A toon by any other name
... would crit as high? We've talked a lot about guild names, heard lots of good examples of pet names, even checked out server names and NPC names, but we haven't (ok we have, but it's been a while) yet talked about your name. Your character's name, that is. How'd you come up with it? Was it what you wanted or what you settled on? You know, when "Legolass" was taken for your female NE hunter.
Terra Nova's latest article takes a quick look at how we create our online identities through our nicknames. For some people, it's serious stuff-- we want our online identities to be a close approximation of what our real-life identities are, and you get names like Lindsay, Ralph, and Drewster. For others, it's a joke-- we still use a reflection of ourselves, but it's through such a dark glass that even guildies might need some explanation if they met us in real-life (Jessirogue, Dakstalker). And still other people care even less-- they jump onto a pop culture identity (Leggolas again, or Vaderrogue) or other social reference (TN's example of "FlirtyGrl91") and try to make their online personality completely seperate from anything that represents them in real life.
I'll let you decide which category I'm in-- my two current mains are a gnome warrior named Tankey and a orc shaman named Shamanic. I'm also working on a UD PVP twink rogue named Punishment (my favorite names, I've found, are just one single word) and a human shadow priest named Shadowgirl (female, obviously). Then again, maybe I'm all three types of namers. What's in your name(s)? Do your character's names reflect who you are as a player, or something else, or nothing at all? Would my guildmates treat me differently (or, more likely, see me differently) if they all called me Mike instead?
