If you change your steam nickname and enter dayz your character will be lost, BUT NOT WIPED!
After this happen to me, I reverted my nickname to my old one and voila, my character was there.
This may be the cause of some character lost problems, and this leads to the conclusion that your character is saved in db with your nickname rather then your steamID.
This should really be fixed as soon as possible!!!
1º - Change your steam nickname
2º - Enter Dayz (you will have no character)
3º - Revert to your old steam nickname
4º - Enter Dayz (character is back)
I would consider this a feature, not a bug! I would love to be able to have a character for the different groups of friends I play with.
@compydad, it should be an option in the game, changing your name from steam shouldn't have anything to do with that.
I think if we could make character names IN the game and we were to check steam profiles from the players list -for reporting / friending- that would be the best way to address your point of view and to prevent such a problem from happening to 3nvy and all of us.
I concur with uritziel. A player should be identified by his Steam ID and have a character list in-game, with the character name defaulting to the current Steam name (i.e. when you select "New Character" in the list, the text field will show that, or if you have no character in the list, the game crates one with the your Steam name for you).