Originally Posted by
Arkhan
Well, I certainly hope they aren't doing something that is that incorrect, especially since I'd venture to guess that first and last name are stored separately. Maybe not. Maybe the unique ID is a concatenation of both names.
Anyway, using any of the above combinations for a unique defining ID would be a terrible idea. I doubt they are, since they do force name changes for vulgar names.
A 32 bit integer alone would allow for more unique IDs than we'd probably ever have as players on the game.. (Over 2 billion IDs). Use a 64 bit one, and we get even more! Do the IDs on a per-server basis, and that's even more uniqueness.
So, my guess is that they can do it, but are making damn sure there aren't any unforeseen issues that will pop up from the mass gender change that is most certainly going to occur when like, 50,000 people all simultaneously turn into boycats and change their names from Fluffy McFurry to Sir Purrsalot or something.
Also, it'd be awfully embarrassing if they have database problems that games like UO don't have. You can have 7 characters with the same name on UO! Heck, two of my characters are the same exact name.