People pick names in this game to "stand out." (i.e. different language chars, symbols, etc.), at least in their eyes. It's just like any games that lets you. Old school wise, remember games like WoW that people hacked the colours on until it was patched? Rainbow chats everywhere!

To be fair you're mixing two different arguements.

For variance, there's millions of usernames from meaningless to art designs thanks to symbols languages etc. so that's just debunked lol

For old school, the games age range is like 12 on ipads but I did see a UNSC clantag that brought me back to Combat Evovled.

Halo sucked for years though so they must've been older

Even "old school" names in those days didn't have one source type / motivation. Some might be have been nods to a cultural reference, some personal, but some were just as nuts and the end goal even then was quite often to stand out. But that's the goal of any name, right? You want a name that identifies you (while not necessarily defining you :-) ) as uniquely as possible.

I'm old school in more ways than one, and while I wouldn't use the kinds of names you shared, some of them do give me a chuckle. The most recent mirth generator was "OOPSiFARTED" (in that capitalization which also I thought was a clever touch :-) ).

By the way I would not personally also use a name like TheGeneral. Nothing against it of course, but my point is that it isn't automatically a good candidate for one old schooler just because it is for another. Old or new, names depend more on us as individuals and might often be independent of what era we belong to (thinking wise.. giving no hints about my age ;-) ).

My favourite names to see are "God, I am the best, I own you, Can't Kill me, I Am Pro, etc. (in some sort of iterations). Those are the ones I go for first in a match. 😛