Every NPC and his uncle has a full name.
Even Garrison Followers do.
Note: The concept of full name depends on many variables.
Trolls (Vol'jin) usually have a single name.
Blood Elves (Valeera Sanguinar), Night Elves (Tyrande Whisperwind) and Dwarves (Magni Bronzebeard) usually have a first and last name. Orcs, are more ambivalent. Some (Garrosh/Grommash Hellscream and Varok/Dranosh Saurfang) have first and last name while others (Gul'dan and Ner'zhul) have a single name.
Draenei usually have a single name accompanied of their status/job (Exarch, Spiritbinder, Artificer, etc).
But our character - the "Commander" - isn't worthy of a proper name...
No apostrophes, no first and last name, no hifens... no choice.
DISCLAIMER: You would not be forced to have more than one name.
Will Blizzard ever allow us to include spaces ( ), apostrophe (') and/or hifens (-) in our names, with appropriate restrictions?
I'd assume at least the restrictions below would be necessary to enforce reasonable credibility:
- Max 2x spaces ( ).
- Max 1x hifen (-)
- Max 1x apostrophe (').
- Max 3 total among any combination of space, hifen and/or comma.
- Min 3 characters before and after each space ( ).
- Each name can only have one instance of 3 isolated characters ("Man Uscript" is okay, but "Man Usc Ript" is not).
- You can have upper case after each space ( ), but it is not enforced as long as there is another space afterwards ("Victor von Doom" okay, "Victor vondoom" not okay).
- (thanks to Polarthief) You would be limited to 2 Capitals per word, and must have at least 1 lower case between each upper case (McDonald and MacDonald, but no MC Hammer).
Extras:
- You might be able to determine what part of your name NPCs use to adress you (can even be all of it).
- As a new restriction, perhaps all similar characters (a, à, á, ã, â, etc) are considered the same for purposes of checking whether a name is taken (Legolas = Lëgólàs).
Examples of Names made possible:
Vol'jin
Greven Il-Vec
Dranosh Saurfang
Victor von Doom
You cannot make Ar th as or Art has.
And although you could make Art'has and Art-hasn't, it would actually be less obnoxious than names like "Arthaslol".
EDIT: What about programming issues?
The only issue I see is when dealing with whispers and macros.
My solution is this:
- When manually typing an action such as "/w" you are now required to press space ( ) twice after the name to let the game know the name has ended and the message/etc has begun.
The second space is "eaten" by the script.
- Macros could require names to be enveloped in (" ").