In part 1 I discussed the various ways of designing how characters get named in an MMO. In this part I will talk a little bit about how your perfect name might not be perfect for the game and you will be forced to change it.

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Naming your character in an MMO is a sacred thing. It’s probably the single most personal thing about your character. Especially in an MMO that does not allow for a lot of character avatar customization, where your name is probably the only real differentiation from any one else of your race/class combo. MMO designers should take this seriously, and make sure that you have the player’s interests in mind when you come up with your naming rules.

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A couple weeks ago I wrote a blog about Maintenance, which was my term for the “fiddly stuff” you do with your character when you are not fighting or traveling. A couple readers thought the post was going to be about Server Maintenance and what goes on with that. I figure I’d take the opportunity to pull back the curtain and tell you guys what happens during that “server down time” that happens to almost every MMO about once every one to two weeks.

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When I first started working on City of Heroes, the design team could never really grasp the idea that people would want to “solo” a “Massively Multiplayer” game. If you think about it, it does make a certain amount of logic. The name “Multiplayer” is right there in the genre, doesn’t that automatically invalidate the solo playstyle?

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