Removal of Surnames

[Rannie]

I like the fact that we have Surnames. I always hated when I'd create a character and low and behold the name was already taken and used.. it does give it a more real life quality to it because how many Amanda's, Michaels, Johns and peters are there out in the world today?

[Malakhim]

No offense, but less than 1% of the population has an interesting, clever, or powerful sounding name. This is virtually unattainable when requiring surnames.

I believe the only reason for surnames was because of the drama that occurs 8 years down the road when you have to merge servers...

Surnames should not exist in FFXIV. Not only do most people's names suck, but it makes the game look like a text-adventure in crowded zones.

I won't even bring up the fact that trying to send a /tell to Whargershire Alizeilaronetsunakashima as he runs across the screen is often a disaster.

If you are in defense of surnames, please know that your name sucks and is not memorable to anyone other than yourself (unless you're Belgian, Rofl, that is...)

All they need to do is a "click to tell" to solve your little problem.

I'll agree though that it's kind of depressing when you spend a few hours going through different cultures' vocabularies trying to come up with a sweet name to log on and see some jackass named xCloudx Sephiroth.

[Sirrush]

I'm more interested in knowing why he hates the flintstones so much

[Abriael]

This discussion doesn't even make sense. Duplicate names already exist, so surnames will never be removed. It's that simple.

[AmandaHuggenkiss]

Putting surnames into the game was a great idea.

[Arkine]

But if surnames got removed now, there will be a good number of people that'll have to change their names.

Anyhow, best way around this, is to implement the old FFXI system where you get a window with a list of commands when you click on a person.

Chat
Magic
Trade
Check

That included a click to tell function too.

[Rhianu]

But if surnames got removed now, there will be a good number of people that'll have to change their names.

If surnames were simply made optional, there would be no naming conflicts with existing characters because their names would already be decided. But for new characters created from this point onward, people would have a choice for whether to use a surname or not.

"optional" labeling is one of the major sources of confusion in any kind of form.

Says who? They could just change the text field during character creation to look like this:

Given name: [________________]
Surname (optional): [________________]

I don't see what's so confusing about that.

I actually find funny that some people are complaining about something this absolutely minor (and that simply cannot be changed) and feeding an obvious troll. Surnames won't go away for very simple practical reasons, so this discussion is pointless.

What makes you think it can't be changed? Do you work as a programmer for SE? Did you look at their source code?

[Abriael]

If surnames were simply made optional, there would be no naming conflicts with existing characters because their names would already be decided. But for new characters created from this point onward, people would have a choice for whether to use a surname or not.

Oh yeah, more confusion and less clear rules. Exactly what this game needs.

[Rhianu]

Oh yeah, more confusion and less clear rules. Exactly what this game needs.

The level of clarity would remain the same. Adding a single option would not cause that much confusion, especially since it could be clearly communicated with a single word.

I'm sick and tired to see stupid names like in another MMO like ~:+:LoVe|2:+:~, <*-AsSaSS|nATioN*->

these people don't know how to named themselves and deserve to be forced by rule

What MMOs do you play that allow for special characters in names? All the MMOs I've seen only allow letters. >.>

But the issue of special characters is a whole other discussion anyway, so I don't know why you're bringing that up.

[Abriael]

The level of clarity would remain the same. Adding a single option would not cause that much confusion, especially since it could be clearly communicated with a single word.

That's why the first thing they teach you when devising a survey in a statistics class is not to put in any optional questions

This thing is so minor and inconsequential that there's no doubt on the nature of an effort to question it.

Surnames aren't going anywhere.