My husband doesn’t really take MMO names too seriously. The pigtailed City of Heroes toon floating in the image up above? Yeah, her name is Bubblezap. She’s his old Electric Control/Force Fields Controller. She, uh, bubbles people and zaps things. It’s not complicated, but hey, it gets the job done, and he manages to go from “I want to make a new toon” to “here’s my new toon” in a few minutes.
Me, on the other hand? Onomastics is my thing. I have a spreadsheet, a giant list of names and terms and ideas from my trusty thesaurus, tons of ideas rolling around at all times, and premade costumes I can adapt when the mood strikes me. It sometimes takes me hours to roll up a toon even then. Names matter so much to me that I’ve abandoned whole concepts when I can’t get a good name to go with it. When Homecoming warned it’d be putting an end to name-hoarding with characters, I felt very seen. I didn’t have 277 in reserve on one server, but I came pretty close!
Do you have a technique for coming up with MMO character names?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
