The simplest and yet the hardest part of creating any hero is coming up with a good name. Your name represents you in City of Heroes, so you’ll want to choose something representing your hero and perhaps your own personality. Often the costume you have chosen and attributes of your hero will suggest a name to you; a glance through a thesaurus can help you come up with a variety of different words to describe your hero.

Of course, when all else fails there’s always plenty of ways to ‘accessorise’ a basic name. Add a prefix such as Captain, Mister, Miss, Ms, Major, Doctor and so on – or try a suffix like Man, Woman, Boy, Girl – even Lad or Lass have been used in comic books before.

Remember, when deciding on a name, that shorter names are easier for other players to type, and unconventional spelling can cause other players to hesitate or make mistakes when trying to contact you. That’s pretty important in a game that relies on typed communication, much of the time.

Also remember that two players cannot have the same hero name on the same server, so you might find your first choice is unavailable. Try some variations on your name if that’s the case – if you can’t be Amazing Man, try Mr. Amazing, Amazatron, Captain Amazing, The Amazer, or even AmazingMan. You can select to have ’The‘ in front of your name if you wish, or have multiple words in your name. As with the costumes, copyright-infringing names will be changed, as will offensive and misleading names – so please choose considerately.

With all these steps complete, you’re ready to begin your career as a hero in the City of Heroes, Paragon City. Good luck out there!