ASCII Change - Seems to have be the reverted.

[Sajuuk]

Linking from the WoW boards: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=13275622293&sid=1

I tried making a character with special characters and I kept getting a 'Failure' Message.

How lame. :(

[algol]

About time they figured out how to do simple form validation. A ten year old could do it.

[suicidesspyder]

Well thats strange do you just mean uppercase letters. Cause this past weekend i made names with special caracters like â ä so i was wondering if it was just for the uppercase letters.

[Sajuuk]

It's a very recent change. And it does effect lowercase symbols.

[suicidesspyder]

Oh man dont tell me this i still need to make 8 more chars with the same name as the main im going to cry if i get home this weekend and cant do it. Talk about making it easier for enemies in pvp to single out one player in a multiboxed group. Damn you blizzard.

[algol]

It could be just for moves. But it's an annoying trend that makes Blizzard look like a bunch of noobs. I wouldn't be in the least disappointed if they finally fixed it.

[Ualaa]

As long as they're consistent.

If they remove the ability to make new toons with ascii symbols, then they should force everyone with the symbols to rename their toons too.
If they allow people to keep toons with the ascii symbols then new toons should be able to utilize this feature too.

I'm fine either way.

[Gadzooks]

As long as they're consistent.

If they remove the ability to make new toons with ascii symbols, then they should force everyone with the symbols to rename their toons too.
If they allow people to keep toons with the ascii symbols then new toons should be able to utilize this feature too.

I'm fine either way.I'd be willing to bet they changed it because of all the asshats who used the ascii chars to make naughty names, as they'd get past the filters, or creating names close to other player's names, to get into guilds (Hey, I'm an alt of <someone>, invite me!) and clean out the guild bank.

Anytime Blizzard takes something away, it's because the idiots are exploiting it.

*sigh*

Nothing new here. I can tell by reading the CSF forum posts that Vrak and Orylia don't want to discuss it, which means it's not a popular change, and is probably causing customer support a lot of headaches - and Vrak's abrupt responses says to me, it ain't changing soon.

[Tehtsuo]

Ummm that's not good. I just moved my paladin to a different server, was going to move my shamans this weekend. Not good at all.

[TheBigBB]

There was a time, back near release, when you'd get a swift name change if you had any of these characters in your name. I was surprised when it started becoming common and seemingly allowed to have them. I wonder why they would take so long to do this if they were going to do it. I always found it annoying for myself, but if other people are okay with having those names, I don't care that much. I assume that this would also be slightly problematic in some European countries.

[moosejaw]

Vrak pointed out this change was strictly for the NA servers. IMO I think they are planning a character limit (more than 12) change or something similar real soon. Or perhaps allowing the same name on ally and horde, but that could still create problems. Although there doesn't seem to be issues in BG's with same name characters, unless your clones start assisting/following the wrong cow. ;(

[pengwynman]

i'm really not disappointed by this change at all. it has always been a bit of a hassle when you have someone with an ascii char in their name... talking on vent "hey invite this guy Dëâthbèlöw." "umm.... how do you spell it?"

[Caspian]

The original TOS or ELUA or NA naming policy forbid using extended ASCII characters. After a while it seems like they gave up on it. Looks like they finally implemented what they originally wanted and the fix is in.


i'm really not disappointed by this change at all. it has always been a bit of a hassle when you have someone with an ascii char in their name... talking on vent "hey invite this guy Dëâthbèlöw." "umm.... how do you spell it?" /who thb

that will get him

[Tehtsuo]

Called blizz support, lady there said this shouldn't apply to transfers unless your name is already taken. So.... wish me luck!

[elsegundo]

As long as they're consistent.

If they remove the ability to make new toons with ascii symbols, then they should force everyone with the symbols to rename their toons too.
If they allow people to keep toons with the ascii symbols then new toons should be able to utilize this feature too.

I'm fine either way.I'd be willing to bet they changed it because of all the asshats who used the ascii chars to make naughty names, as they'd get past the filters, or creating names close to other player's names, to get into guilds (Hey, I'm an alt of <someone>, invite me!) and clean out the guild bank.

Anytime Blizzard takes something away, it's because the idiots are exploiting it.

*sigh*

Nothing new here. I can tell by reading the CSF forum posts that Vrak and Orylia don't want to discuss it, which means it's not a popular change, and is probably causing customer support a lot of headaches - and Vrak's abrupt responses says to me, it ain't changing soon.well... im sure there are plenty of people blaming the mb community for it also by saying they're sure its because of all the asshats who used the ascii chars to make similar names, as they'd confuse players in arena, bgs and such. well what can you do? avoid pointing fingers, ya?


Vrak pointed out this change was strictly for the NA servers. IMO I think they are planning a character limit (more than 12) change or something similar real soon. Or perhaps allowing the same name on ally and horde, but that could still create problems. Although there doesn't seem to be issues in BG's with same name characters, unless your clones start assisting/following the wrong cow. ;(i would love to have more than a 10-char per realm limit. i've used up all my slots in my realm, and its pvp too. =[

[Starbuck_Jones]

My 1x priest 4x mage group was all named Alysca with the last a in each being an ASCII character, This lasted till level 62ish or so when I got home one day and found my email full of messages from Blizzard about TOS naming violations, I thought I was getting banned or something, but they said that the names with special characters were not allowed and made me change them on the next log in. Odd thing is one mage still has it but I had to change the other 3. I was a little miffed when I came back to WoW after a good year+ break to see all kinds of people with ASCII special characters in their names.

[Ualaa]

My roommate does not multibox, but uses the ascii characters frequently.
He's a huge transformers fan, and without the special spelling, it would make it impossible to get some of his names.
Megatron, Soundwave, Laserbeak, etc.

It's not just boxers who use it.
Given we're a smaller percentage of the wow population overall, I'd imagine we're a smaller percentage of those with the funky names too.






*Edit*
Pretty much ascii characters violates the naming policy.. but GM's don't actively enforce this.
If someone on your server reports you to a GM, via a ticket, then you will be asked to change the name(s).
So its policing via the community, without customer service actively looking.

[Redbeard]

I welcome the change. Yay blizzard.

[jettzypher]

in concurrence with it being against the user agreement. but i thought that the agreement said you couldnt use all non-standard chars. idk, either way i like it. havin those chars makes so many things a pain in the ass in that game. sorry for those that use it to create variations of a single name. but imo, learn to be more creative.

EDIT:
If you feel the need to troll, go find a multiboxer thread or something wow...definitely someone against our cause.

[Tehtsuo]

in concurrence with it being against the user agreement. but i thought that the agreement said you couldnt use all non-standard chars. idk, either way i like it. havin those chars makes so many things a pain in the ass in that game. sorry for those that use it to create variations of a single name. but imo, learn to be more creative.

EDIT:

If you feel the need to troll, go find a multiboxer thread or something wow...definitely someone against our cause.Actually, I checked very thoroughly through the terms of use and all related material on the blizzard site. When I found nothing restricting the use of special ascii characters in names, I posted on the blizzard forums to confirm that it is now allowed, and received the same "It is allowed at this time, but may change in the future" we get about multiboxing.

I respect your opinion, but why should I be more creative? My naming schema was one of the highlights on my team, I considered it a way that I was being creative, rather than naming them Tehta, Tehtb, Tehtc, Tehtd.

[elo]

Sorry this hits home for some of you, but it's about friggin time. The special characters are particularly out of control on Blackhand and it makes things very difficult. I've booted people from groups and raids for using them. I'm sorry your favorite name was taken but you really just need to deal.

[Tehtsuo]

Sorry this hits home for some of you, but it's about friggin time. The special characters are particularly out of control on Blackhand and it makes things very difficult. I've booted people from groups and raids for using them. I'm sorry your favorite name was taken but you really just need to deal.Maybe they don't care if they get booted from a group or raid once in a while because of their name. Why do you care so much if they get to have the name they want? Just leave them out of your business, I'm sure they'd rather be ignored by you than not have the freedom to have the name they want. This is similar to the entire multiboxing argument - what did they do to you, shit in your cereal?

[jettzypher]

what did they do to you, shit in your cereal *sniff* yeah...i got brown stuffs in my rice crispies... *cries*

im sure if there was a larger population of people that used these chars, they would be less apt to make such a change. but since its a very small minority of players, its only affecting a few in a bad way. you can please all the people sometimes, you can please some of the people all the time, but you cant please all the people all the time. just how it is... *shrug*

[algol]

*Edit*
Pretty much ascii characters violates the naming policy.. but GM's don't actively enforce this.
If someone on your server reports you to a GM, via a ticket, then you will be asked to change the name(s).
So its policing via the community, without customer service actively looking.

That.

Which also makes me really wonder about who is smoking what. String validation is ridiculously simple. So is searching the name field of their character database for characters outside [a-z] and then flagging those for a name reset.

What's the point of rules you're going to halfheartedly enforce, when a child with some hobbyist computer experience could figure out roughly how to fix it?

[Tehtsuo]

It's been mentioned several times in this thread that special characters violate the naming policy - they don't. Take some time to read through the naming policy - http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=20421&rhtml=true?rhtml=y

[kadaan]

It's been mentioned several times in this thread that special characters violate the naming policy - they don't. Take some time to read through the naming policy - http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=20421&rhtml=true?rhtml=yIt's been said it used to violate the naming policy. Sometime around BC they removed that clause from the naming policy, and now they're putting it back in.

[Tehtsuo]

It's been mentioned several times in this thread that special characters violate the naming policy - they don't. Take some time to read through the naming policy - http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=20421&rhtml=true?rhtml=yIt's been said it used to violate the naming policy. Sometime around BC they removed that clause from the naming policy, and now they're putting it back in.If you read the post, the words "used to" are pretty clearly left out. Also, Blizzard has not announced they are putting it back into the naming policy.

[unseen]

It's been mentioned several times in this thread that special characters violate the naming policy - they don't. Take some time to read through the naming policy - http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=20421&rhtml=true?rhtml=yIt's been said it used to violate the naming policy. Sometime around BC they removed that clause from the naming policy, and now they're putting it back in.If you read the post, the words "used to" are pretty clearly left out. Also, Blizzard has not announced they are putting it back into the naming policy.So at this point are you just arguing about semantics? The original post links to a blue saying that they do not allow special characters in names now. While it hasn't shown up in the official naming policy and probably isn't reportable, you have it from a blue that this change is intended.

I can understand you want to have the same name on your characters, really. Keep in mind that a lot of people are just flat out sick of special characters in people's names, it's mostly just a matter of opinion.

It would appear that the ascii characters were allowed back in as an oversight of some kind, which is why (after seeing such a huge influx of new ascii names) they suddenly reigned it back in. If that's true or not, who knows? None of us work for blizzard and can say for sure. I cannot find any kind of cached version of an older copy of the official blizzard naming policy so in my opinion I don't think that the wording on it has changed.

Can we stop beating this dead horse now? (Answer to this is below.)

[Tehtsuo]

Um, hello. Semantics are important when you're referring to a Terms of Service document. That's why whenever someone claims multiboxing is against the Terms of Service, we're so very quick to point out that it is not. Blue posters said the current character creation limitations are working as intended. That does not mean the naming policy has changed, you are inferring that a change has been made.

[Yo-Yo Freak]

ok um idk what is up with this but i just tried to make new characters with ascii characters in the names and made 5 no problems at all. they were Blödhgârm (acual spelling is Blödhgarm meanning blood wolf in the ancient language from the Eragon series ^_^), Möönfire, Moonfîre, Moonfìre, and Moonfïre. all of them worked. so either this thread is a bunch of bull or they recently changed it back to normal >_>. personaly i hope they allow these because i mean who cares if you can make a name that is neerly identicl as another persons. it is in all aspects fair to me that you can have the name that you want. but thats just my opinion.

[Sajuuk]

Confirmed. They must have reversed it.

[jettzypher]

probably cause too many people QQ about it...

[elo]

I take it back. I'm not going to fight with you Teht, excuse me for having an opinion on the matter.

[TheBigBB]

It's been mentioned several times in this thread that special characters violate the naming policy - they don't. Take some time to read through the naming policy - http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=20421&rhtml=true?rhtml=yIt's been said it used to violate the naming policy. Sometime around BC they removed that clause from the naming policy, and now they're putting it back in.If you read the post, the words "used to" are pretty clearly left out. Also, Blizzard has not announced they are putting it back into the naming policy.It doesn't affect anything right now at all, but GMs used to change names with ASCII characters almost without question for the first 6 months of WoW. I'm not sure that it was ever a part of the official rules or not, but it happened so often that it became part of the common community understanding that it was against the rules. You will often hear old time WoW players refer to it and insist on it, though the proof is difficult to obtain since that was four years ago. It's not a myth that this was enforced - I swear on my life that it was.

[Tehtsuo]

It's been mentioned several times in this thread that special characters violate the naming policy - they don't. Take some time to read through the naming policy - http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=20421&rhtml=true?rhtml=yIt's been said it used to violate the naming policy. Sometime around BC they removed that clause from the naming policy, and now they're putting it back in.If you read the post, the words "used to" are pretty clearly left out. Also, Blizzard has not announced they are putting it back into the naming policy.It doesn't affect anything right now at all, but GMs used to change names with ASCII characters almost without question for the first 6 months of WoW. I'm not sure that it was ever a part of the official rules or not, but it happened so often that it became part of the common community understanding that it was against the rules. You will often hear old time WoW players refer to it and insist on it, though the proof is difficult to obtain since that was four years ago. It's not a myth that this was enforced - I swear on my life that it was.Actually you won't have a hard time convincing me. I remember seeing it in the policy way back when, and I was surprised when heard it had been removed. I'm in the same boat not having proof, but I don't think Blizzard would deny that it was once in the naming policy.

[TheBigBB]

Attempt at proof:

http://blue.cardplace.com/cache/wow-cust…vice/112340.htm

Note that this blue post actually is from 2006, so this "rule" was enforced by some GMs even years after release. My experience with the game says that I didn't see a lot of ASCII names running around until just after the first expansion.