Character Name Change - Suggestion:

The character Race Change, I think it's absolutely amazing to see this feature make it into the game after so many years!

My only negative on it, which got me thinking on character names again, is that even after all of these years many of the character names I've thought about making are still taken and still to this day none of them have manifested to be online active players.

Which means there are many good names that are forever gone, as to my knowledge there are no cleanup processes in place for someone that played RotZ once and never touched the game again after two decades.

So my idea was, can this game, like FFXIV, introduce Surnames?

Or could a player that never touched FFXI after 10+ years have the name released so others could have the opportunity to have it on character creation?

Personally I think Surname, like FFXIV, would be the one-time perfect fix for any of this stuff, but I know crafted signed stuff might be more effort to make happen.

Just my thoughts and hoping to see that something is doable.

Thank you,

This isn't really a race change suggestion, it's a suggestion for a new feature entirely, so not sure why it was framed this way.

Anyway, I have very mixed feelings about the whole surname thing, even in FFXIV. On the surface it's cool, it allows NPCs to address the player in different ways, it opens up more ways to get the name you want, etc. But my direct observation in FFXIV is that rather than make "real(ish)" given name / surname combos, people mostly end up making lots of cliche two word phrases (a few I know personally- Diet Coke, Playstation Portable, Bicycle Salesman, Mash Buttons, and Catgirl Sniffer. I kinda don't really want to see this take root in XI if I'm being honest.

HOWEVER We really do need a name change feature. Frankly I think it should be included with the race change since it's more limited than it is in XIV yet costs more.