Gotcha. I completely agree, it's almost certain a list was presented. It was the implication that GW reviewed the whole list and chose Traitor as the preferred name which I think may be off the mark. This may seem pedantic at first glance, but this particular view has been put forward as a legitimate reason to give up on any campaign to change the name, and the only evidence I'm aware of for it is either personal assumptions or a creative interpretation of one of Katie's comments about the decision. There is no concrete evidence that my view of what happened is right either, it's simply not disproved by the evidence we have. However, the difference is whether or not we see GW as an insurmountable barrier or very likely to agree with our proposal if it's put to them. Which is quite the difference, all told! On a separate note, sorry that parts of my response may have seemed a bit blunt or dismissive. This distinction has come up a couple of times recently - indeed, twice today - and although in my head I was responding very coolly as if it was for the first time, evidently the fangs had come out a bit. Double irony points as immediately beforehand I'd made a post saying we shouldn't let emotion get the better of us. Revelation is a process, Kanthric. *sigh*
Well if I'm not mistaken it was only the top submissions from the brainstorming thread that were actually submitted to GW for rubber stamping, which would mean that the probability is only Legionnaire, Legionnary, Maurader and Traitor ever made it to their desk, while a slew of names that barely got less than Traitor were never submitted at all. We don't know if popularity came into consideration, but the most likely process was Legionnaire/ Legionnary were crossed off for not being used in 40k, Maurader got crossed off for overlapping with Fantasy, and they were probably hust unaware that a fairly large minority of fans actively despise Traitor and most of the rest feel Meh at best about it. I highly doubt that it was intended as a slight, but rather a misunderstanding about what their fans actually like about the faction.
@Kanthric Can't argue with your logic there, to be fair. I suppose it could simply be that if you go that class (in the confines of the Eternal Crusade bubble) then you are literally selecting a Traitor Marine, as in a Marine who was alive at the time and joined Horus during the Heresy.
Chaos' term for that is Veteran of the Long War, rather than Traitor Marine. It's a term actively used in tabletop, where it marks them out as a slightly more experienced CSM which is less likely to break and has a pathological hatred of the loyalist Space Marines. While it's possible to headcanon Traitor Marine to some extent, it's difficult to circumvent the fact that it's an Imperial slur. Even if for no other reason, it seems sensible as a point of principle that the classes should be named in line with the lore of the respective faction unless the class doesn't exist in the faction's lore, e.g. some of the Ground Assault classes. That principle holds true for all of the Space Marine classes, all of the Ork classes, all of the Eldar classes and for three of the five Chaos classes. The odd one out is 'Traitor Marine' which also lent it's name to the 'Traitor Assault' variant. It's very odd to have a name which is more popular amongst players of a rival faction than of the faction's own players. That in itself should really be setting off some alarm bells.
I'm going to post this suggestion here as well: Renegade seems a better choice to me over calling them something generic that is easily confused. Your faction is Chaos Space Marines; calling a unit that as well is just asinine. I'm aware table top does that but doesn't make it good either. Still not a great name for a specific unit but hell of a lot better than Traitor.
91,3% of voters want to change the name. Should we bring in the devs or should we wait some more, @The_Dokta, @Kanthric?
I really hope this works out for you guys. I'd hate it if we orks got stuck with Green Xenos Stormboy or Filthy Alien Ground Assault.
Sure would keep in the tradition of everything being from the fucking Imperial point of view. Gotta sell people on the SM bandwagon, AMIRITE?
