Discord changes how to use your username. There are good reasons for this, as the service itself explains. In the future, you will have to say goodbye to the numbers behind your name.
What change is there? Discord is making changes to its usernames and eliminating the numbers that follow each user. Instead of MeinMMO#1234, you will only be called MeinMMO. In the future, you should be able to change your username for almost everything.
Moreover, there will be a new option “Display Name”. In the best case, your appearance in front of your friends on Discord will change little at first, and you won’t have to worry about not being able to distinguish your thousands of friends because they all suddenly have different names.
There are several reasons for this change, as the developers explain.
Cumbersome and nobody could remember strange numbers
Co-founder Stanislav Vishnevskiy explained in a blog post that there are several reasonable reasons why the naming system needs to be redesigned (via discord.com):
- Too complicated names: Nobody could remember the distinguishing numbers.
- Distinction between uppercase and lowercase letters is important on Discord. Phibi#8936 and PHiBi#8936 are different users.
- Standard names are often taken. Since there are already 9,999 Mikes, you cannot be the 10,000th, as all numbers are already gone.
- You want to change your user regularly, but there were restrictions.
- Special characters or certain characters were hardly or only difficult to find on Discord.
Furthermore, nobody could remember the number behind the username anyway. Discord explains: 40% of all users didn’t even know they had such a number or what their number at the end of their username was.
What will the names look like in the future? Each person will receive a unique alphanumeric username without a distinguishing feature. So, without a number that nobody could remember anyway. This username will only be used to interact with other users. These names will be limited to lowercase letters (a-z), numbers (0-9), and two special characters (dot and underscore).
The second change is a non-unique display name. This can contain almost anything, as long as it complies with the community guidelines, including special characters, spaces, emojis, and non-Latin characters.
More about Discord: If you want to use Discord on the PS5, MeinMMO editor Maik Schneider has tested the service on the P5 and explains whether the wait was worth it:
PS5 and Discord: The small crossplay revolution is running, but comes with flaws
