Screwed over by Bioware!

A) If you made a truely original name the chances of another source of media creating the same name is incredibly slim

B) Batman film or not, it's certainly not an original name. Even without the film it would still be against policy.

C) It's far from rediculous. It's par the course for the genre and you (apparently) being a veteran to MMO's would know that this isn't just EA's policy or some draconian measure to persecute you.

D) So long as your not using the dictionary to create your character it doesn't matter how many of them are protected. And why, in a Star Wars RPG, would you ever want to do something like that?

E) DC and Marvel both sued City of Heroes about characters named and made to resemble theirs.

F) there's a certain level of immersion that gets broken by these kinds of shenanigans. If it were me, any name that was not "real" or was derived from another source would be against policy.

The fact that I was able to make the character with the name says it all. I even rerolled the character after patch 1.2 because I had made several human characters, and I would rather level up a different race to get a new legacy unlock. So even some time after patch 1.2, people could still name their characters Bane. It wasn't until the launch of the latest Batman movie that the name suddenly got added to the prohibited list. So what if someone makes a movie next year with the name of one of your own charcters? Must Bioware then add that name to the prohibited list and ask you to rename your character? It all starting to get a bit ridiculous. If someone owns the copyright on the word Bane, what about Reaper, or Grace, or Titan? Nvidia just launched a new series of graphics cards named Titan. Did they own that word? Where does it stop?

It makes me wonder sometimes, just how many words in the dictionary are copyright protected? And how many word-combinations? Why does it even matter what we call our characters in a silly gameworld anyway? Even if my character was named Superman, it's not like I would be earning money off the brandname or anything. Would DC seriously sue some random guy on the other side of the planet for having a character named Superman? I could buy some random.com and make a forum just to call myself Superman on that forum. Would DC sue me over that? It's crazy. I could understand that since this is a SW game, they'd put in rules about not allowing names like Skywalker, but if you're going to disallow every word in the dictionary because someone copyrighted that word, then we'd be left with names looking like encryption keys. I'd seriously like someone to explain it to me why MMO's bother adding all these restrictions. Fear of litigation? That's ridiculous!

I hate to break it to you pal, but I'm not looking for original names. I'm not a new-age neo-hippie. Yes I know this isn't the only MMO haivng filters. Why would I want the name Superman in SWTOR? I don't. City of Heroes is a unique example of where people could create characters that actually looked like the actual DC/Marvel heroes. I still find it completely idiotic that (if it's true what you say) DC/Marvel sued the owners of the game over that. But I don't think they'd ever care about somebody naming their Jedi Superman. And yes, Superman is a crap name for a Jedi or anything else in this game. And thank Bigfoot and Elvis that you're not in any position of power here.

Fear of litigation is it. City of Heroes was sued, and lost big time by DC and Marvel for allowing people to use those names. Turbine was sued in DDO for allowing WOTC names, and that game is part owned by WOTC. Its an owned trademark, so the company that owns the trademark will protect that trademark. As I said, they might not catch it right away, but when they do, they will change it.. Happened to me on DDO, I had a Dwarf fighter named Durnan, a relatively minor character in Waterdeep, someone reported it, and bam, renamed. So yes, you might have gotten it, but playing with those names is dangerous, better to try something you made than regurgitating names from popular fiction or culture. Easier in the long run. Its hardly ridiculous, its business.

I'm not sure if only a few people are getting the point of this thread or if most are and are just trolling... It doesn't really matter what the names are, other than the fact that they were important to him and that he lost one of them directly because of something he was told by a representative of Bioware. Now because the name violates the ToS, Bioware could've forced him to change the name whenever, but that isn't what happened, so that is unrelated too.

I think that two things should happen here:

1. Bioware should apologise. Hey, sorry, we made a mistake. Nothing big, but acknowledging a mistake is pretty important to me.
2. Bioware should enforce their name policies. Anyone who currently has a name that violates the name creating procedure should have to change it. I think it's only fair.

Seems unlikely that anyone who has read this far will care about this, but no need to mock what the OP feels is important. I'm sure something is important to you that others don't care about. I have an irrational liking of pets that I know most others really don't care about, and regardless of what others say I'd be annoyed if someone messed with them

Hooray for civil discussions! Peace on Forums!

Hoodling if you want my opinion, you shouldn't come to the forums expecting sympathy. You could have evidence as clear as day and somebody will shoot you down because your evidence is on lined paper.