names
Latest
Hail and well met, Supaghank!
I don't play on an RP server, although I have a few toons on one. Still, even though I'm fairly indifferent to RPing in WoW (mainly because I think most of my characters are sarcastic jerks, kind of like myself) I am sometimes thrown by the names I see people giving their characters. Especially when, as an example (and names are being changed to protect folks who don't need to see their characters being mentioned on this blog) I see a level 70 holy pally looking for a Kara guild in Trade, and his name? Lordodeath, let's say.Lordodeath, the holy pally.Lordodeath is going to come heal the Kara raid, guys! Don't you feel confident now that Lordodeath is standing between you and the grave?Now, I understand that when you're creating that character you might not be thinking 69 levels down the road. That's cool, but still, you are aware you're making a character in a fantasy MMO, so why would you name your character something that sounds dumb? It's going to be funny for what, five levels max. Then you're going to have to read the same six or seven whispers over and over and over and over again about how you named your druid Dadanktanka or your rogue Notblush. Also, was Pwninthepuss really the best you could do? It also brings to mind what kind of person names their children things like Sthabby, but Azeroth is a strange and scary place, so I suppose that we cannot judge them too harshly. Then again, I did name one of my characters something that sounds like a lisp, so what do I know?What's the worst name you've ever given a character?
Outland, South Carolina
Pheonix_singing found Outland... and it's in South Carolina. Doing a little searching, I also found Durotan, Nagrand, Crossroads (oh man watch out for all the Chuck Norris jokes there), and Lakeshire. Unfortunately, Azeroth doesn't appear on Google Maps anywhere-- at least until they start mapping other planets. Until then, of course, MapWoW's got the monopoly.I have to give it to Blizzard for their place names-- they're really, really good at coming up with names that sound real, but aren't. Stranglethorn Vale is a perfect name for the southern tip of the Eastern Kingdom, and Feralas and Desolace are perfect for their ambient locations as well, but none of those names directly refer to anything on a real map. And even Azeroth is a pretty epic sounding name that Blizzard (Metzen, probably) pulled out of thin air. Well, not completely thin air-- they did kind of nab it fromone of their first games, which was based in "Androth." But still.And my favorite name from Warcraft isn't on any real map either-- it's Thousand Needles (or 1K Needles, as I like to call it). I don't know how a designer looked at the hundreds of plateaus south of the Barrens and decided to call it that, but I'm glad they did.
DS may have killed the 'Game Boy' name
We all suspected that the Game Boy Advance was basically moribund, because it lacks the high-tech money-printing capabilities of the DS. Confirming our suspicions, Shigeru Miyamoto mentioned in an interview with Kotaku that Nintendo basically didn't care about the platform anymore. Now, according to George Harrison, it's not just Nintendo's "third pillar" strategy that's out, but the whole Game Boy line. He told GameDaily that "This year in our marketing you really won't see much push against Game Boy itself, so it will kind of seek its own level. It's hard to say in the future if we will ever bring back the Game Boy trademark."It makes sense for Nintendo not to bring back the Game Boy name when the DS has so much momentum. But, personally, we think it's quite sad to see a Nintendo standard go away. Oh, well, at least we've got the Wii now to take over as the most awkwardly-named Nintendo console on the market.
DS Daily: Those pesky names
Stupid names. Who needs 'em? We never did. Growing up, we never talked about moblins or lynel in The Legend of Zelda. We talked about the spear dudes and those stupid #*@&$^) centaur guys (except with more colorful metaphors). We were dirty, dirty children who shouldn't have been allowed to mix with the other children. But the point is, manual-reading aside, the official names for creatures in video games just never seemed to stick with us. Oh, maybe some (evil) people could summon the precise names for Lakitus and Metools, but we were not those people. This is why we like Castlevania. You know what a Fish Head is? It's a freakin' fish-headed monster. Even we can remember that. But what about you?
Baggy McBaggerbag would be fine, too
Hot on the heels of that trinket chain suggestion from the other day, I've got another easily-implementable suggestion for inventory management: I want to name my bags.Not necessarily "Jonah" or "Sally" or "Tricia," although those are all very acceptable names for bags. No, I want to be able to label the bag that I keep all of my healing gear in my "Healing Gear Bag." And I want to label the bag that I keep all my quest items in "Quest Item Bag." Clear labels that help me organize exactly how things get laid out in my inventory.Now, there's already a little bit of that going on-- "special" bags like Enchanting or Soul bags are already labeled, not to mention that you can't put anything in them that doesn't belong there. And obviously the same thing applies to quivers (Related: where on your bag bar do your hunters put your quivers? I always put mine just to the left of my backpack, but I just realized it didn't have to go there all the time).But I want to put custom labels on all of my bags, so that if I happen to take a vacation (either out of town or to an alt), I can come back and know exactly what's where. There are lots of bag-related addons out there, and for all I know, one of them lets me do exactly this. But I'd like to see a nice and easy implementation in the normal interface.
What's in a name?
Last night over guild chat the subject of naming our characters arose. Someone asked exactly how we chose our character names. It's a pretty personal question, at least it is for me. Being a writer pretty much all my life, my player character names are mostly names from my writing. There are also those characters that have been created out of jokes, or as representations of their jobs like Donations. I've built character names out of thin air as well, mostly because I love character creation beyond all other things. Most of my characters' names are fantasy in nature since being a fantasy writer I tend to be a stickler on that sort of thing. But some of my characters have looser based names. My priest is named Mandie, for obvious reasons. My paladin I've called Vashlyra, which is a combination of my dogs' names. I once even had a gnome rogue named Runnt. Perhaps that is part of why I love creating new characters so much. I get to give them a name, and infuse them with personality and back story. Every new character is a chance to rewrite the story, and each name is so important to me. But I am just one player in millions. I know my guild mates choose names differently. We have one player whose characters are all named variations of the same word. We have another who picks all his names from the random name generator. And yes, we are a guild populated mostly by alts, if you must know, so there are plenty of characters to name. On the other hand, I have seen many, many names that I cannot stand. I have actually found a correlation between horrible players and those who named their characters by picking a cool word they like and tacking on the letter X at the end (CipherX, you know who you are.) On our server I have run into Linksys, Pallyman and my personal favorite Ooitsahamster. I have even seen some I cannot believe haven't been reported. Now while I am more of a name snob, I can see why people choose to have fun with their character's names. What I cannot see is playing a character with a ridiculous name until 70. How do you choose your character names? Is it something tied to characters you have always played, or do you close your eyes and hit 'random?' What makes you connect with a name, or do you have no connection to it at all?
Gallery: What's in a name?
From NPCs to player names to guild names and locations, I often find myself having a chuckle over Blizzard's and players' creative naming decisions. We've started a gallery to showcase some of the funnier names around Azeroth and Outland, and we need your help filling it in. If you see a funny NPC, player, guild, or place name in your travels that isn't already in our gallery, take a screenshot and send it in. We're happy to credit you by name and a link to your blog, guild website, etc. We'll keep updating the gallery and post periodic reminders as long as it keeps growing. Make sure your image is less than 10MB in size and send it to funnynames AT wowinsider DOT com. And of course, check out the gallery so far. Thanks in advance for your submissions! %Gallery-1669%
Japanese Hardware Sales: 29 Jan - 4 Feb: Executive assistant edition
Don't lie, faithful readers. Each and every one of you, upon reading this article, indulged in at least four seconds of consideration on applying for the position of Reggie Fils-Aime's personal assistant. The list of technical requirements was steep, but when you consider the amount of people willing to take this job is approximately 6.5 billion, there are certainly a few out there who fit the bill.Reggie personally kicks all those asses that are so frequently mentioned. But those names he's taken? He merely dictates them to that special person, whose job it is to transcribe the taken names for future reference. Truly, a job of monumental importance.A little known fact, friends, is that Reggie has a direct impact on the Japanese hardware sales numbers every week. Here is an example conversation, heard behind the closed doors of his secret penthouse office...Reggie Fils-Aime: We need to come up with some interesting numbers this week.Assistant: Sir, they have the actual data available in Japan, if we just--Reggie: Silence!Assistant: ...Reggie: ...Assistant: If you wan--Reggie then rips out the assistant's spine in retribution.- DS Lite: 146,073 48,453 (24.91%)- Wii: 65,740 18,014 (21.51%) - PSP: 31,216 4,484 (12.56%) - PS2: 18,727 1,269 (6.35%) - PS3: 17,540 3,455 (16.46%) - Xbox 360: 6,130 1,235 (16.77%) - Game Boy Micro: 1,050 127 (10.79%) - GBA SP: 724 299 (29.23%) - Gamecube: 306 41 (11.82%) - DS Phat: 119 37 (45.12%) - GBA: 28 6 (17.65%)[Source: Media Create]
The temporary art of Corpse Grafitti
Grimmus on LJ points to this forum thread, and introduces me to a fad in the game that I have never heard about before: corpse graffiti. It's the art of leaving corpses (usually of the opposite faction if you're in a faction specific place like Orgrimmar) with meaningful names in strange places. It's fascinating to me that people came up with this idea, and it's genius at the same time. "Nerfmurlocs" in a murloc spawn area, "Nerffire" on top of a torch in a city, "Welcomemat" outside of a city, a female orc named "Mankirkswife" in the Barrens. The thread's got lots of great ones in it-- one guy says he even placed corpses of all the main characters from Lord of the Rings in Ironfroge.Do people actually do this? Just to check, I logged into my server and looked around the front areas of Org, SW, and IF, but couldn't find any interesting corpses. A Google search of corpse grafitti turns up nothing, and there are no screenshots at all in the thread-- you'd think people who made works of art like this would try to capture their genius. And while we're at it, exactly how long do corpses of logged out players stick around, anyway? I know it's more than a day, but I think it's less then a week, so this is a pretty temporary artform.Still, theoretical or not, I think it's a great idea, and I'd love to see it in practice sometime. In fact, maybe I'll log in right now, and place a corpse somewhere in the jungles in Stranglethorn Vale for you to find on your travels. The name? It'll be "Drlivingstone," I presume.
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?
Nokia to switch up naming scheme, follow Moto's lead
5200, 6136, E70, N70, N73. We lost track of what's what in Nokia's soup of numbers and letters about twenty or thirty phones ago; maybe our jaded minds can't handle the constant onslaught of new devices anymore -- or perhaps we're just getting old -- but it sounds like help is mercifully on the way. After watching brands like Motorola's RAZR and LG's Chocolate dominate pockets and purses for the last couples years, our favorite Finnish phone manufacturer has dropped hints that it, too, will be switching from numbers to names for at least some of its future products. Ironically, the news comes just as HTC is going the other direction with its naming scheme, moving from names to numbers -- but with monikers like "TyTN" plaguing their stable, we're thinking that was the right move. No word on what kinds of words might pop up in the Nokia lineup, but our vote goes to names of Finnish cities (who wouldn't want a Nokia Oulu?).
Apple Support doc: Mac maintenance Quick Assist
Apple has released a "Mac Maintenance Quick Assist" support document that is more or less a 10-step guide aimed at beginners for taking care of their Mac, both inside and out. These steps include good, basic practices such as using relevant names for files instead of "DSC_00001.jpg," while also recommending that you occasionally clean your Mac (duh).I was surprised to see a few tips make this list, however. The first: Check for viruses. "Macs don't get anywhere near the amount of viruses that Windows PCs are prone to, but that doesn't mean that they can't get infected," reads tip #8. I guess the guys who wrote this article didn't get the memo from the team who made the "Macs don't get viruses" TV commercials. The other odd tips deal with Mac maintenance stuff, like repairing permissions and defragging your hard drive. I was under the impression that, since Panther, Mac OS X defragged itself. On the permissions topic, there has been a lot of chatter over the last couple of months about whether repairing permissions is actually useful. Just check out the pseudo-series John Gruber had on the topic.All in all, I think I was actually a little frightened by evidence of even cheesier one-liners making their way into Apple's support docs: "As a Mac user, you won't have to do windows, but you will need to do some housekeeping!" Yuk yuk.
On marketing, and a thanks to Apple's department
While chatting with my brother this afternoon about (what else) this whole Boot Camp thing and its ramifications, he brought up a great point concerning Apple's marketing and a good choice they made with this new software:They didn't call it "iBoot."Bonus points for not calling it "iBooty" either. Thanks guys.
Survey: what will Intel-iBooks be called?
So now that we know Apple has changed the naming scheme of their PowerBook line to MacBook Pro, the question begs to be answered: what will the iBooks be called once they get Intel Inside Leap Ahead? Will the name shift to iMacBook? MacBook mini? Something else? Post your thoughts, and lets have some fun trying to guess Apple's next marketing move.
