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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Racial Naming Conventions
ArchivedUser
Guest
Just curious to hear what people think of this topic, for good or ill. I'm a big fan of such things for they help me feel as though I'm fitting into a world.
There's a lot of power in a name, and can help establish a racial identity. For instance, all we know about the Py'rai is that they tend towards the more 'naturey' qualities of Elves, but if we were to discover that many of them have surnames depicting rather gruesome qualities (I.E., Boneclaw, Flesheater, or Heartpierce to come up with a few, rather cliche, names), I imagine most of us would be less inclined to imagine spritely pixies and lean towards feral, savage-like beings who dwell in the wilds.
Other naming conventions, be it something as simple as a suffix that denotes the order in which your were born, a social ranking, or even a taboo based on the color if your eyes, all make for interesting things that emphasize the society and way of thinking an individual race has.
On the other hand, they can be limiting for those of us who having a long-running name we use in games, or make someone who wants to engage in the world in-character but has a name they prefer outside of conventions feel somewhat ostracized.
There's a lot of power in a name, and can help establish a racial identity. For instance, all we know about the Py'rai is that they tend towards the more 'naturey' qualities of Elves, but if we were to discover that many of them have surnames depicting rather gruesome qualities (I.E., Boneclaw, Flesheater, or Heartpierce to come up with a few, rather cliche, names), I imagine most of us would be less inclined to imagine spritely pixies and lean towards feral, savage-like beings who dwell in the wilds.
Other naming conventions, be it something as simple as a suffix that denotes the order in which your were born, a social ranking, or even a taboo based on the color if your eyes, all make for interesting things that emphasize the society and way of thinking an individual race has.
On the other hand, they can be limiting for those of us who having a long-running name we use in games, or make someone who wants to engage in the world in-character but has a name they prefer outside of conventions feel somewhat ostracized.
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Comments
Hopefully we'll be seeing some love and care put into not only the names, but languages as a whole. As a hopeless anthropology nerd, I love seeing fantasy worlds where the names of characters and cities follow certain conventions, rather than just adding some Y's to real world places and names.
It will e fun to see what the Dev’s come up with.
Ox
[/quote]
Brother! I thought we lost ye in the battle. God damn orcs.
For example let's take WoW
Illidan Stormrage, the Last Name Stormrage suggest a brutish/savage yet somewhat nature/element focus and that maybe your first impression of the character/its race. But the Character itself is a egomanic Mage..
Arthas Menethil, the last name Menethil doesnt seem to be a compound word, like Stormrage was, yet it somewhat feels ethereal, noble, elvish in a sense and that would be the first trait you would imagine there
personally i think compound word names are suboptimal yet are easier to implement in a game then truly original names. Afterall our real last names evolved of centuries from words long forgotten today. Unless your name is Smith