History of player name

Could we get a public record of all previous names a player has used? When people change their names I usually stop recognising them, as I remember names not player numbers, and I find this very inconvenient. If I could easily look up what names they've used in the past I would realise who they are. Perhaps there could be a link on player pages showing all their names in chronological order?

Added bonus if this could be incorporated into the member search so that if you searched for a particular name it would also check former names, that way if you were looking for someone and didn't realise they'd changed their name you could still find them. In the search result the player name could appear as something like "PlayerA (formerly PlayerB)" where PlayerB is the name(s) which match your search term. But if no former names match the search term, then just their current name would be displayed.

There use to be a forum that was locked and people would post their old names and new names and then it would be updated and such but this is a good idea!

I do support this, but to play devil's advocate here

1. The player could be trying to hide for some reason (reaching in the dark here) and not want to create a new account, and rely on people NOT remembering player numbers.

2. Alternatively, you could always message them and ask who they are, albeit might be a bit embarrassing.4


Maybe have it as an optional feature for deluxes to display previous names?

#1: I can't think of a legitimate reason why a player would want to hide their identity. Let me know if you're aware of any. The only one that comes to mind is if they were getting bullied or something, but if that was the case they should be contacting a mod instead.

#2 isn't always doable, as it relies on the player actually responding, and for a wide variety of reasons they may not do so quickly or at all.

I think this feature would work best if it was available to everyone, so it shouldn't be a deluxe feature.

*edit to clarify* By "legitimate reason" I mean a good reason, as opposed to an illegitimate or bad reason, such as trying to get away with bad behaviour. I can certainly think of plenty of the latter, which is one reason why it would be good to be able to prevent people from hiding through name changes.

Last edited on 2016-04-13 at 03:33:45 by UlyssesBlue (spare)

They might change their name to hide because they're in trouble with mods...but in that case this would be especially useful. If anyone's trying to hide from other someone other than that on a horse game I question their lifestyle heavily e - e

And yeah messaging them is annoying when you could easily just click their profile and check it out. Support!

Honestly I don't see why you (player base) can't make another thread like the one on the previous version of EV. It would be far simpler than adding to the long list of things Abbey is going to code into the game. Moderators have access to a database of all name changes (Mod privileges on player profile pages) solely to keep track of who is who and who has broken what rules and gotten what warnings, etc.

As I said, reaching in the dark. But it could be they're being harrassed, yes, and a mod should be involved if that be the case, but sometimes there are people who can't bring themselves to report someone for such behavior, then again, we do have a block feature, don't we? That could always be utilized in the case of harrassment too.


Vos, I'm glad the mods have somethng like that, I expected it to exist for mods already, for necessary reasons.

I'd like to see it as a feature in some capacity for players (hence the support of this) But, with being able to ask, and as was suggested, creating a thread, I don't see it as being a must have or high on the priority.

Just something nice to have for the sake of convenience.

I like this idea, but maybe a forum thread (pinned?) would be the way to do it. Take the burden off of Abbey, particularly since she's currently working on other stuff.

I can absolutely think of reasons why someone would want to change their 'identity', such as those that troll the forums (haven't seen that lately but it's happened in the past) or those that post from multiple accounts pretending to be different people (saw this just yesterday). The thing with those though is that I usually bookmark the account(s), so even if they change names I still know who they are, lol.

Dawn, I just made a thread for it a few minutes ago ^_^

Just to clarify, by "legitimate reason" I mean a good reason, as opposed to an illegitimate or bad reason, such as trying to get away with bad behaviour. I can certainly think of plenty of the latter, which is one reason why it would be good to be able to prevent people from hiding through name changes.

A long, long time ago...

I remember some younger players changing there names, and saying they were indeed a whole different person to get around art bans from some players.

I've also seen some players try to hide who they are because they were being bumhats to the community.

It happens, and thus I support.

I don't support because there is really no need for a 'players name history'. Someone could always make a thread on it to where you can comment your old/new names. Why waste money on a feature, that really won't do anything? I think mods can tell who you are/were before you changed your name on EV.

Support for same reason as Dox.

Once, someone changed their name before I remember to block them... -_-

Sometime, I don't want to block someone but I would just avoid them on forums. Kinda hard to do that when they change their name and didn't announce it.

Public announcements of name changes, such as a forum thread, only work when people are not trying to hide their identity through a name change. It also relies on people actually making the effort to do it, and not everyone who changes their name for legitimate reasons will necessarily do that.

Frankly, it's no one's business on if someone change their name or not.