Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Aliases

One thing the Overwatch beta brought home to me is that I need to change my BattleNet tag. When Blizzard came up with the old system, the only Blizzard game I was playing was WoW. I couldn't think of a decent handle to use, and since the tag doesn't appear in WoW, I just entered my real name.

But now, when I play other Blizzard games, my real name appears very out of place. It is traditional to not use real names in gaming, to use a made-up handle instead.

I haven't really used an alias online in years though. My usual Coriel-style names are for characters, not for me. I suppose I could go back to using "GSHamster", but it was always pretty lame. I used it mostly for laughs in FPS games.

So I'm trying to think of a decent handle, and am drawing a blank. Do most of you use a consistent online alias? How did you come up with it in the first place?

28 comments:

  1. I also came up with a BattleNet tag at a time when the only Blizzard game I was playing was WoW. I just took the name of my main character (Banquetto) and made that my tag.

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    1. Unfortunately, my main MMO characters are female, and the "Coriel" family of names that I usually use are female names as well. I don't really feel comfortable using them for myself.

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  2. Just go with Rohan, everyone will think you're a Tolkein fan and nobody will realize that's your actual name.

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    1. Heh, that's an idea. But it would still look out of place to me.

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    2. I had a friend that gave me a 'nickname' (Hawkinson) that was basically my last name (Hawkins). I've been using it since with mild variations based on the original concept (Hawk) for names and alternative handles. I've also used a randomly generated name from I believe SWTOR as a handle often enough.

      Using my main handle as a guideline I'd go with something like the following: ‎Rohirrim, PhaRoh, P (the symbol for Rho), or rho meson

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  3. Same as Carson, my battletag closely recalls the name of my WoW character :)
    I don't use a consistent alias, on the one side because at times it's already taken, on the other side because the whole point of using an alias it NOT to be immediately traceable across activities, so I use different names for different "roles".

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    1. I think I would find it confusing to keep track of all the different names in different games.

      Personally, I don't mind being traceable on the internet. A real name just seems inappropriate in this context, though.

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  4. I'm sort of pondering the question of my "online alias" as well.

    My first alias was "Alien", which I chose in Unreal Tournament (99 - 2k4), obviously because I was always crap at coming up with original names and also because I liked the Alien-movies and especially the namesake creature. I came to actually be even somewhat proud of not having a "properly cool" alias ;)

    Having moved to MMOs, I became "Remaglar", which was the name of my main (and pretty much only) character in LotRO and subsequently my main (and pretty much only) character in WoW. Which is fairly convenient, as hardly anyone else is likely to come up with it and also because it's easily (and readily) shortened to "Rem", which is actually people-friendly.

    So, now "remaglar" is in the URL of my blog, except no one ever calls me that and I'm not likely to ever play a character by that name again. Which makes it pretty much "just something". Which isn't bad, but makes me wonder if I should swap the "Rem" moniker for something ... more original. Except I have no idea what that should be.

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    1. Another vote for WoW character, I guess. Now that I think about it, I used to have an older male WoW character who's name I could use.

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  5. I've been using variations of this since 1995 (when I first reached the interweb).... in many various games I have played characters called "Lorelei", and "Ierendi" comes from way back in D&D...

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    1. Heh, back when I played D&D, I used to be the DM, so that's not really an option.

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  6. I use Durentis as an intentional misspelling of "derentis" from the Ancient language in Stargate which means insane/crazy. I thought it at least somewhat fitting, it sounded good to me, and I expected the misspelling to keep it unique going forward. I was not quite so fortunate (Reddit, etc..), but have stuck with it. No doubt you could find plenty of good names from similar sources.

    GSH was never lame.. Minsc and Boo were awesome. :)

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    1. I don't know. I've never really liked using a name from fiction for me personally. If it's a major name, it seems presumptuous. As well, it links you to closely to the work. I'm not sure there's any specific work that I would care to be identified with that closely.

      Admittedly, that's one of my issues with GSH. It's too "D&D" for my current tastes.

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    2. I wouldn't say I identify with Stargate in any way.. but it had a number of interesting creative aspects. A source of inspiration may be closer, perhaps, as a budding musician adopts or adapts aspects of those favoured who came before. I enjoy linguistics, so their adaptation of Latin drew my attention. And I'm not at all concerned if people make and/or have opinions on the connection.

      If you withdraw from all fictional reference, you're left with a string of random characters which, if they sound at all sensible, are nevertheless almost guaranteed to pattern closely to one or another existing fiction regardless of your having encountered it.

      That said, there are of course plenty of non-fictional languages in the world to draw inspiration from, but you might feel the same sense of identification there? You can google translate common words from english to random languages and see if an interesting name is produced.

      Your search reminds me of a scene in Hackers where Joey struggles for an alias. Perhaps you're just overthinking it - especially if it's just for casual gaming. But I do think that if you plan to make a sizeable online presence, especially if monitized, it should be as brand-worthy as you can manage.

      How about Vaejl'n (VAY-lynn)*.. a reference not born of reference? ;)

      *Alternately, Vaejlhn, Vaejlhyn, .. if whatever game won't accept an apostrophe.

      Anyway.. just some further thoughts. It's an entirely personal thing and I'm sure something will just click at some point should you need it to.

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  7. In anything gaming related I usually go by this persona. (I'd say it's more than a handle) - and there's also many characters in different games by that name. So this direction works.

    On the other hand I have a "nick" in the original online nickname/handle/alias sense - which I don't use in gaming circles, but on IRC. I've never named a character like this and also won't. It's the "me" persona - online. I have used this in FPS games before I adopted the gaming persona (around the time I started playing MMOs), though.

    Sounds complicated. Maybe it is.

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    1. It is oddly complicated. I didn't think it would be this complicated to come up with a handle.

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  8. Im almost always going by the name Shandren online. It's actually the name of a character i played in a LARP campaign way back when. It was also the name of my first "main" in any MMORPG (back in EQ), and more than a few single player RPGs through the years. Some time in my twenties it took over from my previous handle Osiris (mostly used for starcraft/fps/whatnot at LAN parties because no real internet for me back when I was younger.)
    It is also apparently a rare American girls name...but hey, too late to change it now :-)

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    1. Osiris, hmm. Something from classical mythology would be nice. But it would also increase the odds that the name is taken.

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    2. What I did was go with an intentional misspelling. I originally tried for Athena and Athene as a paladin name. As expected, both were already taken. I then tried Pallas (a variant for Athena) and that was also taken. Then I deliberately misspelled it with an 'i' and that worked. I've since gone on to use Pallais (or PallaisAthene) as my universal handle.

      The only amusing side effect is that folks try to pronounce something originally Greek as a French name. :chuckle:

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  9. My main handle is from the Dune series. But if I want another name (for a WoW character, for instance), I usually just look up a list of names in a foreign language and pick one that sounds nice.

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    1. That's an interesting idea. Though I imagine my name is already foreign. Maybe I should pick a western name like "Bob" as my alias.

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  10. I use this handle pretty much everywhere, and have done since the late 90s. I'm a big fan of Wilde, and it's a fairly obvious pun.

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    1. A historical reference, eh? That might be an interesting source.

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  11. I picked btag just based off wow characters, but the characters were originally from a character in a book I liked back when I first started WoW. It's been somewhat weird lately in HotS because people think it's a reference to Deckard.

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    1. Heh, or originally from the Bible? It is kind of weird, 50 years ago, the biblical Cain would be the allusion that everyone would immediately jump to.

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  12. My current online name has it's origin from my Hunter I rolled when I got back into WoW in 2010. He's Kalven (with and orange tiger named Hobs, of course), and after contracting altitis, I renamed my Priest from Kirise to Kalare and named all further alts something starting with Kal. My btag is Kal1699 (random numbers given) and so that's what I've made my twitter handle as well. I guess WoW set the foundation of my current online identity.

    I've found that only going with Kal names is fairly restrictive, but the result is that I have to be extra creative to compensate. The easy part is that no matter what alt or social media platform I'm on, I'm always just Kal.

    FWIW, I also second Polynices's comment. It seems you like to mentally separate yourself and your avatar, so just going with Rohan would have that effect. The nom de jeu tradition isn't that strict, I think.

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  13. Great question, Rohan, and the answers have been really interesting! I've used various mmo character names for online accounts, as well as ones based on my name. I don't really have one unified 'persona' name that I would use if e.g. I got esports-famous. My favorite character name is a linguistic term - Hapax Legomenon, meaning a word that appears only once in a collection of writing, be that a story, book, series, or collection. I like it for a few reasons: the superficial meaning suggests uniqueness, but since roughly half of the words in a book are hapax legomena the deeper meaning is one of many; It looks and sounds like a name a person might really have in a variety of settings; the meaning is esoteric enough that most people don't know it isn't just a name; I also think it sounds cool.

    I only play orks in wow, so the names don't really work outside that context. I don't want to be known as Gobfullateef :)

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