Quote Originally Posted by Okipuit View Post
Greetings,

Once again, sorry for the ogre bump. We understand that having two names can make sending /tells difficult at times. Therefore, when it comes to sending tells in A Realm Reborn, we are planning to have two different methods; typing out the player's name and a method that doesn't involve having to type their name. While things have yet to be finalized, we are looking into possibilities such as a feature where you can just click on the player's name in the chat log to send them a tell.

Once we hear some more concrete information we will be sure to pass it along.
The problem more lies within people whom you do not have physically around you or a preexisting conversation with. For instance, if you want to send a tell to someone who is only a minor acquaintance and you have only naturally memorized their given name you are stuck unable to message them. I know his name is Kitty but what was his last name again? Hmm... There may be about 50 other people with the given name Kitty on the server. Or if believe you know their surname but have no idea how it is spelled you are also in a bind.

Quite a while ago, the dev team stated that they were trying to devise a way that if you were to type "/tell Kitty", something described similar to auto translate would pop up to give a list of possible surnames. Is this still something that will be possible for ARR? I worry my previously mentioned scenario may be an even bigger problem sending tells for people who will use the toggle surnames off feature. If you never learn the surname of a character, or don't add everyone you encounter ever into your friends list you're pretty much up a creek without a paddle.

For the record I like the novelty of surnames, it makes my character feel like she has more of an identity. However, I wish it wasn't actually part of her character ID. It would be better to still have the first name be unique one character per server and allow it to be the means of contact, keeping the surname just for immersion purposes but be irrelevant as far as contact goes. It's just too troublesome. I don't even have all my real life friends full names memorized let alone all my virtual ones!