Choosing names....

[sicsid]

Personally I went an easy route, I just added numbers at the end of the names.

Shamun, Shamdeux, Shamtrois

French but still numbers :P

[Catamer]

I tried using different names and I hated it.
I found it to be so much easier to mail stuff around to the alts if I have only the last character changing.
for examples xxxxxB always does mining/whatever, xxxxxA always does herbs & alchemy, xxxxxD always does skinning/leather , xxxxxE always does enchant/tailor
and poor xxxxC is always left out.

[Binaryzero]

That and it's against the TOS. I used to have a character with an ä in it...and I was forced to change it after someone reported me.

It used to be they lifted it this year, it is no longer in the naming rules...

[zanthor]

I went with visual confusion...

Samam
Samarn
Sarnam
Sarnarn

I considered different names and tried a few before I finally landed with the Sam's... the end result was as above and creates a LOT of confusion for targeting me.

[Sanctume]

After a while, I like creating team names based on some book I read and I try to make a team of individual names.

For example, I created Mages with names of Black Ajah sisters (from Wheel of Time)--wiki search Black Ajah / Wheel of Time.

[Skrimshaw]

I'm not a fan of the all the same name concept. I much prefer themes. As for pvp and them not knowing who to target (having same name), it doesn't take much brain power to figure out who the leader is and assist, or simply have an assist macro to your team mate who calls out targets.

[sqeaky4100]

I don't mind extra code when making macros...

but what else hinders you with special Characters?

Does it mess up PiP?

Does make make "leaderless" setups impossible?

Does it make certain things not possible?


thanks

[Evol]

I had two characters named Evoc and Evok... Sometimes I need to cast heals on one shammy while my paladin friend heals another.

This happened over vent:

"I've got Evoc, you heal Evok!"
"Huh?"

I paid $10 to never have that happen again.

[wrs]

Having created one group with alt characters and one without, go without. Even though it looks cool to have the same name, it makes anything else harder than it needs to be.

I went with shamm shami shamn shamy, so your first option looks the best to me.

Can you give some examples as to why?

That and it's against the TOS. I used to have a character with an ä in it...and I was forced to change it after someone reported me.

I'm not sure they enforce it anymore. Waaaaaay back when, I had a rogue with a alt-characters and Blizz made me change it. Now, I have a pally named Málibu, and it's been a pain, so I've tried to self report myself to a GM so I could change it, but they replied stating that it's fine. I thought I just had a slow GM, so I tried again, and they were okay with it.

This leads into the pros vs cons: It was difficult to pull up the toon in the armory. I've found ways around it, but that was a pain.

[Akoko]

It's now next to impossible to report your own name and get it changed unless it's strictly offensive. Anything other than offensive will not be given a name change since blizzard wants you to purchase their paid name change.

Alt-character containing names are no longer reportable, same with characters using in-game lore names or real life names of people, companies, places, etc. Basically, there's no way you are getting a free name change unless all 5 of your characters are named after different racial slurs. And in that case you shouldn't be multiboxing in the first place :P

Trust me, I've tried all of this. Before, my main level 70 mage was named Volljin and I reported myself saying that it was similar to the name of the Darkspear leader NPC in orgrimmar, and got it changed it to Teriyakijin, because I love eating Teriyaki. Then I made a shaman under the name Volljin and levelled him to 70 and found out that I couldn't get his name changed.

Check the blizzard naming policy, it's undergone some changes.