Reserving Your Character Name for Guild Wars 2

Waits for the inevitable crying..

Just read this, seems like a very generous and fair policy.

Not new information though, we have known they will reserve GW1 names for years now.

inb4 some-one says this is unfair

Logging in once after Jan 1 is fine.  Names being free and open after launch day is generous.

Interesting technique for sure.
But I don't care, all my characters have been dead for 250 years, there is no sense in putting the same name on a new character.

This is unfair. Wizardex was going to be my main! GD it!

Interesting. It's a pretty good balance I think. It allows pretty much anyone from gw1 to reserve their name for the start of gw2. The only problem will inevitably be those who for whatever reason cannot log in to gw2 during the first day, or during the 3 day headstart. That is a circumstance I expect to be rare though. I can see why they would want to open up names for all the newcomers asap.

I'm all set then. All my names are currently in use by my GW characters. Winning!

Sounds fair.

DoGofWaR, on 17 May 2012 - 05:52 PM, said:

Waiting for people speculating when the game is going to come out based on what was said in that blogpost.

All seems fair (although it seems like HoM winds up having absolutely nothing to do with reserving your character name), apart from the very restrictive time limit on creating a character. Can pretty much guarantee there will be people who bought EotN and filled their hall of monuments in good faith that this would be enough to reserve their character, and yet will be unavailable on launch day.

Seems fair. Most people who really care about reserving names will likely be on during the headstart or on launch day anyway, and I can't imagine that most names that people would be reserving are the type that would be snapped up immediately were they not already reserved.

Still wish there was a way to reserve single-word names (I'm worried about my Asura's name being taken before I can create her, come release), but it's really not a big deal.

WOOHOO! NO HoM REQUIRED!  I approve of this message!

Verene, on 17 May 2012 - 06:07 PM, said:

I have solved this issue for my asura by adding "the specialist" as a surname/title, and reserving via GW1, something to consider

Also works with prefixes like "golemancer".

Yeah I'm somewhat surprised that name reservation has nothing to do with the HoM and it had always alluded to. I would think it would be generous for more reserve time being extended based on how full your hall is.

As for my characters, I have 11 from GW1 but I can say that only one has a name that I will be reusing for sure.
There's only one name I want to have for GW2 that I'll have to act quickly to get. The others I have planned are original enough that I'm not worried about them being taken.

I'm not terribly thrilled with this new information.  I guess I had never considered the idea that ANet would need to "release" GW1 names to new GW2 players.  Once I think about it, it does make sense, but I wish they had gone about it differently.

My issue is this: I don't know for sure at this point how many GW2 characters I will eventually want to have.  Given that this is an MMO, I would expect for my character "stable" to grow and develop over several years as I play the game.  But what ANet is effectively telling me is this: I must make my decision regarding my characters' names, races, classes and appearances within the first 4 days (given the 3-day headstart).  Otherwise, there is no guarantee that I will be able to name my character as I would like, despite the fact that I specifically created some "placeholder" characters in GW1 for the express purpose of reserving the names.  And yes, I know that I could make a "placeholder" character in GW2, also, and then delete and recreate the character later.  But that seems like an unnecessary burden of responsibility being placed on the player.

The other issue for me is that I have 14 GW1 characters, from most/all of whom I would like to carry names into GW2.  Since we will get only 5 character slots at release, I will need to pony up enough real-world cash (since it would be very difficult to earn sufficient in-game gold in 4 days) to buy 9 additional character slots.  That is likely to be enough of a financial burden for me as to make it impossible.  If I could buy 1-2 character slots per month, that's no problem.  But one of the reasons I love the GW2 business model is because it doesn't force me to mortgage my life to pay for my gaming.

Please understand, I'm not bashing ANet.  I'm just surprised and rather disappointed that they are (apparently) choosing to prioritize "new" GW2 players over the existing playerbase from GW1, to whom they made promises years ago that character names would be reserved.  If they even gave us a week, or a month, I think that wouldn't bother me at all.  But only 1 day for people who have chosen not to pre-purchase?  That's a pretty narrow window of opportunity.

I'm not saying it's unfair.  I understand that the company needs to keep new players in mind, too (how else would they grow?).  It's just very, very restrictive, and coming from a company with an excellent track record of taking care of their fans, it's disappointing.

Seems fair enough to me. I won't be using my guild wars 1 character names, though I did create a few guild wars 1 characters for the simple fact of reserving names FOR guild wars 2. Planning ahead, it works

Very surprised about letting people take any name after a few days. It's fair yes, just not a whole lot of time is given from what it sounded like.

omedon666, on 17 May 2012 - 06:12 PM, said:

I considered that, but decided against something like that - just doesn't fit with what I have in mind. I'll just be creating my asura the moment the servers go on so that I can have the best chance of snagging the name I want, even though she won't be my main by any means.

Tallera257, on 17 May 2012 - 06:22 PM, said:

I obviously couldn't know specifically how your particular case works out, but 99.9% of people in your situation will be the type to have chosen names that are unique enough to have a more than fair degree of expectation that random person won't grab it up.  On the other hand, if you named your characters after the Fellowship of the Ring....then you're probably s.o.l.

Character names already locked down, GW2 character's appearances already locked down with screenshots for easy reference. Character biographies already memorized.

I'll be in game with my characters in no time.

NOOOOOOO!!!!!1111one.... My cat’s bar mitzvah is that week and I’ll be out of town….

in GW2 u can have 1 word character names... so how are we gonna reserve those? or is it just ganna be a free for all?