For the first few weeks playing MxO I was delighted that the NPCs all have randomly generated names. When I was doing a mission to steal a data disk from an exile named Butterfly and take it to Agematsu, a Zion Selective Phage,  I felt as though I owned that experience--rather than just playing through the same exact mission as every other player like you get on other MMOs. I still love that, but as the weeks have passed I've noticed there's a heckova lot of Agematsus out there as well as a handful of other names that I see over and over and over again. Sometimes they're a contact, sometimes I'm supposed to kill them, sometimes I'm supposed to escort them to do a job somewhere. Same names, over and over.

It's really getting a little weird. I can't imagine it would be too much to ask for someone to dump another 50 names into the database for us?

Oh and it would be nice if the names matched the characters a bit better. Doing jobs for Fred Menkowitz in the International district is a bit of a letdown. Likewise I once had to kill someone named Butterfly (yep, another Butterfly) and it was this leather coat wearing EPN Neo wannabe. I actually stopped and typed out the message "YOU'RE Butterfly??" in game. He kicked my trash.

Well yes and no. On one hand it might not bug everyone, but it really kind of does bug me. I'm really into the roleplay part of Matrix Online--the whole "exploits of Loebner" thing, and little things like this that screw up the feel of the game really bother me a bit. I figure I put down some good money for the game, and I pay my $15 a month like everyone else.

If the NPC naming was as messed up in some PS2 game as it is on MxO I would probably throw my hands up and try to get my money back. For me MxO is a labor of love. I really love the setting and really enjoy playing in it, so these weird amateurish glitches really irk me.

Likewise it's such an easy fix. There's gotta' be some file out there called NamesDatabase or some such that all you'd have to do is pull out a phonebook and type away for 5 minutes--done.

In addition there is so much good stuff that I would want to see that won't happen anytime soon (no animator, overworked mission creator, general hip deep backlog of clothing and other requested items) so when there's a simple little buggy thing that bothers me, I bring it up figuring that at the very least it won't be horribly impractical to impliment--you just add more names to the database. Easy.

That said, not every problem is going to be a problem for everyone. I have a friend who is absolutely livid that the elevators won't open on most levels in the buildings, and that the building floorplans have no logical sense to them. I see his point (and the fact that most buildings have no bathrooms did make me laugh) but it's just not as big an issue with me, whereas for me the name thing is a much bigger deal. Maybe it wouldn't bother me as much if I hadn't had to search Wikipedia for an interesting, relevant character name that wasn't taken (everything's taken by this point...) only to come in and have every tenth operative I work with be named Agematsu.

*sigh*

"Kill Vladivostok"

"Get Map Disk from Minsk"

"Give the Data to Novgorod"

"Escort Alexandrovsk out of the area"

"Make Boris invincible"

"Kill Vladivostok"

"Get Map Disk from Minsk"

"Give the Data to Novgorod"

"Escort Alexandrovsk out of the area"

"Make Boris invincible"

I was doing pretty well on my missions until I encountered this NPC. I got killed pretty fast unfortunately.

Something about tacos.

Fatmop wrote:

"Kill Vladivostok"

"Get Map Disk from Minsk"

"Give the Data to Novgorod"

"Escort Alexandrovsk out of the area"

"Make Boris invincible"

"Kill Boris"

"Don't let Moose die"

"Don't let Squirrel die"