ArenaNet's Guild Wars 2 Blog Post Delves Into Name Creation

Written by: Jason Winter (Twitter @winterinformal - Google+) | May 23, 2012 7:30 pm

27 Comments

Some names inspire fear. Some inspire awe. Some inspire passion.

But someone has to come up with those names — especially in a fictional setting — to evoke those proper responses.

For Guild Wars 2, one of those someones is Annie VanderMeer Mitsoda, a content designer for ArenaNet, who explained the naming process in a recent blog post.

Mitsoda delves into some of the real-world influences for names, such as naming a Charr NPC after a Roman dagger or the brainstorming that goes on to change a “rat dog” into a “murellow.”

And if coming up with names seems like a yawn-worthy subject, consider how long you probably spend staring at the character creation screen coming up with the perfect moniker. Or how many Guild Wars characters you’ve created to reserve their names for Guild Wars 2.

Now imagine that your job actually depended on how well you named your things. If you’ve ever tried to write something creative, you know how long that can take.

But we’re still wondering where they came up with “centaur.” Now there’s an awesome creature name!

ArenaNet's Guild Wars 2 Blog Post Delves Into Name Creation

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pandora005

I have been roleplaying for roughly 30 years now and coming up with a decent name for a new character is ALWAYS the hardest part about the design. Only some of the names work well and only some of mine were original, others were blatantly stolen and thus I sympathise with anyone who has to come up with new original names. Especially for totally alien races like Asura and Sylvari the names should be recognizably different too and not simply “Jenna Greenleaf” or “Will Thinksmart” to make the distinctive race (=cultural outlook) clear. Otherwise they would simply be reskinned humans.
Old Ben

I thought this was about the name of the game itself (i.e., how there are no actual guild wars in Guild Wars 2).
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=506728308 Julian F’n Mugnieco
  
  guilds capture keeps. other guilds attack. guild wars.
  - Old Ben
    
    Not really. People from other servers capture keeps. From your point of view, it’s irrelevant if they’re in guilds or not. And other guilds from your server can’t fight yours. It’s called “WvW” (and not GvG) for a reason.
    - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=506728308 Julian F’n Mugnieco
      
      guilds can capture keeps in WvW…
      - Old Ben
        
        Do you really feel the need to post exactly the same (pointless) message three times on the same thread?
        
        As I and others have pointed out, anyone can capture keeps in WvW. Guilds from your server can’t capture a keep controlled by your guild, and you can’t take keeps controlled by other guilds from your server. There is no war between the guilds; there’s a war between the worlds.
      - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=506728308 Julian F’n Mugnieco
        
        also, guilds on those worlds
      - Old Ben
        
        Sigh…
        
        Either you’re trolling or you have serious comprehension problems. Either way, not worth my time.
      - pandora005
        
        Just flag the trolling comments as inappropriate.
      - Old Ben
        
        Well, if he’s a troll, then a trolling comment is appropriate for him.
      - pandora005
        
        … but not for the thread.
  - http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
    
    No thats weak. Worlds attack keeps, other worlds attack.
    
    Sorry, guilds do not attack guilds in GW2. The guilds are just one happy family in a world devistated by past guild wars.
    - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=506728308 Julian F’n Mugnieco
      
      guilds can capture keeps in WvW…
      - pandora005
        
        Oh come on and stop the stupid semantics war. NO ONE WILL NOTICE IF A GUILD CAPTURED A KEEP … because anyone can come by and take part in that and THE GUILD WILL NOT OWN THE KEEP AFTERWARDS.
        
        A guild attacking a keep would only become a GUILD WAR if there was ONE other guild defending that keep. That wont happen simply because its “green invaders” who are defending and not “Rasczak’s Roughnecks”
        
        Sure they can capture a keep, but they could also “go raiding” … which doesnt mean that raids exist in GW2.
  - Brozathon
    
    lol nice try brah there are no Guild Wars in Guild Wars 2 jajajajajjaajajajaja how revolutionary.
    - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=506728308 Julian F’n Mugnieco
      
      guilds can capture keeps in WvW…
- http://www.kaiketsu.enjin.com/ Corey Jenkins
  
  You could do guild vs guild in gw1, but Anet said that for Gw2 the competitive pvp tournaments are going to take the place of the guild vs guild battles for now. It makes sense cause most people are going to be doing 5v5 matches with their best guildies so its still pretty similar.
  From a lore point of view though it also wouldn’t make sense, because most of the main factions are trying to band together to destroy the Elder Dragons so that also might have been a reason for it. Also if you could just attack any other guild out in the world like tera, then no one would ever get events done because they’d be too busy ganking each other. I honestly don’t think its that big of a deal that there’s no official guild vs guild battles at the moment. They have plenty of other systems in place which are equally as fun, I feel like people are just complaining about how the series is called “Guild Wars”, but that name was mainly chosen from a lore perspective and not a gameplay one which people don’t seem to grasp.
  - Old Ben
    
    As I’m sure you know (if you read developer interviews at the time), the original design of GW wasn’t going to have any PvE, it was going to focus almost completely on GvG. Then (as they developed the game) they added more and more PvE features, but the name wasn’t completely contradictory, so they kept it. The lore was rewritten to justify the name.
    
    GW2 is called GW2 basically because GW is a recognizable name. I have no interest in GvG (to do that properly, they would also have to implement “commercial” wars between guilds of craftsmen and merchants, political wars, where guilds can spend influence to lower the bonuses of rival guilds, etc.), but I do find the name a bit silly, and thought this article would be about that (“GW2: What’s in a name?”).
    
    > It makes sense cause most people are going to be
    > doing 5v5 matches with their best guildies so its still
    > pretty similar.
    
    No, it isn’t. Lots of people who belong to guilds will never go into structured PvP, the people on your PvP team don’t have to be in your guild, and guilds aren’t limited to 5 people. You’re just trying to find “evidence” to support the conclusion, instead of the other way around.
    
    The name “Guild Wars 2″ is just a consequence of the previous game’s title, it’s not a description of the new game’s actual gameplay.
    
    > I honestly don’t think its that big of a deal that there’s
    > no official guild vs guild battles at the moment.
    
    Me neither, I have no interest in that. But I do think it’s a bit silly they picked a name that describes something which isn’t in the game.
- Sklys
  
  Guild…An associaition of people with similar interests or pursuits…Thus the folks that play
  GW2.
  War..A period of such armed conflict..Thus any race/prof with weapons/magic who plays
  GW2.
  Thus the name Guild Wars 2
  - Old Ben
    
    Actually, it goes more or less like this:
    
    Seven years ago Arena Net released Guild Wars .
    That game has some name recognition.
    Thus the name Guild Wars 2.
    - Sklys
      
      Sure would like to know how the A-Net folks came up with the name
      Guild Wars but til then is a lot of fun trying to figure it out.
      - Old Ben
        
        The name came from the original game design (GW was going to focus very heavily on GvG). As they added more PvE and PvP content, the actual guild-versus-guild aspect became less central to the game, so the lore says the “Guild Wars” were some big wars that took place in the past.
        
        But (although it wasn’t the main focus of the game), you could still do GvG battles, so the name wasn’t contradictory.
        
        In GW2 all the guilds are at peace with each other, so the title seems a bit silly. Maybe they should have called it “Guild Utopia” (which was the title of a GW1 campaign that got canceled).
      - Sklys
        
        This part of the lore of Guild Wars I did not know, I do
        now. The Utopia part I did know.
        To change the name now would not do any good. So like
        my frist thought even though it is not true.
        BTW concur on the personnal stories but they are mostly
        about a quest line. So not to important with all the other
        play in the game.
  - Damir Miric
    
    I play Firefall nowdays and I saw no fire falling anywhere but the game is called Firefall how wierd.
http://www.facebook.com/toph1980 Christopher Fischer

*** SPOILERS AHEAD ***

One thing I didn’t enjoy with my Charr Warrior storyline was the revelation of my father, surname included. Why give me the option to pick a surname when Anet has already provided one for me?

While I understand it’s perfectly fine for offspring to have a different surname than their parents it just felt ackward and it took me out of the game.

Thank God it was only BWE, perhaps it’s time to pick another legion…
- Old Ben
  
  The selection of your father is independent from your legion.
  
  I’m not sure if Charr have “surnames”. They typically have a name and a “title” (description). They’re not raised by their parents, so the concept of surnames probably doesn’t make much sense.
  
  Anyway, all personal stories are full of plot holes and contradictions (the human stories are very slightly better than the other two races’, but still feel like they were written by 8 year olds, for 5 year olds).
  
  Ex.:
  
  Charr ash legion storyline: “In this quest we give you the ability to be completely invisible for five minutes… but you never get to use that again, even though it would make the next steps much easier.”
  
  Norn weapon of legend storyline: “You’ll spend the next three quests making an ax that can kill everything around you in three seconds, but then it disappears with no explanation because it would obviously break gameplay”.
  
  And so on…
Old Ben

Reading the actual blog entry, I have to say I totally disagree with Mitsoda.

Murellow is a terrible name for those creatures. To me, “murellow” suggests something wet and possibly slimy, living in a damp cave. Like a half-man, half-plant, half-fish creature (yes, I know that’s three halves, shut up). It also doesn’t sound like a norn word at all. Those hairless hyenas look a lot more like a “skregg”, or a “grask” something dry and sharp like that.

And “Sicaea” definitely doesn’t sound rogueish to me. It sounds like a sylvari sorceress.

But hey, if this (Mitsoda) was the person who wrote the part of the story where you first meet Sicaea, then character naming is the least of her problems. That chapter has so many plot holes that I actually wondered if James Cameron had been involved in the writing…

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