So i’ve been doing some googling and i’ve had a hard time finding any up to date, concrete info straight from the horses mouth, usually it’s a bunch of forum threads with people stating speculations as facts and even in the same thread you’ll see a different answer from every poster.
Basically, as of right now in 2019, does Blizzard ever free up taken names and if so what does it take for them to do it? Since the game is quite old at this point and does not allow for first and last names it is very hard to get a decent name on most popular servers (especially on RP servers) if you want to avoid tainting your name with awful looking symbols or first and last names in one word. And this issue becomes a thousand times worse if you wanna play a human and have a lore appropriate name.
Anyways, it would be nice with some proper clarification!
As of 3 weeks ago.
World of Warcraft
Character names on accounts that have been inactive for the past two expansions automatically become eligible to be used by other characters. We do not assist with releasing character names manually.
World of Warcraft Classic
We do not release character names for World of Warcraft Classic characters.
Thank you!
One thing though, they say “accounts that have been inactive for the past two expansions”, does this mean any account that has not played WoW specifically for the past two expansions or does this not apply to for example a battle net account that has not played WoW for the last two expansions but still been active on other blizzard franchises or just being logged in to the desktop app?
To my knowledge only time in WoW affects the timer and is purely WoW based. i.e. you actually go into the world of warcraft client and enter the game world, every character is ‘safe’.
Don’t do that and you lose them eventually, regardless of what other blizzard games you play.
Alright this makes sense, then i know for certain.
That so? My mage’s name was taken by someone else despite my being very active ingame… on other characters, that is. Hadn’t logged on that specific character in a while.
The most annoying part is that the person who “stole” the name then stopped playing at level 20.
That too was done to me. I was active enough but then notice the character was gone and found it later used by a Human Hunter and hasn’t touched the character since.
shrugs there’s a reason I said “to my knowledge”. Maybe it’s character based then. Makes their article poorly worded though, as it implies account based.
Speaking of names… any idea why I cannot name a character “Coldshade” without the accents despite the fact that there’s no character called that? There used to be a 26 level rogue called Coldshade, but they no longer show up on the armory which suggests me the character has been deleted for inactivity.
Characters don’t get deleted from accounts for inactivity but they do get removed from armoury listings.
It is, presumably, still on an account somewhere but hasn’t been inactive long enough to make the name available for other people to pick up.
So… they get removed from the armory before the name becomes usable? Okay, that’s odd.
I did get one name freed up for me, but I was never told by blizzard even though I did send them a lot of tickets about it. I was only lucky to grab it one day when for the fun of it I thought I might just try to see if it was available that day.
I’m almost certain that characters below level 20 go unregistered on the armory, which is why you might be having a hard time finding them. They do technically exist though and that’s why the name remains taken.
Personally I’m not a fan of how the policy on occupied names has turned out. I get that they don’t want their GMs spending a considerable amount of time on this matter… but it’s frustrating to say the least. And I know accented names are an alternative (one I don’t mind if the name I’d want is being actively used!), but if it has been gathering dust for a year on some forgotten alt? Yeah, that grinds my granary.
1 Like
Neither am I, the fact people take really good names and don’t level past level 10 or even try to sell the name for real currency. Personally, I still think Blizzard should be allowed to free up names should the person not be using the character at -all-. I know that sounds very childish, but I know people who are after specific names and never end up getting them.
1 Like
Considerably less childish than having a name hoard for sale. 
3 Likes
Though trying to sell names for real currency is against the Terms of Service. But I only got lucky with one name, I am hoping to get lucky with the next. Using accents is a good way of going about it.
But I don’t think there is any harm in poking Blizzard about it either.
People who hoard names with the sole intent of selling them are scum imo. Always had that opinion, doubt it´ll change.
Well, it is understandable to think that way. But I often shake my head when I see threads ‘Looking for name’ cause I think it is unfair for this person to try and hopefully seek out said name. And this person with that name could be inactive for an expansion or not even using the character for any purpose.
Bulk name-squatting is incredibly scummy and i wish Blizzard wasn’t as strict. Inactive for 2 expansions is a long time. That’s 4-5 years, for the entire account being inactive. I feel like if a character has not even logged in for 6-12 months the name should be freed up and if the character is below level 20 after 3-6 months it should be freed up. Don’t delete the character, just free the name up and offer them a name change.
2 Likes
I don’t really understand your meaning. Could you explain differently?