Ryan Schultz talked with Patch Linden about the returning ability to pick a last name. And today in the Content Creators UG meeting Oz Linden spoke more about the coming ability to change your name.
First, both are making it clear this is something that will change in late 2018. Oz hopes before the end of the year, not the last minute of December, but not real soon either.
Anyone, new or old, can change their first and last names. It will cost RL money to change your name. Price has not been decided. Some MMO’s charge US$20 and a few more. So, whatever rumors you hear on price, that is wild speculation so be skeptical.
You will be able to change first and last names. So, all those scripts that depend on remembering an avatar name, they are going to be obsolete. If you have a need to remember an avatar, your script will have to use the UUID, as the UUID for an avatar will never change.
You can create any first name. Last names will be selected from a list. I think it was Hamlet that was writing about watching a Linden trying to come up with last names to select from. Oz says they will be selecting names users submit. They will probably update the selection list in batches.
Once a name is used, it cannot ever be reused. So, when the feature goes live expect a rush to get the good names.
When you change names, can you go back to a name you used previously? Probably… but that has not been decided.
When we know someone’s name and they change it, how do we find them? Seems we can search on the avatar name we know and always find the avatar, no matter how many names changes they have had. So, for those avatars that need to hide, a name change is not going to be much help.
No one is talking about how the Friends List is going to work. If my friend ‘TheDick’ decides that is not the glamorous name they though and changes to ‘TheBigOne’, what will I see in my Friends List? I know Dick, but not Big One.
Will I have to pull up their Profile to try and figure out who they are? I have enough strange friends and several from over the years when playing combat games that it takes me some time to recall. With a name change that will get even more difficult.
Will I be able to pull up a list of my friend’s aliases?
And Display Names… what is happening with those? Patch says they will sort of sunset out of use. Oz says it would be more work to remove them than to just leave them. So, they will likely hang around indefinitely.
For RP Display Names may be good. We can change them once a week for free. Plus, they allow the use of Unicode characters. The new first and last names will NOT.
If we change a name are we changing our login? I think so. But, does our password remain the same? I suppose. What happens to the names displayed in the SL Forum? Do they change on all our posts or only the new ones? And the Marketplace?
There is a lot of stuff the Lindens have to figure out…
“Once a name is used, it cannot ever be reused. So, when the feature goes live expect a rush to get the good names.”
Have they’ve told why ? At the beginining of SL it was possible. Doing like that will oblige them to regularly add new names, and it’s not the easiest way to do, don’t you think ?
I think they thought the why obvious.
I don’t remember being able to change an avatars name, other than the Display Name. So, define ‘in the beginning’.