I read through the email this player received and the reasons cited are completely invalid, as there was zero breach of TOS whatsoever.

Wait, you can be banned for a name referencing your race or house?

Are you kidding me? This is insane! You can be banned for having a name that is lore-friendly? I could understand, for legal reasons, if ZOS wanted to keep people from having account usernames that were "proprietary names" and thus make players change them. Banning them, though? Going after character names? What if someone came up with a character name years ago and then a brand new piece of content drops where an NPC happens to have the same or similar name? Are you going to ban a player because you decided to use a name that they started using first?

This is absurd. Practically speaking, there are so many indicators that someone is a player and not an NPC (alliance rank even if you haven't set foot in PvP at all or gained a single AP yet, character level, CP's if they're 50+, username) that there's no practical reason to keep players from using them. The only thing I can see is it being a legal matter, and frankly I don't think that's something you can maintain for very long when you have as many NPC's as there are in ESO.

What are roleplayers supposed to do? Each race only has so many known naming conventions, prefixes, suffixes, etc. Do roleplayers now have to live in fear that they'll wake up one day to find that their account has been banned because ZOS decided to use a name they pieced together from existing in-lore naming conventions in a new piece of content they might not even have played?

This is a really terrible precedent to set. I don't know the person in question, but I don't need to in order to know that this is a load of bull and extremely suppressive to the playerbase at large, and in particular roleplayers who want to use lore-friendly names.

Ayo I heard about this as well. Can we get a clarification on the TOS here? I've had this issue as well for copyrighted characters and references to real-world people. So I'm aware that the Code of Conduct forbids copyrighted names being used as character or account names so does that apply to names that are imitating names that are present in-game? That makes zero sense. Would that not mean then, that having a lore-friendly character name like Telvanni for roleplay reasons would be a violation of the Code of Conduct? And if these things result in such harsh reactions from support, why aren't these rules enforced evenly?

If this was an error and gets corrected, will the team be doing anything to make up for this error, including offering an explanation for the error and a plan to prevent further issues from arising? If this was due to mass-reporting, as I've heard rumor it was, does that mean that ZOS listens to majority rather than logic, or is there any plan to punish repeated misuse of the in-game reporting system? Is there going to be any accountability on this at all?

I have not seen the names or the email, however my guess is the names may have contained letters that may have formed some type of word and/or acronym that zos’ automated systems have on their banned word list. The bot probably just autobans any account with characters with those words or letter arrangements somewhere in their name.

Perma ban for a character name seems ridiculous, unless it's a death threat or something.

I've seen the the correspondence as well and can confirm none of those clauses were in breach. Either this is a complete oversight/error or they're throwing about T&Cs at a whim. I do believe it's the former and they've had some sort of automated process misinterpret the names, but there is virtually nothing in these names that breach the T&Cs.

If it is the latter and the ban was approved, it sets a terrible precedent where any of us can be punished for the slightest things. I've seen worse names float around in zone that use expletives and derogatory references and nothing has been done about them, but somehow this is worthy of a ban?

Ball's in ZoS' court unfortunately, but hopefully this was an oversight and not something intentional.

DerAlleinTiger wrote: »

umagon wrote: »

I have not seen the names or the email, however my guess is the names may have contained letters that may have formed some type of word and/or acronym that zos’ automated systems have on their banned word list. The bot probably just autobans any account with characters with those words or letter arrangements somewhere in their name.

No, they were all names that were related to in-lore NPC"s or items. One was even flagged despite being a name not from ESO but TES V instead.

I can certainly understand a rule against impersonating an Elder Scrolls character, but not an item.

I'm using Telvanni as a last name on one of my characters too, though the first name looks nothing like any character in-game. This kinda scares me, as I have a lot of money and time invested in my account. I would be devastated if someone, or myself, was banned for this.

Lorefriendly names are no reason for a ban at all, just force a namechange with a short reason explaining why a certain name is not allowed. So players do not pick a similar name again. But honestly, normal lorefriendly names should be allowed.

My best guess is that ZOS considers names from the ES IP to be covered by this:

“Names or material protected by copyright, trademark or other intellectual property rights cannot be used at any time except by the rightsholder. Rights ownership must be established prior to use on any ZeniMax Media, Inc. site or service. Any use of material protected by intellectual property rights that is not wholly owned by the account owner is a violation of the Agreement, including the Code of Conduct.”

They have clarified sometimes in other threads when there have been questions about how to understand the ToS/CoC. Perhaps they could consider doing so here.

Um, if it's a banable offense why let the name be chosen in the first place? They have veto control over names when you create them why allow one that will get the player banned. That doesn't seem like a good way to go about making the player base happy. And out of the blue like, it's chilling...

I am really looking forward to see some green comment here.

This really seems like some unfortunate error, and I'd love to see this matter solved -
with a fair compensation for those people impacted.
(Missed Daily Log In boni etc.)

Wow, this is completely insane. My character names have nothing to do with ES lore but they do have something to do with my favorite video games, book series, etc. To be banned for it is just stupid ZOS.

I doubt I'm the only one who suspects that there's rather more to this story than we're being told here...

This is getting ridiculous. I know people who constantly hate whisper everybody who kills them in PvP and they are still running around despite getting reported all the time. Meanwhile others get permabanned for having a name refering to an ingame lore object [snip]

[edited for profanity bypass]