Is naming characters similarly really the best idea?

[TheBigBB]

It might be great to have the same names in arena, but it seems like in any other situation, naming the toons completely different names would actually help prevent people from tagging you AFK in a BG or if you're running multiple classes, people might not figure out you're even multiboxing them all. I've had more than one person ask me if the druid was also mine, even though she's clearly always following the same as the others. And people who look at a BG chart have no clue who my guys are.

[Havelcek]

I have my current group named differently and find it much easier to keep them straight.

[Vyndree]

Example of "similar name backfire":

Big bad wolf encounter in Karazhan:

[Raid Warning] VELA*** is LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD!
Me: Oh SH*T WHICH ONE?!!!!


However, it's a decent advantage in PvP -- particularly if your characters all sound the same. If you're facing low-bracket teams that don't do assist macros and use vent to call out which person to kill, they're going to have a hard time coordinating a spike.

If you don't PvP, there's no reason to make your names complicated.


I think the best "middle of the road" strategy is to use <Prefix> + <letter>

For example,
VelaA
VelaB
VelaC
VelaD
VelaE

That way you have a logical way to tell which one is which (i.e. "VelaA is little red riding hood!!" -- A is my "main PC" therefore I know exactly whom to move) while still using a prefix to prevent /target a from working -- they either have to tab through to find you, use Proximo or some other pvp targeting mod, or use /assist. It's a minor PvP downgrade but a major PvE upgrade for managable naming conventions. :)

[ElectronDF]

I was just scared they would say "Kill BoxingMainChar" and I would have to worry about switching my main. I want them to have to be a tiny bit confused which is my main and which char name is the one they should kill. It won't stop them, I just want to slow them down. Also same with armor. I don't want them to say, "Kill the guy with the red hat on".

[mlwhitt]

Added benefit of having different names (and looks) is that the number of WTF HAXXOR tells is way way down since I decided to redo my naming convention and started rolling different looking characters. Of course guild name can still give you away.

[Malekyth]

My names are similar enough that people know I'm boxing: Osaar, Isaar, Esaar, Usaar and, um, Harmsworth, but I find keeping the first letters different at least helps me tell myself from myself. I also stop just short of the clone army look and give each toon the same face and coloring, but a different hairstyle. I remember that Isaar has the prim up-do, Osaar has the sporty ponytail, etc. I don't PvP, but I don't think anyone would have trouble figuring out my main if I did ... in PvE, people just watch for the toon in front, leading the others, and send all their "WTF? LOLOLOL" messages to her.

[Steph]

My first team was a-,b-,d-,elaire and captn. The second is all Æteam with accents on the e. I have not noticed any increase on people calling out clones or hacks by mistake.

What I have noticed though is that I have trouble telling my characters apart myself, in particular if the window is resized.
Also, with two irregular chars in the name, I am usually not mailing anything to these chars and trade instead. =]

[moji]

The only problem I have is forgetting which toon I'm currently playing. PIP moves the windows and I'm using focusless, leaderless macros, so if I move #4 to big screen, it's switches places with #1, so with the exception of a few addons that I only run on #1 and one letter in the name, I'd never know myself.
Example of "similar name backfire":

Big bad wolf encounter in Karazhan:


../forum/icon/quoteS.png Quoted

[Raid Warning] VELA*** is LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD!
Me: Oh SH*T WHICH ONE?!!! Oh god, I'd never want to do that with more than 2 or 3.With 5, make sure reincarnation is up I guess.

[Zub]

I have 2 teams of 3, one with similar names (apart from accents) and one with different names. In PVE i find it much harder with the similar names as you can't easily tell which one took agro from the target of target of your main screen

[KSboxers]

Also, with two irregular chars in the name, I am usually not mailing anything to these chars and trade instead. =]I only mail stuff between my primary account toons. To aid in this i have the names of all my toons on that account on each others friends list. CT mail mod has an autocomplete for mailing that autocompletes your mail with the name of toons on your friends list. Helps out with the high ascii names. But i do plan to redo my naming so i don't really have to worry about this anymore. My locks i'll keep the same since they will be for PvP.

[Zub]

CT mail mod has an autocomplete for mailing that autocompletes your mail with the name of toons on your friends list
Doesn't Wow do that by itself now? i know it autocompletes all the names of my guildies and friends when i type in-game mails, and i don't have CT Mail.
I believe they added this to the default mail quite some time ago.

[Fizzler]

Naming them similar is certainly an easy way to ID your toons. I have never done this though in fact I am very unoriginal with my naming with the exception of my very first main Fizzler. It was a take on the Fizzle sound made when a spell failed in Asheron's Call. After that they have all been randomize, randomize.. wash rinse repeat.

[daviddoran]

2 of my teams have almost identical names, with just different accents over the letter i. It's caused me a few problems in identifying toons, such as in ZG the boss that says "Toonname! I'm watching you" and oneshots that person if they cast anything, I had no idea which of me he was targeting...

I think for my next team, im going to go with similar prefixes and different suffices, like i used to with my "rhon" prefix. Although the concept of making one of them "look" like the main, but actually be an alt is appealing, like having 4 near identical names and one oddball, people would often assume the oddball is the leader...

[Yamio]

I make my names/hair/faces different just because I never liked the way all that looks. I thought it was funny the first time I saw it but there was no way I'd ever make my team look like they all come from the same parents. It's a personal choice thou. You name them and make them look anyway you want.

[TheBigBB]

I don't have a problem with the names being different with regard to IDing them. Even though 4 of my guys are technically exactly the same in all ways, I still find myself knowing who's who. Violin is the one who always pulls aggro on the big fights and is way lower in exp because of it. Violin you unlucky rascal, you! Kickinside is my trusty enchanter and has less gold because she DEs everything rather than getting to sell it. Thebigsky finds ways to somehow lose follow and get stuck on a branch or something, despite EVERYONE ELSE MAKING IT. Come on bigsky...

Yeah I really think these things.

[Tasty]

Ronburgandy Champkind Bricktamlyn Brianfantana

<Channel Four News Team>




:D kgo

[KSboxers]

CT mail mod has an autocomplete for mailing that autocompletes your mail with the name of toons on your friends list
Doesn't Wow do that by itself now? i know it autocompletes all the names of my guildies and friends when i type in-game mails, and i don't have CT Mail.
I believe they added this to the default mail quite some time ago.I've run CT mail so long i had no idea. I'll still use it for mail logging function.

[NoobShammy]

My team on Aman'thul is

Funkamaster
Funkemaster
Funkimaster
Funkomaster
Funkumaster

I will pvp with them but nothing to extreme or overly dedicated. The reason why i diid this was for my own sanity. Listing them alphabetically as well as sequentally
account 1 = a
account 2 = e
account 3 = i
account 4 = o
account 5 = u

This way it is a no brain when doing loots I know who has what and who needs what and which instance of wow i need to click in order to activate that that toon to perform a certain action.
.
Furthermore it makes easy trades between characters and the toons trade skills. lets face it how many times have you said "AEIOU" Its easy and intuitive and streamlines the processes of looting/questing/account activation/trading/skilling up. I wouldnt ever do it any other way

[Stabface]

Example of "similar name backfire":

Big bad wolf encounter in Karazhan:


[Raid Warning] VELA*** is LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD!
Me: Oh SH*T WHICH ONE?!!!!One solution to that is get your Paladin to make a macro that's '/cast [target=targettarget] Blessing of Protection'
And actually someone tonight had an addon that automatically put a skull on top of whoever was Red Riding Hood, but I have no idea which one it was (some option in DBM maybe?), which helped immensely.

On-topic, I went with variations on the Phonecian alphabet:

Alephi
Bethi
Gimeli
Dalethi
etc.

So yes they are similar enough to clearly see I'm a multiboxer, but different enough I can immediately know which is which based on my screen layout... which was 2 of my 3 goals with names (the third being no special characters).

[RobinGBrown]

I'm an RPer at heart so I always name each of my team uniquely, although I do try to come up with a theme if possible. However I do make them all look alike for some reason... (probably because I like to control their appearance rather than just select 'randomize')

My RP triple boxing team 'main' is Kharisma (BE warlock) with two slaves Vassal and Odalisk (undead warriors) - so the warriors are her necromantic minions with no will of their own - it's RP and it's multiboxing all at once!

[Korruptor]

I use mostly unrelated names:

Here were the names of my first quint group:
Quaid
Axis
Exmortis
Eckhart
Quade (yes this is close to the first but it's still a real name)

My next batch:
Chaplin
Viper
Wülf
Tags
Draxl

etc.

It's a lot harder to find names that aren't taken but I can't really do the similar naming convention, not knocking it, just can't do it myself.

[Boylston]

It's really simple:

Similar sounding/looking names = Advantage for Arena mostly (very few in BGs are going to "call out" anyone other than TAB-Targeting your lead.

Different names = Better for YOU in PvE and inventory/client management.


My shamans are Boylston (lead) and Boylbee,Boylcee, Boyldee. I have talked with people on my server that have killed me in arena that they will simply say, "ok, kill order is going to be D, main, B, then C" over ventrilo. I have seriously considered renaming them if I keep on with them. As a result, I named my hunters:

Zoljuzol
Zuljuzol
Zoljuzul
Zuljuzul

and my healer will probably be renamed Zoljozol, just for consistency.

Yes, it's sometimes a bear to figure out who is who, but you get used to it after a while. My only beef is that I RAF'd them and then character-transfered them back over to my normal, old accounts and their team-order somehow got messed up.

[Littleburst]

I don't have a problem with the names being different with regard to IDing them. Even though 4 of my guys are technically exactly the same in all ways, I still find myself knowing who's who. Violin is the one who always pulls aggro on the big fights and is way lower in exp because of it. Violin you unlucky rascal, you! Kickinside is my trusty enchanter and has less gold because she DEs everything rather than getting to sell it. Thebigsky finds ways to somehow lose follow and get stuck on a branch or something, despite EVERYONE ELSE MAKING IT. Come on bigsky...

Yeah I really think these things.Lol :D

I also got a slacker, the one with " on the i. If i forgot to pick up a quest on a toon because share wasn't possible it would be him, if a char would get stuck somewhere it would be her.

I always have to wow windows on the same places, so if i have to check one out i can check it that way easily. If i would have to target a specific slave without the party frame, that would be pretty hard though. :P

[Jaws5]

I have played and run both ways.

All same names easy to pick out and get grped in AV.

easy to tell you are a M boxer

different names and toons are harder to tell but when they find it out you get more insults on account selling , boting etc

I like all being same for pvp events

:)

[Vicker]

My current pvp team is:

Triplicatión
Triplicatiòn
Triplicatiôn

I tried to make it as difficult as possible. "Kill the one with the little mark above the 'o'!" "Which mark?"

[RobinGBrown]

I can see that for the PVP scenario already mentioned, i.e. an enemy team using vent/voice chat to organise themselves, naming your characters similarly would help.

However don't serious PVP teams use focus macros to concentrate fire on the main target? i.e. the way multiboxers do. Wouldn't that minimise the advantage of having your characters similarly named?

In my opinion the benefits of different names outweigh the benefits of similar names, but each to their own.

[Toned]

Lawlshawk - ACT1
Lawlzshawk - ACT2
Lawllshawk - ACT 3
Lollshawk - ACT 4
Lolshawk - ACT 5

They sound similar and are pretty close to the same name, but easy for myself to tell apart. Really it isn't hard to communicate over vent my team names if you say L.O.L shawk, or the one with a Z etc.. But If they pronounce it just lol/lawlshawk there is some confused noobs.

[Eteocles]

Arena - Name confusion helpful
Other pvp - Not so useful, who gives a shit basically
PvE - Diff names very helpful, e.g; "Just send Flayme the mats when you're done" "Urth's gonna tank, heal him" "Yo you forgot to invite Waturrshokk!" etc :p

[raz]

I personally like the similar naming idea but it lends itself nicely to my setup. Running full hardware I know exactly which monitor and mouse to grab if I need to move A, B, C, or D separately from my "main" Z. I do often run less than 5 in kara so I'll swap who's on my main computer, but the others are always on a specific monitor so that I know who's who at a glance.

[TheBigBB]

It does seem like if people at decent rankings are losing battles over targetting confusion, then the state of the competition in the arena is pretty sad.

[Vyndree]

It does seem like if people at decent rankings are losing battles over targetting confusion, then the state of the competition in the arena is pretty sad.

Shock and awe is a decent tactic. I doubt many teams have seen a multiboxer in arenas.

That being said, naming conventions won't fool good PvP teams. They'll have assist macros set up. Naming conventions help the "learning curve", though, since casual players who don't arena often probably won't have the mods/macros.

Preparation vs lack of Preparation. *shrug*

Even in a competitive arena, there has to be the 1100's teams to balance out the 2k teams. And you're not going to be 2k right off the bat. Everyone has to do the weekly gear farm.

[hotsuma]

i kept getting nubs saying reported etc so when i re rolled the 2 i gave them different names , most dont notice im 2x boxing now

[Jaese]

I like my names.

When the clones are all bunched up and look like one character, the names combine to Jâêse.

I am easily amused.

[moji]

My experience now with running similar names, is don't. Make 'em different. And another thing, make them in alphabetical order. With my current setup, when they're put in a party, where they're loading in the 4 pip screens on the right had side, don't correspond to the order of the unit frames on the left. Might be a way to fix this with pitbull, but I'm not sure atm. I could change the login order of the screens to put them alphabetically, but I dont want to mess up the rest of my toons. Using PiP and leaderless targeting, I get confused as to who the lead toon is sometimes, not that it matters much, but still, I'm confusing myself for very little gain long term.

My second team, warlocks and shadow/discholy priests, I'm naming after alcohol. <Dotting under the Influence> Someone else here gave me that idea but off the top of my head I can't remember who.

[merujo]

when i started boxing, i gave my toons different names, having in mind Pink Floyd, the band i love.
So one was Pink, other was Floyd. I decided to tribox and the other was Pompeii (the italian city, destroyed by the vulcano where Pink did a movie, a series of videoclips).

when i decided to 5box, i followed the strategy of similar naming, just changing the `´¨^ above the i. i thought it was better to confuse.
now i know that, ur opponent will always know wich is ur main, so it pretty much has more to do with being funny and joke with noobs. depending on the font that ppl use for wow, some cant really see the difference on the nick, and automatically say im hacking lol.

I think anything will do. similar naming. alphabetical naming. random naming.
but the best choice for me, and i would do now if i could, would be as Vyndree sugested. but instead of a letter in the end, i would put it in the beggining, like Xzin.
being able to identify the char better, is a plus. for trades its nice. i do my trades based on party position of my addons, i can barely see the difference on my nicks :)

[Freddman]

Im thinking of renaming my characters, my first team was named Reek, Acklay,Nexu and Zuxu ( all from the Star Wars universe :P ) and my new team is simply Ryloth with different "`" "´" "¨" over the O, and in the begining i had a hard time trading, sense i always ended up trading to the wrong character, and like someone said in this thread, the names in the partylist doesn't match the order i have my slave windows aligned on my screen and sometimes i tend to heal the wrong characters (have a macro to target heal each individualy, F1,F2 etc) sense i couldn't quite make out if it was a ` or a ¨ over the O :P

[Korruptor]

I have been giving thought to rolling a group with a leader having a unique name and the four minions with similar names.

Little RP' in there.

[Vyndree]

would be as Vyndree sugested. but instead of a letter in the end, i would put it in the beggining, like Xzin.

The reason I put "letter at the end" is because you can /tar A or /tar B, but you can't /tar BlahA or /tar BlahB as easily. ;)

[Gurk]

I made a first timer mistake with my team. I got to 15 before I realized it and had to delete and reroll.

Assari
Assarii

"/target assari" Would target the nearest one of the 2, even though the 2nd one has 2 "i"s.

[Eteocles]

A patch or two ago they added a command called /targetexact which would fix your problem, Gurk ;p

[Jaese]

My experience now with running similar names, is don't. Make 'em different. And another thing, make them in alphabetical order. With my current setup, when they're put in a party, where they're loading in the 4 pip screens on the right had side, don't correspond to the order of the unit frames on the left. Might be a way to fix this with pitbull, but I'm not sure atm. I could change the login order of the screens to put them alphabetically, but I dont want to mess up the rest of my toons. Using PiP and leaderless targeting, I get confused as to who the lead toon is sometimes, not that it matters much, but still, I'm confusing myself for very little gain long term.

My second team, warlocks and shadow/discholy priests, I'm naming after alcohol. <Dotting under the Influence> Someone else here gave me that idea but off the top of my head I can't remember who.

The party frame is grouped by the "age" of the character (the reverse order in which they were created).

The youngest is always first and the oldest is always last.

[Eteocles]

The party frame is grouped by the "age" of the character (the reverse order in which they were created).
The youngest is always first and the oldest is always last.

Aye this is true; I created my chars in Captain Planet order: Urth, Flayme, Wind, Waturr, Mana. In Urth's party list, it shows Mana at top, then Waturr, then Wind, then Flayme at bottom. :P

[moji]

The party frame is grouped by the "age" of the character (the reverse order in which they were created).

The youngest is always first and the oldest is always last.AH so that's how it works.

Well I looked again and my toons are in alpabetical order if circuit is party leader, but the rest is backwards, because I created them in order. Any way to modify this?

[HPB]

I'd be happy if they'd just let us reorder our characters on the character selection screen. :pinch: I hate how my bank toon is first the list and my main is halfway down. Also, it'd be nice if all the shammies on all my accounts were either all first or last...

[Hat]

I've had two experiences with different groups.
With one group, where they all had similar names, they were called botters more frequently. But it did have a confusion pattern. Especially if 3 are similar to each other, and 2 others are similar to each other (where your main is in this one, and has the later alphanumeric name). The big problem is that though your enemies may be confused, so willl you sometimes.

[evaqwesta]

I donno about all you guys. I keep hearing these stories about being flamed, and cursed haxor, etc but they second I tell people about dual-boxing.com they usually send me a msg back asking about my hardware setup or which program I'm using to run all my characters so they can do it too.

I felt as though naming my characters very similar tells people that I am a multiboxer and tens of people have recognized it and im not even out of the 40s on kel'thuzad.

I've always felt like I was the last one to know what multi boxing is because everyone else seems cool with it.

I think if my characters were named randomly without a them that i'd be less distinguishable as a multiboxer and that would suck because that is what I am.

[pinotnoir]

All my toons are named after wine grapes. I have 2 new shaman orc females that I added to my 3 shaman Cows. I cant count how many times people asked me about 3 boxing because they cant see my orcs inside my cows. If you ever want to hide toons use Cows. This may be why people try to attack me solo. When I have everyone on follow it almost looks like 2 cows standing there.

[Dominian]

All my toons are named after wine grapes. I have 2 new shaman orc females that I added to my 3 shaman Cows. I cant count how many times people asked me about 3 boxing because they cant see my orcs inside my cows. If you ever want to hide toons use Cows. This may be why people try to attack me solo. When I have everyone on follow it almost looks like 2 cows standing there.

haha nice one i didnt think of that! :D

[TheBigBB]

All my toons are named after wine grapes. I have 2 new shaman orc females that I added to my 3 shaman Cows. I cant count how many times people asked me about 3 boxing because they cant see my orcs inside my cows. If you ever want to hide toons use Cows. This may be why people try to attack me solo. When I have everyone on follow it almost looks like 2 cows standing there.My moonkin hides all my other toons. haha. I'm not trying to hide, though, just can't avoid it.