>> If you're role-playing someone who doesn't hunt, craft, or trade, then you have chosen to role-play a character who has no source of income. Your character is a bum. This is a choice which you, as the player, have made for your character. <<

Bum is a valid roleplaying choice!

Hah. Lorzelophia is arguably the most bum-like of all the myriad characters populating our dear Elanthia and even she managed to scrounge up 10 platinums. I must admit it seemed a little steep, though. If they hit us with a festival immediately following this I'll be irritated.

-- the Player of Storyteller Lorzelophia Elberethia, sticking with the good ol' vaguely OOC surname for the sake of continuity.

>>I've always considered a bronze coin to be the 'dollar' of Dragonrealms . . . You can also make a good argument for the silver coin

I'd say that the silver coin is probably a reasonable standard unit of currency to use when making comparisons with real-world money. Silver dollar, bronze is worth about a dime (IRL we use a much smaller piece of 'silver'), and copper is a penny. Got it.

>>Note that this DOES NOT take into account various pricing on what are largely 'adventurer only' items like expensive forged weapons. These are luxtury items in every sense of the word

I agree. I should like to point out, however, that registering your name cannot possibly be considered anything other than a luxury service. Let's keep that in mind as we proceed.

>>if you use a silver standard, its still $1,000. That seems very high for what is basicly a fairly simple, administrative task.

I'm going to object to calling this a "fairly simple administrative task." Let us imagine that someone in the United States wishes to have their last name registered and restricted to their use. After this proceeding, no one will be able to legally change their name to be the same as his, and people whose names happen to already be the same will not be allowed to put that name on their children's birth certificates. Frankly $1,000.00 sounds remarkably modest for buying those rights. For reference, registering a trademark costs upwards of $375.00, not including the lawyer's fees and other associated costs (IRL lawyers don't work for tips). http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee2007february01.htm#tm

Now of course, DR is not the real world, and you would not be wrong to object to the way I have characterized the name registration system. But there is another way to compare the value of currency in DR to the value of currency in real life, one which is more explicitly suited to measuring the actual value of coin in the Player-Character adventuringg community. Currently, a platinum Kronar is worth somewhere between $0.10 and $0.15 on the open market.

This means that in terms of RL currency, registering your last name is not the aforementioned $10,000.00, or even $1,000.00, but rather somewhere between $1.00 and $1.50. And if a character cannot afford that fee, then in terms of the DragonRealms Player-Character adventuring community, they are extremely, desperately poor.

Of course, in reality, a DragonRealms plat in DragonRealms is worth a plat. It is neither $0.15 nor $100.00, but simply 1 PK. A 10 plat fee is alomost certainly more than many characters can afford, especially people's lower-level alternate characters. There is a trade-off between the cost of registering the name and the expected benefits from doing so; this is a value judgement which you make for your character. However, the 10 plat cost, in terms of the overall DR economy, is not so great as to prevent someone who, despite their modest income, feels a need to have strict legalistic control over the particular spelling of their surname from doing so.



X

<<I know of no plans to return last names to the character manager. I'm not going into the multiple reasons for this as they should be obvious and have been discussed before. I do believe that to choose a new last name the price will be 1 plat kronar, when that service becomes available.>>

What he said. I mis-spoke, however the rest of what I said remains correct.

Solomon


"Experience will come, it's not a race or anything. The ones who kill themselves to get to the finish are the ones who tire out quickly."

GM[Anti-ESP] Pormithius just killed Caelumia's ESP!

You're all wrong.

The current currency exchange is 8-10 cents per platinum kronar. Duh. Just read DRSales.

---

Rev. Reene

"Who provides the opportunity to cultivate patience? Not our friends. Our enemies give us the most crucial chances to grow."
- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

They held at .10/plat for a long time, probably because the math was so easy.

-Sephos

>>Comparing how much DR coins is to RL money and using that as a base to your argument is silly.<<

Not really what I was going for - I was using RL money to give a sense of scale, not attempting any direct comparision. What I was really driving at is that characters are almost all very rich compaired to an 'average' (read non-player) citizen of the realms and that within the realms own terms, 10 plat was a lot for your average man on the street.

>>Let us imagine that someone in the United States wishes to have their last name registered and restricted to their use. After this proceeding, no one will be able to legally change their name to be the same as his, and people whose names happen to already be the same will not be allowed to put that name on their children's birth certificates. Frankly $1,000.00 sounds remarkably modest for buying those rights. For reference, registering a trademark costs upwards of $375.00, not including the lawyer's fees and other associated costs (IRL lawyers don't work for tips). <<

Honestly though, the trademark costs are probably a lot closer to reflecting this cost then trying to register a last name in the real world - after all many folks in DR don't currently HAVE last names (just like many bussinesses don't have trademarks) and so wouldn't be an issue in the administative sense. So I'll settle for seeing the cost lowered to 3.75 plat... :D

As for the various pricing on DR plats - yeah, I know they are out there, yeah I know I could take advantage of them, not really the point here.

>You can call yourself whatever you want. I've never registered my first name with any Elanthian government telling them it was my name, why do I now have to pay them to have a last name?

In your raging against the machine, you've made the best point for the system that has yet been made. You can call yourself whatever you want. The platinum fee is there in order to have your name legally registered and recognized as such by the governments of the realms. Just because it says nothing behind your first name when someone looks at you doesn't mean that you can't introduce yourself with a last name.

Like I said before regarding this hysteria: it's really not that deep. If you want to have the name there for all to see, pay the plat. If it means that much, a single platinum kronar isn't hard to make, even for a single-digit circled character.

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Fuquois

I also said, I never registered my first name with any Elanthian government, but the bank still calls me by that and other players see it... So why do I have to pay to have a last name?

Can I suggest that you be able to add the one plat fee to your debt after you make a new character? Some characters don't have the same money making opportunities, for instance, empaths don't make a great deal of money at lower levels.


Elemancer Opieus, Journeyman Warrior Mage of Elanthia
(Petitioning for Last Names for Elanthians of not so olde)

Although, do be aware that if you have a plat or more worth of debt, any money you try to withdraw from the bank will be confiscated.

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Fuquois

<<Other posts have already touched on how to get over half of this amount and there are other ways as well.

How to get the coin has never been the issue. We are talking about suspending play style to gather coin for a system that we have been using for years. I am not concerned about someone else using the name but the risk of me be denied the right to use it is an issue, although not a major one. It is disheartening to have that issue not considered in some sort of grandfather clause. If the last name was a new system or had been this way from the start it would not be an issue.


Sylvado

Where would we be?

Jack: Bobby, I've had enough of Nikita, I'm ignoring him from now on!

<< How to get the coin has never been the issue. We are talking about suspending play style to gather coin for a system that we have been using for years. I am not concerned about someone else using the name but the risk of me be denied the right to use it is an issue, although not a major one. It is disheartening to have that issue not considered in some sort of grandfather clause. If the last name was a new system or had been this way from the start it would not be an issue.

If the coin isn't the issue, then I'm not sure why you're complaining. Play style has to sometimes adjust to the elements around us. If the normal guild that you circle at is suddenly taken out by a volcanic eruption or war, you have to go to another to circle. Likewise, if last names have never officially been recorded in documents by the Elanthian governments but they are now, you have a choice to make - register or not register.

You are not being denied the right to use your last name, it will remain on you unless you clear it, you simply cannot distribute it, which you couldn't do before this system was rewritten. This IS a new system - it allows you many options that weren't available from the start.

Grandfathering last names was considered but simply isn't feasible as most everyone would do so and we'd be back where we were at before the name purge. Many systems have changed over the years and aren't the way they were in the beginning, this is one of them.

I'm sorry you're not happy with the system but it is within your ability to register the name if you really want to do so. Since you have stated your views and I have done the same, I think we're simply going to have to agree to disagree here.

Best Regards,
~GM Arnimas

"Wealth is not his that has it, but his who enjoys it."
-Benjamin Franklin

All of the detractors are correct. It was better the way it was before this system was implemented. Please remove the option to have a last name entirely.

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Fuquois

Sarcasm, in general, is not an effective arguement. The fair option would be to make the CHOOSEing of a name free. It'd be like going in to an official office and saying, "Hey, for some reason you don't have my last name on file. It's XXX."


Elemancer Opieus, Journeyman Warrior Mage of Elanthia
(Petitioning for Last Names for Elanthians of not so olde)

governments always come up with new ways to bring in money. its like the 100 bucks i pay for my liscene plates, i keep the same plates but for some reason i gotta give the man a hundo every year. if i dont give him the hundo i still get to keep my plates. :)

Verbal.

>>Or unless you're unfortunate enough to get walked during an invasion after they removed last names. Or if you start a new character.

I'm not sure it's even possible now given the length of time involved, but if a player were able to get a restoral back to a character state with a last name would the restoral take priority over current situation or vice versa (assuming the name were registered to someone else)?

J'Lo, no that other one
The Manipulation List -- http://symphaena.com/index.html

<<just be grateful the clerk doesn't want two other forms of ID along with the money to get your last name registered.>>

considering what guild i'm in, i'm sure we could... print somethin up in no time... dat'll be a few plat... payable in advance...and if ya don't pay, we break yer kneecaps..



"Word on the street is, ya been lookin' out for the best interests of the Guild."

>>Could you share with us those reasons again?

They can chime in with the more-detailed (and real) reasons, but it all boils down to the fact that the CM is exceptionally old, rather fragile, generally too-forgotten, and largely unknown why it's still working. Until they decide to slay this venerable beast, they are content to let it sleep beyond small forays such as Aurdun's gor'tog stat fixes. :)

J'Lo, no that other one
The Manipulation List -- http://symphaena.com/index.html

<<J'Lo's post

Again completely misses the point.

If they rereleased the abilty for last names in the CM then we'd be at the same point we were before this all started, with a large glut of last names already used. The whole point of this was to free up the names database. Any names taken in the CM as a last name would also be unavailable to be chosen as a first name.

So, we don't get last names anymore so that the name database has a lot more longevity because new characters only reserve 1 name and not 2.

We must also remember in this setting last names were not common among most people. If things got confusing, people would append signifiers... "Oh.. John, the smith" "No, not him, the other Bob, William's son." Therefore, over time we get John Smith and Bob Williamson.


Player of a few too many
______________________

Pol-i-tics (pol-i-tiks) n. 1. "Poli" meaning many. 2. "Tics" meaning blood-sucking insects.

>>I hadn't even heard about that in Prime. Is that true? If so, how can I get a last name?

Currently, you can't. The Last Name system is in the process of coming out of rehab and is only on step 1 of a 2-step program. Those who already had last names can currently pay 10 plat to lock off their last name from everyone else (except by properly notarized invitation). It's not mandatory to do this, but the staff wanted to let those old last-namers who were actually proud of their last name to be given the chance to obtain control of the last name.

Step 2 will consist of the being able to get a last name at all, even if you have a stupid/embarassing last name now and want to change it.

J'Lo, I'm a ranger.. I'd believe anything.....
The Manipulation List -- http://symphaena.com/index.html

It's been a month, can we get phase 2 now, please?

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Your mind hears Tucktayuctuc thinking, "Battle Puff Powers...ACTIVATE!"