hen it comes to character names, Tibia has always followed a rather special policy. At the moment, more than 7,000,000 characters live on 74 game worlds and every single one of them has a unique name. In contrast, in most other online games, unique names only exist on individual game servers. As a consequence, our Tibia players can rely on the fact their character names are truly unique!

This policy has come with a price, however. So far, the name rules in Tibia have been quite strict and rather complex. Some rules seemed to be rather difficult to understand, especially given the fact that a large part of our community does not speak English as their first language. In fact, experience has taught us that many players wished for more tolerance when it comes to character names.

Around 500 illegal character names are reported to customer support every day. As tutors are the ones to report names to us, we are in a constant dialogue with them on the tutor board. From the numerous questions that are brought up there on a daily basis, it has become very clear that the name rules need some further clarifications. Names in languages other than English proved to be especially tricky as they cannot always be assigned to a certain category easily which creates many borderline cases.

For these reasons, we have decided to reform the Tibia name rules in the course of this month. The new regulations should ensure that the name rules are more consistent and easier to understand, which should also lead to a reduction of borderline cases. Of course, with the new rules we also want to meet the community's wish to accept many more character names.

Two important points should be kept in mind concerning the new name rules: Firstly, no name that has been legal under the old name rules will become suddenly illegal under the new name rules. Secondly, we will not unlock any character names that have been illegal under the old name rules, though they would be legal under the new regulations. After all, the names have been illegal at the time they were locked and for this reason the namelock will stay. We will also not remove any entries from the criminal record resulting from a justified namelock.

The new name rules will divide into the following 4 subgroups:

a) Offensive names
Names that are insulting, racist, sexually related, drug-related or generally objectionable.
b) Invalid name format
Names that contain parts of sentences, badly formatted words or nonsensical combinations of letters.
c) Unsuitable names
Names that express religious or political views, contain illegal advertising, or generally do not fit into Tibia's medieval fantasy setting.
d) Names inciting rule violations
Names that imply or incite the violation of the Tibia Rules.

These new categories should be much more intuitive to understand. Also, we have explained in even more detail which names fall under the single categories. For example, names referring to drugs have always been illegal, though this was only briefly mentioned in the comment on this rule. From now on, players will be able to tell right away that such names are prohibited.

In addition to explaining some rules more clearly, we have focused on removing some existing name rules to comply with the desire of many Tibia players for more tolerance concerning names. Most importantly, you may name your character after objects now. Firstly, this rule created many questions as it was not always clear to define if a certain object could not also refer to a person in another language. More importantly, objects are a rich source for many great imaginative character names. A druid named "Healing Power" or a knight that is called "Drawn Sword" would surely add to the fantasy atmosphere of Tibia.

The second name rule that will be discarded is the rule to fake other player names. With more than 7,000,000 already existing character names, it becomes more and more difficult to find a name which is not somehow similar to another one. All too often we find characters on the same game world who have very similar names. However, by checking the creation date, we almost always find that neither of them was created to fake the other character. Sometimes, also characters that start newly on a game world create a name that is similar to the name of a high level on this server without being aware of it. Naturally, rules that can lead to a punishment of innocent players are not desirable! The original intention for this rule was to protect players from scamming. In the last years, however, we have introduced several features that allow you to check easily if you are talking with the right person. First of all, you can check your VIP list if the friend you are supposedly talking to is online. Secondly, you can have a character's level displayed in your console, a feature that can be activated ingame under "Options"->"Console"->"Show levels in console". If your friend is, say, a level 87 knight, you can be sure that you are talking to the wrong person if the level behind the name shows only level 11. Thirdly, you can put all your friends on the white list and only allow players from this list to private message you. Besides, it does not need a character with a similar name to scam another player. A character with any random name could pretend to be your "hacked" friend on a new account asking for items. Remember that you should check players carefully before sending them items or gold. We believe that giving our players some basic advice on how to protect themselves from scamming is a much better approach than to establish a rule that is inefficient and difficult to enforce.

Thirdly, names of celebrities will be legal in the future. We will abolish this rule as it will remove ambiguities which arouse from the rule that fictional characters are legal. All too often players mix up the name of a celebrity and the role he or she is mostly famous for. For instance, we get numerous reports that Jack Sparrow needs to be locked as he is a famous actor. ;) Moreover, many celebrities have common names, too. Names such as Robbie Williams or even Shakira are, after all, regular names. It gets even more difficult if you select a character name and two years later, a singer with the same name becomes very famous. Should this character be locked then? To avoid such problems and as it hardly makes a difference if a character is named Sylvester Stallone or Rocky Balboa, we have decided to remove this rule.

Finally, we will also allow names that are referring to countries. The original idea to keep nationalities out of the game proved to be nearly impossible to carry out. As we have always allowed names in languages other than English, the nationality of many Tibia players has been visible in their character names anyway. It does not take much to identify a player as Polish who has a character named "Czarodziej Lech" or to figure out that the mother tongue of the owner of character "Juan el caballero" is Spanish. Moreover, as many names are reported every day that refer to countries or well-known cities, we also see the wish of many players for such character names. For this reason names referring to a country will be legal in the future. Needless to say, names that have been made to insult or mock a country or its people will not be tolerated.

We are convinced that the new name rules will be much easier to understand and to follow by all of you. Many more names will be legal in the future giving you the possibility to create countless of great new fantasy names. We hope that you enjoy the new name rules that surely meet the community's wish for more tolerance concerning character names.

Note: We will inform you in our news section at which day the new names rules become effective.

Think of great new names!
Your CipSoft Team