A few months ago, Second Life changed the way new avatar names are selected. Avatars select a ‘user name’ when signing up, then can select a different ‘display name’ that’s shown in world. Everyone who signed up before this new system was implemented has a ‘legacy name’, or a name with a traditional first and last name, and a user name of firstname.lastname. The ‘legacy name’ of new residents is their user name as the first name, and the last name ‘Resident’. Bloodlines currently uses legacy names for everyone, so all new players have the last name ‘Resident’ on the website. We realize the need to update the system in order to adapt to this new change, and we wanted to present some possible options for how we could address the problem and solicit feedback from everyone. Please post comments on this post with your feedback and concerns.
First, we wanted to say that while it’s possible for us to update the HUDs to collect current display names and display them on your profiles, because display names are subject to change, we won’t be using display names in any official sense. That is, you couldn’t set someone as your liege by using their display name, or transfer a soul by referring to that soul’s current display name. We need to stick to a naming system that doesn’t change.
The first possibility that we see in addressing this is just to filter out the last name ‘Resident’, and your name in Bloodlines will just become your Second Life user name. Names that show up on profiles and in the stats, including in bite lists, minion lists, and soul lists would all just be the avatar’s single user name.
The second possibility is to allow all new residents with the last name ‘Resident’ to choose a last name to use just for Bloodlines, so their first name would be their second life user name, and their last name would be their chosen Bloodlines last name. We could either set this up so that there is a limited number of possible Bloodlines last names, or just let people choose whatever last name they want. I think if we chose this option, we would have to have a way to indicate whether a name is a Second Life legacy name, like “Lyle Maeterlinck”, or whether a name is a Bloodlines name, like if someone named “Lyle Resident” made the Bloodlines name “Lyle Vampiros”. Also, if we did this option, we would have to find a way to ensure that no ‘Bloodlines name’ was the same as any existing Second Life legacy name, so that “Lyle Resident” would not be able to choose “Lyle Maeterlinck” as their Bloodlines name. This might be an argument for restricting possible Bloodlines last names to a list of names that don’t overlap with any Second Life legacy names, to prevent any possible confusion.
If you have any comments or questions, please leave a comment!
