Request

[Thortok2000]

This may seem like an odd request.

I would like a list of all players seen in the last 7 days that have non-standard characters in their names. But only on US servers, not EU ones.

Nonstandard characters are characters like: ???????????, etc.

[DM.]

So you can report them?

[Thortok2000]

Basically.

Also so I can point at the list and show GM's how rampant the problem is.

It wouldn't even have to be searched for, either. It could just be generated every few hours (or even daily) and just cached.

[Rollie]

o.O

[xpolockx]

Oh no, it's vigilante justice!

[Forestlordx]

I do not have a character that has non-standard characters in their name, but where does it state that it is against the rules to have such?

[Thortok2000]

In the naming policy.

Honestly, I kind of do it more to annoy the GM's than to annoy the people who have names like that.

They have a rule against it, but they allow it. They don't police it, but they enforce it when people report it. It's a very stupid mid-way stance to take.

So I basically spam the GM's with names they need to fix, because they won't install a simple way to detect them automatically and/or prevent them from being created. Or even simpler, allow them (although I kinda agree they shouldn't be allowed).

[Balgair]

Silly of it not to allow them tbh; as far as I'm aware they are allowed on all EU realms (they kind of have to be for the non-English language ones, and as I understand it the English servers just use the same policy), and the special characters don't cause any problems - we've all learned how to right-click on names or shift-click them if they contain characters we can't type, so I'm sure US people can do the same thing

In any case I was always under the impression there was a fair-sized Spanish-speaking community in the US (may be totally wrong but it's what I thought from tv and stuff), so they must want special characters for their names?

[Tartara]

...we've all learned how to right-click on names or shift-click them if they contain characters we can't type...

It's a bit hard to invite them to your guild though.

My husband uses a character map addon to be able to click to insert accented characters as he types, but I just resort to opening a wordprocessor, inserting a special character, and copying and pasting. By which time, I've usually lost interest in having them in my guild anyway.

[Thortok2000]

To invite to a guild is easy.

Whisper them, or they whisper you. Then type /ginvite, a space, then hold shift and left click their name.

[DM.]

GM's know how wide spread this issue is, trust me they do. And if they want to they can fix it themselves. But they don't and leave it up the players to report it. Even on the Customer Service forums, you see posts with people that have accented chars in their names and the GM's do nothing about it.

The GM's would rather let players have fun and enjoy themselves and let their name go rather than police the realms and bug a player to change their name. So what they do is get players to report the name, or if the player themself petitions a GM then first thing the GM does is ask the player to change their name before even addressing the petition.

And while your at it, why not read all their policies and report players for spamming trade channel, inappropriate language, and other nonsense stuff that only people like you would care about, because you just love to annoy the GM's and love to waste their time.

http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm01712p, now go have your 'fun'

[Skyfire]

In any case I was always under the impression there was a fair-sized Spanish-speaking community in the US (may be totally wrong but it's what I thought from tv and stuff), so they must want special characters for their names?

Uh...

Uh...

You would be correct, that there is a fairly large portion of latinos living in America... however, the Spanish alphabet only has 3 more letters in it than the standard english: ch, ll, and rr. :/

[Balgair]

Fair enough, I don't speak spanish, so wouldn't know