he starts changing people's nicknames at whimsy or enacting Blizzard's braindead policy. Last time I looked, the anonymous coward posse was still there, as were a bunch of priest impersonators and unlicensed quacks.
http://barrapunto.com/ - News for nerds, en español
You occasionally hear ingame about someone well respected selling their account. Their gameplay changes, but their avatar/gear/chat stays the same. I imagine it to be very awkward. There are a dozen players I look for, that i want to party with. Who are good players, and fun to hang out with in a virtual world. To suddenly find yourself playing with someone that looks the same but acts different is something totally new. Something that happens virtually but not IRL. It's a new issue in a virtual world.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
I am not a crackpot.
That said, I was deeply unimpressed with Blizzard when they forced my friend to change his WoW name, Nosegay. Although a quick trip to a dictionary would reveal that nosegay means "a small bunch of flowers, typically one that is sweet-scented," (and anyone who "plays" ProgressQuest should recall that favorite quest, "Fetch me a nosegay") Blizzard erred on the side of the protecting the ocean of ignorant and barely-literate 14 year-olds from any word with "gay" making up a noticeable portion of it.
Gotta love the common denominator.
CmdrTaco, you are here providing insight about the virtual world. Slashdot has been reporting on this since the beginning.
/. readers I'm sure.
Those who accuse you of being "petty" or whatever seem to have forgotten the context they are in. The Internet!
If anything, this shows the limits, mistakes, and abuses of the virtual world by those who create it - that would be
Your post is insightful and informative about a regular subject on Slashdot.
My thanx, and sorry some people out there have lost perspective.
I considered moderating you down as flamebait for cussing... but you actually express my opinion pretty accurately here. Slashdot is not a normal news site. Never has been. And if it ever has to be one, thats probably when I quit and move on and flip burgers somewhere.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
I have the exact same problem. A little piece of advice one of the guys gave me was to sign up for a frequent flyer mileage card. Because you have to give additional information when you sign up for one of those, they already have that when you check in and you will avoid a lot of the hassles. But yes, I agree it sucks. I often get it on the flight out but the return flight I have no problems.
The other problem with the editor participation is that some percentage of people don't like "Authority". Why should my opinion be more valued just because I picked the story? I already said my bit by selecting the story in the first place- beyond that, I'd rather let the community voice their opinions.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
I had a night elf named "Nymphshadow" - it seemed slightly clever on an RP server to have an elf with a nymph-like name. I was told at level 40 that my name violated their policy. I asked why and was told "it's sexual" I sucked up and changed my character's name to "Feyshadow" and still to this day see "nympho", "hooterz" and other similar names of characters well into their 50's. I don't mind a policy. I mind when it's applied to me and not others.
No kidding.
My clan on UT2k4 had a clan member get nailed for changing his name on a server he was playing on.
Picture this. You're on a DeathMatch server, totally owning (not to mention, anti cheats are enabled) because all of the other players aren't as skilled. So, my buddy changed his name to {rto}leet_aimbot.
Atari actually pulled his CD key over this. He had to fight with them to get the key re-instated so he could play online. In addition, they warned him to not use this name ever again, or any combination of aimbot. No real reason given, and it's not like you couldn't tell he'd been a member of the community for a long time.....
Oh well. Sometimes, even if you pay, you gotta play by their rules if it's their server. It's unfortunate in Taco's events that it took them so long to "make up a rule"....
Karnal
Not really true, I have an RP character name Bunnicula, due to request I tried to tell a GM to change it, since my own name infringes on their TOS (Copywrite, fictional character), but the GM refused. Now I've gotten 100 people to complain, and I still am Bunnicula.
It seems sporadic. My friends auction mule was Gnomedepot, and they forced him to change it, mine is Gnomebase, and I've never had a problem other than being called chinese.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
I was the FIRST person in the world to use the nick "MasterHacker" (with or without a space) since the first BBS days, I found it really annoying when people used it on IRC and stuff like that.
Now how about this one- I was the very FIRST person in the world to use the nick "Wanderer" anywhere for any reason. How can I make this claim?
I was using the damn nick in early 1976 ! And used it ever since then, from multiplayer games on atari 400s and 800s to vic-20s, TSR-80s, C64 hacking, later on PC BBSes, and onward.
its a weirdly personal thing. Something thats been *mine* for decades, literally, suddenly showing up somewhere by some gimp that doesn't know squat.
It really does feel weird.
and then you try using odd names you think no one else will guess. "ByteMe", that is another one I coined first. It's fun. And it gets taken all the time now.
it got to the point where it was almost impossible to log onto an IRC server for a while, every single name I tried, they were all taken, I mean everything.
Even my fabled "RouterSlayer" has been "stolen" by others, as well as my fabled "BitSlayer", yes even "NetSlayer". it was all me... used to be anyhow.
The point is, how the hell can you be original any more? Where's the uniqueness when every single name is already taken, how to identify YOU, you want your personality in there somewhere. something different from the norm.
I came up with a new nick recently, its actually borrowed from something. I will never say what it is or where I got it. But so far, no one has copied it. We'll see how long this lasts. Cuz after that, I dunno any more. Maybe I can think of something new, fresh, and unique.
But it's getting damn hard these days.
Also makes me wonder where all the old hackers I knew vanished off to...
so, its been a few decades, but greets to-
Trans-Net, PE, eaglesoft, KJ, The Cob! (heh), Shadow Rhyder, Covert Operations, TAPPS, TOPPS, and even TGI. God-damn I miss Sublime-Persuasion...
Yeah, that's a bum deal, alright. I've seen it with WoW before, and it certainly does suck.
But, aside from WoW, the idea of keeping ones virtual identity is very personal. I've been 'Lionman' for 18 years, but even in the worthwhile places we want to go, to take our virtual identity, we have to compromise, and use something different.
I think when we do that, find that someone else has taken our name on a system, what shocks us most, is that the name we've used for years, turns out to be a name someone else has choosen to represent themselves with, and makes us a little less unique. There's someone else out there who could be mistaken for us.
I've had friends ask me if various websites were mine, because they appeared to sport my virtual name. They weren't me, of course.
Most of it comes down to, IMHO, that we find we're not unique, that someone else has the same idea we had, or worse, saw ours and stole it. It's the slings and arrows of wanting to be someone that stands apart in the vast world that is cyberspace today.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Hey Taco, I think that everything you said is dead on; It's their game but they seem to suck at customer service. Have you thought about playing the same game with them? They are a meidum sized company of computer people, chances are that at least a few of them read slashdot, so here is what you do. Look up their IP, and flag all users posting from that block. After you have a few accounts flagged, go rename them and change their UID to eight digit numbers. Vindictive? Perhaps. But there is a chance to illustrate to the powers at Blizzard that people get upset at this sort of thing, and that the GMs aren't very good at customer service. After all, it is YOUR blog...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
This is no joke--I had this happen to me when I was hired recently. My situation is that my SS card only had part of my middle name and my surname on it and so that's what they used in the system (SAP, BTW--shudder), which, by the way, they use to identify everything associated to you, including paychecks! Explaining to the bank why you're cashing a check with a name on it that you haven't used since you were seven years old is no fun.
When I went down to the local SS office to get it changed, I told the girl changing my account my story and she said that she's been hearing that a lot lately...
Which makes me think: Wasn't the SS number sold by saying that it would NEVER be used as a form of identification (except to the SSA)? WTF happened between here and there, and why the hell hasn't there been more people screaming about this?
At the end of the day, you just have to face the fact that foo bar baz.
I've been using my gorbachev nickname for over 15 years now. First used it in an online multiplayer realtime war strategy game specifically cause I knew it'd piss off the people I wanted to piss off. No matter how overboard I went with my soviet alter ego, no matter how self deprecating satire I would write, people still believed I was a communist outside of my alter ego. They flamed me for it, they hated me for it, and I laughed.
I don't know what I should've felt about the Emails I got from people after Raisa Gorbachev passed away 1999. I received about a dozen or so Emails from people sending me condolences on her passing. I did feel flattered one of them said I'm the greatest person alive. Come to think of it, it's like The Greatest President. Evar.
Halo 2 is an interesting experience with my gamertag. Every 10 games or so I get the 15-year old redneck from Nuclear Shelter Bunker Town, Bumfuck, who thinks he's going to insult me by calling me a commie bastard bitch homo f***. They also like to kill me a lot, like in "I'm going to come and kill you, commie bastard" not like in "I'ma pwn you n00b".
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Speaking of that, why number people? Am I the only one who finds numbering people dehumanizing? (And yes, I'm not an idiot, I realize that pretty much every database ever made numbers people for indexing purposes, but they usually don't shove it in your face every time you view your own posts.)
If the intent is to show when a person joined, why not display the join date instead? If the intent is debugging, why do end users see it?
Comment of the year
First, let me just say that I *like* the name policy on RP servers. It helps with the RP, yes, and it also helps get rid of l4m3rz. Seriously. I've found that most kiddies, when denied their 1337 names, decide to go elsewhere. As such, when the level gets high I will do some gardening by reporting names.
And I have, myself, been reported.
I had a gnome warlock named "CruelCoconut" early on (first week of WoW), and after a few months she got reported and had her name changed to a random one.
I looked through the TOS, through the explanations of the naming policy, talked to other people about "is this RP?" - I couldn't find anyone who would say that "CruelCoconut" was not a good RP name for a gnome warlock (well, there were a few who said it sucked, but that's besides the point ;-) ).
So, I emailed Blizzard at the contact email they provided with my argument, and a request to find out how my name violated the policy.
I don't think they even read anything beyond figuring out who I was and what I was complaining about. They emailed back a form reply that boiled down to "no" - they didn't even tell me HOW it violated the policy.
This, after saying that that email address was for appeals!
I would've felt a lot better about it if they had just told me how I violated the terms. As it is, I think it's left up to the determination of individual GMs, and I think they vary widely in their thoughts on the matter.
For instance, "FreshPrince" is around after being reported. I had a few other instances, but can't think of them now. I'm sure others can.
The point is that what's really galling is how hidden away the decisions are, and how indeterminant reporting is.
"A man is free who has to obey no man by the law."
At the very least, Blizzard should state what aspect of the naming policy is violated. Internally, they need to distribute a calibration test: a list of (say) 20 names. 5 firm violations, 5 firm non-violations, and 10 borderlines. Make sure everyone's on the same page.
But, of course, it's their game and their rules - they can do what they want.
I am sorry I saw this so late into the discussion, I know there is little likelyhood I'll be read with this volume of comments. Still, this is something that has bugged me for a while, really since about the time I registered here (after reading for a long time, and putting some thought into whether registration was Good or Bad, otherwise my ID would not be as high as it is).
Let me preface this by saying it is not a critique of the above post. It is a critique of a mindset, a critique of a way of doing things. I don't find the artical that objectionable, but I find people's response to it annoying.
I first encountered Rob Malda while poking around the web for Gimp tidbits. Then there was Bits and Pieces (or Bits and Bytes? Its all hazy now) and then Slashdot. I remember the early days. Back when it was a cute domain name, and really was just CmdrTaco's personal blog. But is it still?
It is, to all appearances, a public forum. A newbie will not get any sense that it is a personal blog when they stop by (apropos of above comment). Its not called Tacos Blog, it doesn't have his name prominently displayed on the front page, the majority of the content is not by Rob. My own personal blog and domain names, I can turn off, sell or quit any time I like. Rob, how would OSDN feel if you decided you didn't want the hard work and abuse any more, and wanted to shut down the site, sell the domain and move on?
Everyone here has been invited to, by all appearances, a public forum.
Whenever someone complains about something like Rob's story above, there are two responses, agreement, and the flat statement that its his Personal Blog and he can do whatever he wants. That misses the point entirely. Anyone can start up a newspaper, and control its content completely, but that newspaper is not going to be taken seriously if they don't maintain journalistic standards. Do people who pick up that paper have no right whatsoever to point out the flaws? There are practical reasons for being a good editor of your own personal public forum. Credibility is one, respect another (how much respect does the content here get, compared to the respect the Slashdot Effect gets?).
Like it or not, Slashdot is huge, and taken semi-seriously (more for its massive geek-esque audience than content) around the world. We have no right to point out flaws? We have no right to point out abuses and silly behavior by its editors? (Hey, -my- personal blog doesn't have Editors!)
Of course we have that right, and Rob, et al should listen, respectfully, and respond earnestly and respectfully, even if they don't agree. Rob should answer as much email personally as he can, and really thing about what people are telling him - he should be decent and responsive and thoughful. This site is nothing without the millions who read and post to his "Personal Blog", and those millions deserve a little respect. Like the GM, who has the power to be a jerk, we all know he doesn't have to be, and shouldn't be.
I have a lot of respect for what CmdrTaco has done here, (especially distributing moderator power and helping to prevent -that- kind of abuse) but I think this all boils down to something he said above (paraphrasing) - they have every right to make whatever rules they want, and every right to enforce them, it is -thier- game - but it was handled badly. In other words, you have every right to be an asshole in your private space, but that doesn't make you less of an asshole when you do it.
CmdrTaco is not an asshole, nor a fascist, but I don't know if he realizes how much his baby has grown, and how much responsibility goes with the power he has here. If hestill thinks of it as his private space, and half the readers here do to, things can never improve beyond the often laughable mess we have now.
yeaa, i'm gonna have to disagree with your higher UID numbers comment. I have been an avid slashdot fan/reader for many years, I actually don't remember the first time I stumbled onto this site(late 90's at the very least). However, since I'm now only 24, I tended to keep my mouth shut on the comments side of this site because well, people that you describe tend to make posting scary and intimidating. I can tell you for sure that there are much smarter people on here than myself. So instead of taking the risk of being called an idiot or uninformed(this is my teen years), I just decided not to post or even get an account (site is free). So for me, I'm a LONG time lurker, very very short time poster :) hence, my UID is huge..
As for taco's post. It's very understandable he is pissed off, regardless of what agreements we agree to by saying "accept" who the hell actually reads it verbatim, line for line. I'm not a lawyer so I really don't understand or care what is in them, so I just quickly jump past it and say accept(I'm being honest here :) . But remember, WoW players (myself included) pay a monthly fee to access this game which understandably is used to pay for the ongoing cost of creating and maintaining a persistant world. But the average joe doesn't give two shits about the on going costs, all they know is i'm paying money every month so I should be able to do almost anything I want including selecting a unique name. So after months of playing they just say guess what buddy, your name is gone pick another and people are supposed to roll over and say "ok SIR!".
Ok, sure, there is a commander designation in the game, but that came AFTER he probaly selected cmdrtaco, and to let him go 45lvls w/o a peep from the GM's? That's poor management of the realm and they should have let him keep the name..
my 2 cents.. hope it makes sense..
MrJynx
I then sumbitted a third support request, and to this day I have not received any support from Blizzard addressing my problem. I then stopped all future payments to my WOW membership and I no longer playing it. I stated the explicit reasons to Blizzard as to why I was cancelling my membershop but honestly, I expect it to be ignored just like I was previously.
I very much doubt I will ever purchase anything from Blizzard again if this is the level of respect I receive from them as one of their customers. Which makes the size of the list of game companies I do not buy anything from 2. I am back playing the very improved EVE Online.
Blizzard made the rules. You only have two choices 1) accept it and move on or 2) Don't play the game and don't pay the fees. You accept a LUA that states pretty claerly the naming rules. I have no sympathy. The fact that you are trying to trash Blizzard even makes the situation that much worse. Get over it. It just a game.
Sucks that you have to change it but the bottom line is that you didnt follow the rules.