Perfect, thanks! Quoted for others: So what's changed? Apparently no more rules against celebrities so I suppose I shouldn't have reported that Imperial named "Bjork" today. I think that "Generally Inappropriate" line is a mistake. Basically an open invitation for ANYONE to report ANYONE for a name they dislike. On RP servers, this is trouble. Also, I'm very surprised there's no stipulation about Star Wars names anymore. Again, probably shouldn't have reported a character named "Fett" then. It seems like the new naming rules seem more focused on harassment and profanity over immersion, yet it throws the "generally inappropriate" in there to cover all that stuff.

Anyone else notice that the RULES OF CONDUCT document has been updated and all naming policies apparently dropped? http://www.swtor.com/legalnotices/roc

I didn't even know about that.

Might as well quote that section as well:

In addition to AlyxDinas's comments, it should again be pointed out that callsigns, nicknames, and aliases are NOT incongruous with the Star Wars setting. For example, in this very game the Imperial Agent is called "Cipher 9" past a certain point. And this after posing as a bounty hunter named "Red Blade" or some such.

While I've seen some very positive responses from CSRs when reporting gold spammers, I've seen the following when reporting names: Never heard back -- name not changed Never heard back -- name changed Terse, cryptic responses (e.g., "closeing [sic] for mass effect," "closeing [sic] for mass change") Responses that completely miss the point (e.g., "[we currently do not have a name change service]") Full text of that last, which I got twice: My response the first time: My response the second time: My conclusion is that the CSRs are kind of learning as they go and we're currently in the wild west of enforcement of their own policies as far as naming. I mean, when I link to their Rules of Conduct and provide the exact line of the rule the player is in transgression of and still I get a form response like that for a totally different issue, it tells me they're either skimming, using automated processes, or don't speak English very well. EDIT: By comparison, here's the full text of the proper response to a report that I just got today when logging in to grab the text for this post. Note, this is for an obscene name. Are these the ones that get good responses? Edit 2: I got a response to the "are we not supposed to report naming infractions?" question. It was this: And they closed the ticket. That's it. Just "."

I'd agree with you on a normal server, but this is an RP server. I don't want to see stupid names on an RP server.

I plan to start doing this myself.

/agree

I would never NEED for a companion but I haven't argued with people who rolled NEED for a companion even when I lost. It's ambiguous. I think there should be a COMPANION NEED option.

No, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Does it matter how popular "skywalker" is or does it matter that it's a primary character's name? I wouldn't report someone named "Luke," I would report someone named "Joe Skywalker." Or "Chad Vader." Or "George Starkiller." Etc. That's why it's in SWTOR's policy to just ban all in-lore names. Not because it's impossible to explain a name away in IU terms, but because at a glance it breaks immersion by reminding you "hey, this is all based off of a movie and this character was in it."

Excellent, excellent method. I'll be doing this from now on.

My apologies, it wasn't my intention to imply you shouldn't request features, I was simply lamenting the state of things.

I would want one extra line for RP servers banning "silly names" (e.g., Mistycrazymonkey).

"Captain Raymus Antilles" is the guy Vader chokes out in the beginning of the first Star Wars. Then "Wedge Antilles" is the guy who survives both Death Star runs. In the expanded universe, Wedge goes on to become the long-term leader of Rogue Squadron and stars in a number of books and comics. In these books, they poke fun at the confusion of these two characters by implying that "Antilles" is an incredibly common name--like "Smith" or "Johnson"--likely because of the far-traveling nature of Corellians. They also threw another Antilles, Bail Antilles into the prequels. This seems to be a double-joke as "Bail" is also the name of Leia's father, underscoring the in-universe commonality of both names. People probably aren't aware of all these characters in the lore, no, but they're also, IMO, unlikely to stumble upon exactly that type of name and that should be taken into account. I wouldn't report someone for naming their character "Bail," for example, but I would report "Bailorgana" or "Bailantilles." Shaak or Kun are pretty generic. But Shaakti or Exarkun I'd report. Personal thing or not, this is an RP server. If a name is iconic to a celebrity, then it should be changed, commonality or not. Remember, there's no default last name, so it'd have to be RogerMoore or something unless they picked "Roger" and played through all of act 1. I'd report "Rogermoore" in a second.

That was indeed very odd. The Hutts must be powerful indeed to be able to enforce that. That was not the case when they first made PvP servers in beta, because I remember fighting there while trying to vendor some stuff. Honestly there's not much zone overlap in this game. I've bumped into exactly two enemies in a PvP zone so far and they both ignored me. Part of this I'm sure was because of the early start and therefore lower pop.

If a name is truly obscure then I doubt they'd make you change it. If a name is supposed to be "common" IU (e.g., Antilles) I'm sure they wouldn't make you change it. But I hesitate to put official language for "allowing obscurity" in as that's just an invitation for violators to argue with the GM. Especially if someone feels extended universe names shouldn't count. I totally disagree. "Schwartzenegger" would be totally immersion breaking to me. I don't care if it's their real name or not, that's not the point.

Unfortunately you just never know. And I bet they have an endless list of things that "wouldn't take much time" that they'd like in the game.

If they can make bubbles an option, they should be able to making just floating text an option.

This is how I explain away some of the silly names. If a guys name is "Quickslash," I just assume he's in a band or using an alias.

You can't force roleplay unfortunately, and even if they WANT to help us out, they're probably buried with gameplay-related tickets right now. RP will take a back seat at least until the furor of launch dies down. On name enforcement, they unfortunately do not have a rule against "silly names." I saw someone yesterday on AP named something like "Manyhappyfairyboy" or something and I knew I couldn't report him. HOWEVER, they do have naming rules and you can freely report any of the following: This means you can report: Celebrity, religious, political names In-universe character names Titles l33tspeak names gibberish names "Yoda" is clearly breaking the naming policy. I would argue that "toohawtforu" or whatever is a form of l33tspeak, and is against the naming policy. I've reported exactly two people--"Caedus" for in-universe character name, and "Apprentice" for being a title. But if they just had a rule against--even if it was only on RP servers--"silly" names, I'd be reporting quite a bit more. And of course, until they get their launch tickets under control it's unlikely we'll see much action on these reports, but I HAVE heard on these forums that someone had to change their name, so they are policing at least a little bit. Probably with a priority on offensive/derogatory names at this point.

Thank you very much for putting this together! Roleplaying is hard to do, and I think it would be nice if BioWare was able to throw some development toward the roleplaying community once they've got their core gameplay under control. This is already one of the smoothest, most polished launch MMOs (if not THE smoothest) ever, so I'm hopeful they'll have some free time between the post-launch hotfixes and starting development for the first expansion. A role-players' wishlist is a great start. Great start! My thoughts on each: Disagree: If they rejected even color-matching, we'll never get an appearance tab. Also, we SHOULDN'T considering their orange/mod system. I think the "more cosmetic gear" is a better route to take. I think this list should focus on that: On "More Cosmetic Gear," I think putting more orange gear for cheaper cost in the social vendor is the way to go. This can be generic stuff--such as the pilots' suit for fleet commendations--that people can spec up with mods. Priority: Dyes for armor are a must. For RP chat channels, it would be nice to have something official that mirred "general" since anything the community would create themselves wouldn't be planetary (as I understand it). In addition to more hairstyles and general character customization-- Priority: --the ability to alter appearance post-character creation is a must. Priority: Chat bubbles are a must. Object interaction isn't strictly necessary but it'd be nice to be able to sit in a chair. I would LOVE a bio tab on inspect. This was one of my favorite parts of SWG and one of the few things that game did really well. However, if they can't police names, I don't see how they'd police biographies. I would like to see more response to name reports, and I'd like one additional rule on RP servers for names: no "silly" names. They already ban character, celebrity, title, offensive, and l33tspeak names, why not this as well? At least on RP servers, you should not be able to name your character "Crazyfairyman." And yet I'm seeing names like this and apparently there's no rule against it. It would be nice to have RP explained to everyone at least superficially, but without enforcement it may not be worth it. The PvP rules are enforced automatically by server rules. I would add the additional ideas: Dream-feature: "Decoration" slots on your starship, where you can put, for exampnle, a weapon in a slot of your cargo hold and it appears in a pre-determined display case somewhere in your ship. In addition to gear displays, mount displays would also be good. Dream-feature: Nemeses list: a buddy list for the people you love to hate on the other faction. Especially on the RP-PvP servers, it would be nice to be able to provide "nemesis" status to someone you enjoy PvPing against so that you share location when you're both online. This could be as simple as issuing a "challenge" invite to someone on your list where, if they accept, you share location for the next X minutes. Functional emotes. Please clean up the emote list so that each one provides an animation. Without an animation, we may as well just be using /emote. Some sort of in-game functionality for locating/advertising RP events. If not a calendar, then at least a general /rp channel. Or even planetary /rp channels and a server-wide /rpooc channel. Some way of earning Social points for free-form RP. I have no idea how to do this in a way that won't be abused, but it'd be nice. Maybe an alternate currency? "Cantina points?" Mini-games/cantina games. Pazaak/Sabbac would be good. Arena dueling would be good. Swoop racing would be great. Custom guild ranks that can be used as titles. (Again, would be tough without enforcement and may need to be distinguished from earned titles.) Same-faction guild-v-guild PvP. It'd be great to be able to go to war with same-faction guilds you oppose. RP flag: the ability to mark yourself as "looking for RP." That's all I have for now.

That would be good. Isn't there some sort of "looking for group" flag already? Something along those lines would be good.

Generally in most MMOs the population shifts away from PvP servers. Less people enjoy PvP, and many who don't know this up front abandon PvP servers later on.