Names in every alphabet
Character and guild names may be written in any alphabet the game shows, and how to reach someone whose name you cannot type.
A name is one word in a single alphabet: Latin with its accents, Greek, Cyrillic, Chinese, Japanese (kanji and kana together), Korean (hangul, with hanja), Thai, Devanagari or Arabic. Letters only: no digits, symbols, emoji or invisible characters. Guild names may hold single spaces between words.
Length is how wide the name is on screen: three to sixteen letters, where a Chinese, Japanese or Korean character counts as two, so two to eight of them. A Thai or Devanagari name may be as short as two letters.
Look-alikes are taken
No two names may look the same. A name spelled with Cyrillic or Greek letters that look Latin, one that differs only by accents (José and Jose), or by a capital I against a small l, counts as taken. So nobody can pass for you with a name that only looks like yours.
Players and the game's own characters
Over their heads, players' names are white. The game's own characters are never white: their names say what they will do to you. Green will not fight you: shopkeepers, bankers, workers, your own city's guards, your mount. Yellow will not start a fight but will answer one: townsfolk, prey and livestock, the guards of a city that has nothing against you. Red attacks you on sight or is fighting you now: bandits, predators, the guards of a city that has you on its kill-on-sight list, the soldiers of an army at war with you. The target frame says Player, NPC, Guard or Opponent. No character may be named exactly what a shopkeeper or banker is called (Merchant, Bursar, Weaponsmith…) in any language, so a stranger offering to keep your gold is never the bank.
Reaching someone whose name you cannot type
- Click their name in chat, your group, your friends list or the guild roster: the menu sends a tell, mails, invites, offers a trade, adds a friend, copies the name or blocks them.
- In the chat line, type the start of a name and press Tab to complete it; press it again for the next match.
- Accents are optional when you type a name: lukasz after /tell finds Łukasz, and case never matters.