It's Ridicolus That We Can't Give Our Demons Custom Names

[Hitei]

Lore wise you can call anyone in your party any name you want. Doesn't mean they have to like it or accept it. Same thing with demons. Just because you know their name doesn't mean you have to call them that while in your service. And hunters can communicate with their pets through special bonds. So they would be able to sense a name or even know the name of the creature. They do have the beast lore ability as well.

Like with Hati a legendary beast. That you can rename because who cares about respecting the animal right? It is just your tool to use and abuse. Weird how Warlocks are shown to treat their pet with more respect then the hunter who actually has to form a bond with it.

A lot of hunter tames already have names. But they can be renamed. You even said that a warlock can use whatever name they want. So let the warlock display the name they choose to use for the demon rather then the name it chooses for itself. Just like with hunters that renaming anyone of the rarer pets.

Yes. Exactly. You can call anyone in your party any name you want. You can also currently call your demon whatever you want. But both also have actual names. You're free to refer to your demon by another name, but its display name is its actual name. You're not going to be able to choose the name for a demon who can literally say "No, that's not my name." everytime you try to introduce them with your weird, made up name.

[Kyphael]

This thread is a goldmine of some hilarious explanations and retorts. But yeah, I agree, Demons are more intelligent, self-aware and capable of speech with identities of their own versus the mangy wolf or dopey bird you might tame in the forest that will follow you if you pet it and give it some steak. Demons can't get domesticated, so they won't respond to any slave name you give them.

[Doffen]

What are you guys on about? My imps name is Azfip and I could never have picked a better name myself.

Just think about it. Az. Fip.

[rhorle]

Yes. Exactly. You can call anyone in your party any name you want. You can also currently call your demon whatever you want. But both also have actual names. You're free to refer to your demon by another name, but its display name is its actual name. You're not going to be able to choose the name for a demon who can literally say "No, that's not my name." everytime you try to introduce them with your weird, made up name.

But they can't say no. That is the whole thing with demons. You don't ask them to pretty please come do my bidding but its okay if you say no. They can't say no if you control them because you know you control them. Again people always mix the "lore reasoning" with hunter pets and Warlocks. A hunter pet can scratch your face off if it wants to because you just tame it. Befriend it. Ask it to follow you.

A demon can't. It is chained to your service. Warlocks can, or could, pay 50g to change the name of their demon. It pulls from the random list. So there is even "quasi-lore" to rename. Blizzard has even fleshed it out to be contract based with the Legion quest where players become a servant to a demon. Just have the rename item be "A contract" and problem is solved.

Again. It is a silly lore reason that exists for no good reason.

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Demons can't get domesticated, so they won't respond to any slave name you give them.

Demons can certainly be domesticated and will respond to whatever since they are enslaved. Why is it that you think a Warlock befriends the demon? Oh your name is Juk'mon? Nah I'll call you Steve. Oh you don't like it? To bad you are my slave until I dismiss you. There is also the lore of a warlock summoning the same demon over and over where eventually you could convince it to change its name.

[Hitei]

But they can't say no. That is the whole thing with demons. You don't ask them to pretty please come do my bidding but its okay if you say no. They can't say no if you control them because you know you control them. Again people always mix the "lore reasoning" with hunter pets and Warlocks. A hunter pet can scratch your face off if it wants to because you just tame it. Befriend it. Ask it to follow you.

A demon can't. It is chained to your service. Warlocks can, or could, pay 50g to change the name of their demon. It pulls from the random list. So there is even "quasi-lore" to rename. Blizzard has even fleshed it out to be contract based with the Legion quest where players become a servant to a demon. Just have the rename item be "A contract" and problem is solved.

Again. It is a silly lore reason that exists for no good reason.

They literally can though. They are contracted to fight for you, not mind controlled. Hence why being contracted in Legion didn't suddenly remove all control from your character and making you a walking, mindless puppet. If you want to pay gold to break your current contract and start a new contract with a different, randomly named demon, that's fine. But it makes absolutely zero sense for you to actually rename a demon whatever you want, just like it makes zero sense for you to be able to rename players in your party simply because you can call them whatever you want.

[Isaelyn]

So, apparently according to an ex blizzard Dev the reason they didn't allow warlocks to name our demons was one of the ways they were using to differentiate warlock summons from hunter pets. Essentially they wanted to hammer in the idea that warlock pets were meant to be like different tools in a swiss army knife and you would switch to the pet you needed depending on the situation as part of your pre-fight setup... Not that this really ever worked out with the prohibitively long summoning times combined with all of the *other* setup warlocks need to do.

This is basically why every pet has some utility ability that feels like it probably should be a core part of the warlocks toolkit and why the felguard goes against the core pet design for warlocks since they weren't supposed to play favorites with how they were originally designed, but the gist of it is that we can't name our pets because we're not supposed to "bond" with them like hunters do with their pets, and one of the fastest ways to form a bond with something is to name it.

[Video Games]

We all know you guys would just name them bonerbiter

[rhorle]

They literally can though. They are contracted to fight for you, not mind controlled. Hence why being contracted in Legion didn't suddenly remove all control from your character and making you a walking, mindless puppet. If you want to pay gold to break your current contract and start a new contract with a different, randomly named demon, that's fine. But it makes absolutely zero sense for you to actually rename a demon whatever you want, just like it makes zero sense for you to be able to rename players in your party simply because you can call them whatever you want.

It was a different type of contract. Demon's don't just randomly wander about. They go where the Warlock tells them and does what they want. And as you say they are contracted. So a name change, in the contract, is perfectly possible. Everyone keeps creating these elaborate scenarios for why Demon's can't be renamed. Where there is literally nothing stopping it both mechanics wise and lore wise.

It makes zero sense to rename a legendary hunter pet. But you can. You can even tame, and rename, actual raid bosses. But you are saying it is literally impossible to force a creature that is your slave to answer to a different name. That it make no sense to make a enslaved creature go by whatever name you want. That you can totally enslave and dominate a demon to do your bidding but there is a fundamental cosmic law that physically bars the Warlock from changing a demon's name.

It is, and always has been, a mechanics issue. Lore has never, and never will, stop it from being possible. The identity of warlock and hunter pets used to be the main reason. Cataclysm rolled around and you could re-roll your demon's name for 50 gold. Some people spent a lot of gold. There is no reason to stop it now, or charge for it.

Personally I'd would probably still go with their existing names. I like generated names as it adds some flavor and I like my current demon names. I can't remember if I changed any for Cataclysm and I wouldn't change it now. But there is no lore reason for why a person can't. Write in the contract. Have it be the "stage name". Pen name. Whatever. It is 100% plausible and possible.

It is just mechanics that is stopping it.

[Kaleredar]

Bah, I still want named undead as a Death knight.

It... kind of... made sense back when DKs had to either have corpse dust or raise a corpse from a dead humanoid for a pet that the ghoul would have a randomized name, but now that unholy DKs just roll around with their pet I don't really see a reason to not have them have a permanent name.

Moreover, "named" ghouls and DK minions are definitely a thing in lore... Thassarian had Lurid, and there are many other named ghouls within the scourge and Ebon Blade serving various roles.

Whether Blizzard formalizes it or not, my geist is and will forever be named "Ghoulsby."


As such, I really don't see why warlocks can't name their demons, either. Clearly they're subjugating them, so it's not like the demon gets any say in the matter.

[Hitei]

It was a different type of contract. Demon's don't just randomly wander about. They go where the Warlock tells them and does what they want. And as you say they are contracted. So a name change, in the contract, is perfectly possible. Everyone keeps creating these elaborate scenarios for why Demon's can't be renamed. Where there is literally nothing stopping it both mechanics wise and lore wise.

It makes zero sense to rename a legendary hunter pet. But you can. You can even tame, and rename, actual raid bosses. But you are saying it is literally impossible to force a creature that is your slave to answer to a different name. That it make no sense to make a enslaved creature go by whatever name you want. That you can totally enslave and dominate a demon to do your bidding but there is a fundamental cosmic law that physically bars the Warlock from changing a demon's name.

It is, and always has been, a mechanics issue. Lore has never, and never will, stop it from being possible. The identity of warlock and hunter pets used to be the main reason. Cataclysm rolled around and you could re-roll your demon's name for 50 gold. Some people spent a lot of gold. There is no reason to stop it now, or charge for it.

Personally I'd would probably still go with their existing names. I like generated names as it adds some flavor and I like my current demon names. I can't remember if I changed any for Cataclysm and I wouldn't change it now. But there is no lore reason for why a person can't. Write in the contract. Have it be the "stage name". Pen name. Whatever. It is 100% plausible and possible.

It is just mechanics that is stopping it.

You seem to both misunderstand how demon contracts work, and also misunderstand how contracts in general work. They are not your slave, and they will not do anything you tell them to. You can order your demon to go back to argus and attack the legion all you want and it's not going to do it, because all the contract says is that it has to follow commands to defend you or attack things near you. You can't tell it to shut up, or not talk back, you can't decide its name is something different.

There's no elaborate scenarios or cosmic laws, you just don't have a firm grasp on the extent of the demonic contract, which is not some all powerful agreement turning them into a member of the scourge bound to your will. They are an employee. A contracted soldier that has to come when you call it, and fight alongside you the way you tell it to.

It makes perfect sense to rename a legendary hunter pet, because it's a pet. It doesn't matter that long ago it had a historic name, because you can walk over put a collar on it that says "snuffles" and as far as anyone is concerned, it is named Snuffles now, because it is your pet. If you go and put a collar on your imp that says "snuffles" that imp is going to tell you to fuck off, and tell anyone that looks at that collar that its name isn't Snuffles, and it's not going to answer to "Snuffles" because that isn't its name and it is bound by contract via its actual name, so a contract that says "Snuffles has to fight for me" means absolutely nothing, because it isn't Snuffles.

[Surfd]

It was a different type of contract. Demon's don't just randomly wander about. They go where the Warlock tells them and does what they want. And as you say they are contracted. So a name change, in the contract, is perfectly possible. Everyone keeps creating these elaborate scenarios for why Demon's can't be renamed. Where there is literally nothing stopping it both mechanics wise and lore wise.

Mechanics wise, maybe. Lorewise, absolutely not. Your summoned demon is quite LITERALLY bound by it's name. Names are power, especially to demonic beings. Summoning it through any other name would result in absolutely nothing at best. At worst, it would potentially end up with an unbound demon free to do whatever the hell it wants on azeroth all because you screwed up a syllable in it's summoning ritual.

So when you summon Grix'gall, it will always BE Grix'gall, no matter what you might personally decide you want to call it while ordering it around. And due to the nature of most demonic summoning contracts, the first time you fuck up properly naming it, it gets free reign to chew your face off and make fingerpuppets out of your corpse.

It makes zero sense to rename a legendary hunter pet. But you can. You can even tame, and rename, actual raid bosses. But you are saying it is literally impossible to force a creature that is your slave to answer to a different name. That it make no sense to make a enslaved creature go by whatever name you want. That you can totally enslave and dominate a demon to do your bidding but there is a fundamental cosmic law that physically bars the Warlock from changing a demon's name.

Because those legendary pets and raid bosses are BEASTS. They are not sentient creatures who personally decided their own names. Chromaggus didn't just up and decide one day, hey, my name is going to be "Chromaggus": They were named by someone else. Before that, they were just random dogs, or cats, or wolves or bears that had managed to distinguish themselves slightly from their more common counterparts. So when you tame it, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING preventing you from deciding you want to call it something else and training it to respond to the new name.

Demons are NOTHING like that. They are not slaves. They are not pets. They are otherworldly beings SPECIFICALLY contracted and summoned through the use of their True Names. I really wish the original lore / demon acquisition quests were still in the game, but it was made very clear back in classic, when you still had to do full on quest lines to learn how to summon your voidwalker / succubus / etc that these rituals are not simply some kind of generic "I put in a request for an imp" kind of deals, where the first available imp just gets sucked into your summoning circle, but that you were making a literal pact with a SPECIFIC demon. The demon's name is a specific part of that ritual, and you have absolutely no power to change it's name.

Re-rolling your demon's name is not actually re-rolling your demon's name. It's literally re-rolling your demon. From a lore perspective, you are not changing your demon's name, you are releasing you existing demon from it's contract and acquiring a new one with a different name.

Now sure, if you want to make a case for "stage names" or some kind of "Your True Name is inconvenient for me to constantly pronounce while shouting orders so you will now be Bob" excuse, that another matter, but it has nothing to do with your demon's having the names they do.

[Ihazpaws]

Which is weird since the standard hunter lore is not you owning your pet or them being your slave. But you taming and befriending them and working with them in harmony. However Warlocks summon a demon at will to do their bidding and dispose of it when done. They can feed off it. Sacrifice it. Implode it. Etc. Renaming could also happen under any "contract".

It always has been a poor and silly lore reason for Warlocks not being able to do stuff that hunters can. Now I like the naming scheme Warlocks have rather than a true custom name like hunter pets. I always hate coming up with hunter pet names but like stuff beyond cat or bear.

Beasts do not have name before someone names them. Our cat was just a cat before we gave her a name. Most demons have names before the character you play even has born. Forcing that demon change name would be stupid. It would be same as you go to work and your boss changes your name to smoldicbuttox. Also I prefer not seeing felguard named "dicbuttmcfart" running around whacking people with dildo looking weapon.

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

Makes sense. They're demons serving you unwillingly, not pets.

[FuxieDK]

They are sentient beings who already have names.

You get ready to raid.
You summon your Felguard.
He was about to sit down with his family to have dinner but instead phases out of existence to come to your world/dimension.
You enslave him, force him to fight then set him free to go back to his family. He flips you the finger as he goes and spits on your shoe.

He has consciousness. He has a name. He has a family.
He is being forced against his will to do your bidding. He doesnt like it.
You can call him anything you want but he knows his own name.
They probably have their own name for you, and it isnt nice.

- I can call Steve at work Carol as many times as I want, he might even respond to it eventually. But no matter how many times I call him that, his name is still Steve.

A hunter on the other hand.
Pets something enough times it decides to follow him.
Comes when called. Gladly follows commands. Lives to serve its master.
Its a pet.

^^ QFT

UH DK minion, on the other hand.... We all know his name is Timmy, not Bonegnasher....

[Nastard]

Your. Name. Is. Toby.

[jellmoo]

you can already do that. He will insist hes Xuthkolag and you will insist hes susan, ultimately he is stuck doing what you tell him, just macro '/yell susan! tank that trash over there or you get no puddin!' to petmove and your good.

Oh no, I insist that my VW introduce himself to everyone as Susan. He has to wear a small sign that says "Hi, my name is Susan and I'm a wimpy tank". That nameplate should absolutely say "Susan".

[Boricha]

Is it normal to give pet names to contractors nowadays?

[AwkwardSquirtle]

Demons are NOTHING like that. They are not slaves. They are not pets. They are otherworldly beings SPECIFICALLY contracted and summoned through the use of their True Names. I really wish the original lore / demon acquisition quests were still in the game, but it was made very clear back in classic, when you still had to do full on quest lines to learn how to summon your voidwalker / succubus / etc that these rituals are not simply some kind of generic "I put in a request for an imp" kind of deals, where the first available imp just gets sucked into your summoning circle, but that you were making a literal pact with a SPECIFIC demon. The demon's name is a specific part of that ritual, and you have absolutely no power to change it's name.

I did this in classic. I'd heard all about this deep lore and immersion and was super excited. The Voidwalker quest is just "go grab this crap, kill a voidwalker and I'll teach you the spell". That's it. Maybe the later ones are more involved, but the Voidwalker is super lame.

[rhorle]

You seem to both misunderstand how demon contracts work, and also misunderstand how contracts in general work. They are not your slave, and they will not do anything you tell them to. You can order your demon to go back to argus and attack the legion all you want and it's not going to do it, because all the contract says is that it has to follow commands to defend you or attack things near you. You can't tell it to shut up, or not talk back, you can't decide its name is something different.

Right. Got me. I completely ignored the universal Demon union and their demands for employment. Demons are a warlocks slave. They can enslave any demon if powerful enough. They will do anything the warlock tells them to. Go explode? Move there? Attack X group where you'll die? Yep. Warlocks were able to use Demons to attack the Legion. I don't think you actual know anything about lore if you think Demons would refuse to fight the Burning Legion.

You don't know what the contract says or doesn't say. Or what is possible or not possible. You can decide its name while you are its master. Because there isn't some cosmic force that stops renaming objects. You can also put a collar on a demon that say "snuffles" and as far as anyone is concerned it is named snuffles. You are making stupid rules for why X can be renamed by Y can not.

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Beasts do not have name before someone names them. Our cat was just a cat before we gave her a name. Most demons have names before the character you play even has born. Forcing that demon change name would be stupid. It would be same as you go to work and your boss changes your name to smoldicbuttox. Also I prefer not seeing felguard named "dicbuttmcfart" running around whacking people with dildo looking weapon.

Some beasts have names prior to a hunter giving them a name. Demons don't just go to work. But rich people have renamed servants in the past so perhaps brush up on history before saying that it is impossible. You won't see a demon named dicbuttmcfart for the same reason you don't see hunter pets named that. Its against Blizzards rules. Duh.

[Ihazpaws]

Some beasts have names prior to a hunter giving them a name. Demons don't just go to work. But rich people have renamed servants in the past so perhaps brush up on history before saying that it is impossible. You won't see a demon named dicbuttmcfart for the same reason you don't see hunter pets named that. Its against Blizzards rules. Duh.

I've never said it is impossible, I said it is stupid and my whole point is that they are demons, sentient talking beings. You clearly have not checked hunter pet names that often or you play in RP realm. There are crazy rasist, sexist and braindead names, in EU there are many different languages and people take advantage of that by writing the name in their own language and using somekind slang or similar things to avoid automatical refuse on the new name. It tells alot about the owner of that pet.

It feels like people get dumber every day. Also flexing with weird slave trader cards is seriously stupid...