It's happening! This change is a massive shift over what we've done for the past 15 years and we know upfront that this change will make some people happy, and some people upset. We're making this change to preserve the future of Subeta, and to keep excitement for new users as high as for those of us who've been here for the last 15 years.
We've listened to feedback on this for years, and have looked at how other popular modern games handle unique names like this. We've come to a decision and are implementing it today.
The goal at the center of these changes is to give everyone on the site the freedom to be as creative as they'd like, and build characters around their pets without having to scour for the name you want for months - and to honor those who fought for names and waited months.
Pet Names
From this point forward pet names are no longer unique. That means, for example, there can be two pets named Spot on the site at the same time. You can build stories and characters around a name, without needing to add numbers or strange spellings. We're looking forward to seeing a burst of creativity!
Changes: The new URL structure for your pets looks like: https://subeta.net/pets/keith/AwesomePetName
And the sCode for linking to pets is: [pet not found]
...where "keith" is the username of the pet's owner, and AwesomePetName is the (hopefully awesome) pet name!
All of the links around the site have been updated to reflect this change.
Changing Pet Name
You can now change your pet name once per month with a gold account. That means one name change per pet, per month. We'll have a way for everyone to rename their pets soon!
Legacy Pet Names
To honor those who have spent time, effort and money in obtaining unique pet names up until now, every pet created on the site up until this news post now also has a legacy pet name that links them to their names prior to this update. The old URL structure and sCode will still work, and will link to the pet with that legacy name.
For example, if I owned AwesomePetName before this update, then https://subeta.net/pets/AwesomePetName here will still link to my pet AwesomePetName for the rest of time!
If I change my pets name to "TotallyAwesomePetname" the legacy name will continue to be AwesomePetName. This status will persist even if your pet is transferred to a new owner.
There is a line on the pet profile designating the legacy name, and this can be removed targeting the .legacy-name class with CSS. For example, the following CSS will hide it completely:
.legacy-name { display: none; }
Other Changes
We will no longer be clearing old pet names - all old pets will retain those legacy names.
We will still be clearing usernames at the same time, as they continue to be unique. No pet names will be cleared.
[edit] There is a helpful user-made FAQ here which compiles information from various staff posts/comments: FAQ about Legacy Names/Non-Unique Pet Names
