Name Change Woes

For the shaman team I originally picked names that were individual and loosely based on the five elements: earth, water, fire, air and void. That was all good and well, but did not really work as intended. Maybe if I had gone straight with the element names, using replacement letters where they were taken it would have been ok, but as it was, it has been annoying me for a while. No longer though!

Saturday around noon I decided to change the names of the shamans. I had a silly idea, played around with it a bit and liked it. After a look at the account management, I was not too sure how long the name changes would take and how long the characters would be not available for playing. So I went and tested it with the low level shaman Aethera that I had left aside to boost the other four. The name change went through smoothly and instantly. Yay!

I changed the names of Firma and Flama next, again instant service, everything was going well. Then I hit a serious bump in the road. Payment problem. A quick call to my bank gave me my credit card contact and this again gave me the information that there was no problem from the Credit Card company's side. So it had to be Blizzard. Who are available for Billing problems Monday to Friday. Great news for me with the weekend just starting.

So I made a character each on the accounts with Lavia and Venta to sit on the names that I wanted. And waited. And waited. My first guess was 24h cooldown after the third payment. No joy.

Next stop, Monday morning. I called the toll free number listed on the wow website and spoke to a friendly female agent at billing. I explained my problem, she sorted it with the payment department, and I could change the 4th name. Yay! When I tried to change the fifth name - blocked again. ARRGH! Another call, another agent, another time on hold. And I could change the 5th name. Finally!

Now, what is the whole thing about? Meet Æteam, Ætèam, Ætéam, Ætëam and Ætêam! I remember the A-Team on TV when I was a kid. How they amazingly built a tank from cardboard and vegetables before battle, each episode. That is very much like me putting down a forest of totems when fighting. I used Æ instead of A because it seperates itself a bit from the T - and seriously cuts down on random whispers. ;]


This is a portrait of my four shamans standing on top of each other after I renamed them. Yay!

Having virtually identical names is a tactical advantage in BGs for a multiboxer. If the characters are perfectly stacked on top of each other, dissimilar names leaves you with a blob of text. With very similar names, it looks like just one name. Devious, I know. Also calling focus fire is more difficult: 'all on... never mind!'.