When it comes to naming your character in an MMO, there are two paths players generally take.

The first path, generally taken by people with a semi- to hardcore-roleplaying background, is to name their characters appropriately to the game world and, where possible, even their race and/or class within that game world. In Age of Conan, for example, people playing a Stygian would go and find real Egyptian names for their characters, as that race was loosely based on ancient Egypt. In Lord of the Rings Online, people would invent names that didn’t sound out of place in one of Tolkien’s tales. The character generator in that game even gave hints on how to create a good character name for the type of character you were playing.

The second path, meanwhile, is taken by people with less of a roleplaying background. These people see their in-game character not so much as a real, living, breathing character, but simply the avatar that represents them in this virtual world. As a result, such characters are given “real-life” or pop culture names like Elvis, Letterman or Pontiac. Some might even resort to expressions like, KegOnLegs or LookAtMe. This doesn’t make the character less important to these gamers — many of whom aspire to top the leaderboards — but shows that their interpretation of the pixels on the screen is vastly different to those on the first path.

In Beskar, we are on the first path I mentioned here.

While people can have whatever name they want on the Beskar forums — within reason, of course — to represent them, in the game of TOR itself, we’re aiming to eliminate “silly” character names and present as a mature guild. In this context, “silly” means names that would look out of place in a Star Wars novel, or comic. Names like KegOnLegs or LookAtMe are good examples of that. So we ask members if they already have a character name in mind, to ponder whether it would be realistic to see that character name in a Star Wars novel or comic. If they think it would, chances are that name will be fine with us.

Why do we do it this way? A combination of reasons, actually. We certainly have a group of roleplayers within the guild. For them, character names are very important — which extends to the characters they deal with in the guild who aren’t, strictly speaking, roleplayers themselves. Aside from them, we also feel that “silly” character names can really lower a guild’s reputation. After all, first impressions count and if you see a character from another guild with some stupid, or even offensive, name… what’s the first thing you think? I guarantee it’s not, “Wow, I bet he belongs to a good guild!”

So there you have it. That’s our policy on character naming. Does your guild have such a thing? If so, what is it?