Hello everyone, I am new to Beestation having previously played on other stations.
Mostly on Paradise station.
Secondly, as a warning in advance, my first language isn’t english.
Recently,
I got quite surprised when my character suddenly was renamed by an admin for not following the guidlines.
The name of the character was Flummery Bubbleberry, and she was an oozling. (A considerably conventional name for a slimeperson on paradise station)
I thought, alright! Coming from Paradise station, i am used to see and use some quite abstract names. Especially for the aliens. I think i can tone down and give the character a more normal name.
So i looked them up to find a rather simplistic listing of rules under the heading of ‘Guidelines’. With the ‘not so fineprint’ that these, in fact, are enforced.
Now these rules go from lax to strict depending on your horizon.
With human names probably being the most lax (living next to a person with a name similar to ‘Robert Cheesebread’), you can name your character after certain things, objects, professions, concepts…, or additionaly use a foreign language. You can even name them things that would thematically fit someone of another species better than, what that species can call themselves.
But the rules of other species look more like an afterthought to manage mischievous players that get too corny with their memes.
Seeing names that break conventions on other servers isn’t rare either. But people can usually see that the names of most players follow ‘a certain pattern’.
Or at least, so did I. I wondered why that is and found those flavorful pages for each alien species. Which inspired me to also name my characters likewise.
No one ever told me how i can or cannot name my characters before. Apparently I either was always close enough to norm or the rules were lax. When my names broke too many conventions then other players simply inquired where i got it from. (the question alone by another player is uncomfortably enough to look such things up for myself) Being spaceborne or having foster parents was my usual explanation until i found a better name.
Other times you see a whole rule being ditched by the majority of the player base (Notably Argonian- esque names for lizards)
In the end, who are those rules for?
For the Author? So their idea of who is to be called what comes to realization?
For Admins so they look like jerks for enforcing generated names onto people?
What is the benefit for players if others are enforced to adhere to such strict naming rules?
If all Apid players would ditch the first name that starts with B after a given time, would that be bad for the game?