After approximately five minutes of playing experience, you can spot the people who are going to be annoying. Their first names are “Lotta,” “Dirty,” “Chulpa,” and “Ilike.” It doesn’t take a college degree to know that the last names are going to be “Balls,” “Sanchez,” “Mipenga,” and “Pussy.”

What’s the harm, you ask? Who cares what a couple roleplaying knob jockeys think, as my old guild leader used to say?

Well, for one thing, the roleplayers may be assholes, but they’re a different kind of asshole than a player with a stupid name. If they’re going to be obnoxious, it’s usually to guildmates. And while they certainly generate their share of tickets, usually revolving around a husband/wife pair where the wife’s character is “just roleplaying” a torrid love affair with the guild leader complete with one handed typing, and the husband cleans out the guild bank and sells the gear on Ebay… well, CS people read them, print them out, and close the ticket as totally irrelevant.

An asshole with a stupid name has intentionally chosen to make absolutely certain that everyone who even sees him, let alone plays with him, has to endure him in their faces for at least a few minutes. Ever hear the phrase “your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins”? Yeah, well, naming your character Cleveland Steamroller is an inch past the beginning of my nose.

That name says “I’m an antisocial basement dwelling loser who doesn’t care about anyone’s enjoyment but my own.” Except to a few likeminded wankers, his behavior is sure to be selfish, rude, and cost the company customers who decline to accept this guy as “colorful.” In his single (or is it simple) minded quest to be the beetle with the biggest pile of dung, he is going to make an ass of himself on forums demanding changes to the game that would suit a tiny minority of players like himself, and ruin the game for tens of thousands of others.

If he plays long enough that in real life he leaves his mother’s basement and stops relying on lotion filled tube socks for relaxation, he inevitably comes to regret the name. But he isn’t going to take responsibility for his choices, oh no. Instead he is going to harass the CSRs for hours on end, and incidentally cause massive waits for people who actually need help, to change his name so he doesn’t have to be reminded of his idiocy whenever someone talks to him.

The names aren’t even that funny! Even the most puerile of players will laugh once, snicker a second time, and by level twenty sprain their eyes from rolling them. The names are utterly predictable, and after ten years of MMOs, never original in the slightest. But the guy who puts up one of those names thinks he’s the most startlingly original thinker since Einstein. Assuming Einstein was a coprophiliac.

He is a festering boil on the ass of the community that must be lanced with a red hot needle. My by now extensive experience proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt. He costs the company money, he damages the game experience for everyone else, and he’s as much fun to play with as a rabid porcupine.

After I’ve changed his name and lobbied for his preemptive banning, I see on the boards that he’s created a new account with a new (marginally acceptably named) character, and is planning to come to an event I’m hosting so he can punch me in the crotch. You knew that anyone enough of a cretin to play a fantasy MMO and yet call himself by an improbable sex act is also the kind of person who lacks perspective on a message board.

What a tool. And yet…Somehow, I always wind up drinking beer with Mr. Mipenga at 2 AM, and we wind up standing wobbily on a pool table, declaring that indeed, that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

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Sanya Weathers

Originally Posted by zeetes ok.. cleveland steamroller is now something that i wish i didn't know the definition of.

Originally Posted by Lum I've heard it termed both Steamer and Steamroller.

Originally Posted by Lum I've heard it termed both Steamer and Steamroller. In UO, if I didn't like someone's name or they spoke in d3wd, I attacked them. Didn't matter where. This made banking interesting. When DAOC launched, I was in a guild that named all our characters after obscure porn stars. (I was Danni Ashe.) I was disappointed, sort of impressed, and vaguely skeeved that the lead GM could identify (and flag for renaming) them ALL.

Originally Posted by Calarius "Cleavland Steamroller" comes under the heading of "Things I didn't need to know in this lifetime". And here I thought "Donkey Punch" was bad. People like this simply get reported for naming violations. And I'm one who will happily report people spamming a trade chat channel with nonsense with names like that. The WoW Guild I am in actually has a rule that requires some kind of reasonable thought in the player name. Such players as described above would never be accepted. In fact, most top-tier guilds have some kind of rule regarding naming. No guild wants to be associated with an asshat with an offensive character name.

Originally Posted by Deyth We usually won't let someone into Combine if the name is obnoxious or stupid. Even ones that have no meaning but can't be easily typed like Geistfeuerlyn.

Originally Posted by Deyth I'm sure any minute now Ozkar will step in and tell us how he does it often, possibly to someone's mother here.

Originally Posted by Ozkar Yep, I took at shit on Scizyr's moms' chest. After I read him say that Diablo 2 was a fucking MMO. If anything demanded poop on the source of creation, that was fucking it.

[Yesterday 10:16 PM] Scizyr: i don't count diablo 2 as an mmo

Originally Posted by willwill I'm thinking of actually making a new name, the next mmo i play. The most difficult problem is, i am very unoriginal and boring. So it's difficult for me!

Originally Posted by Scizyr Does this mean you ate that shit after dropping it on my mom's chest? Reading is hard isn't it?