If they do that they would at least be actively trying to keep the names
It would free up names from long lost forgotten characters that will never be played again.
Like my original character. I will never delete him because there is too much history there.
I doubt I’d play him again.
Id be happy for someone to take the name but they will never be able to get it under the current system
They just made it automated instead of making a person look up whether or not the name was attached to an active account.
I do agree it seemed easier to get names then as inactivity didn’t have a two expansion requirement.
Someone chose to fire majority of the gms
You want to force people to log onto up to 50 characters per account, to keep the names on their active accounts that have sub time?
Once every 2 years?
Yeah im perfectly fine with that.
If they can’t go through that effort they don’t deserve the names
I expect their wage to be the same regardless of whether the tickets concern locked names or more serious account/ingame issues. But they’re being paid - and if I were the employer of a GM team, I’d want them to spend the most of their working hours on the most important player issues.
Names being locked, when compared to other potential problems, probably rank somewhere around the bottom of priorities.
So by automating the names being unlocked, not only will the GMs focus on the more pressing matters, but I get to say that no further action is needed on my part. Just player patience and a bit of luck. 
Cutting costs is very on brand for Blizz, s’true.
Well, you are right. That could be weird to log each character with sub time just to keep names when I think about it, I’m still defending that it should be every expansion anyway.
That’ll just harm people with many playable characters, while the ones with level 1-10 as name holders will just delete and remake.
I barely touched alts throughout Legion because AP farming was so intensive for much of the expansion, and BfA had a constant farm metric for much of it as well. The only reason I managed to get 48 level 120s is due to Korrak’s AV. I did a couple more for AR Heritage when they were released through faster levelling.
I wholeheartedly disagree with any forced login. It’s just not practical. If people are paying Blizzard it’s no one’s business how frequently or infrequently they log on their characters.
I disagree, many returning players that haven’t played WoW for a couple of years can get upset if the toon they wanted to play and have been attached to in the past, suddenly has a forced namechange.
It’s not a positive reaction upon reinstalling the game.
Gone, but never forgotten. 
My preference would be a better naming system like having an account name to go with your name
Such as id only show up to others as mclovin, but like to talk to me youd talk to mclovin (16r8ens)
That way anyone can have any name and everyone is happy
But unless they do that, I do have a problem with unplayed characters stopping people making a main with the name they want
Oh yeah, not forgotten but partly in a bad way (as an Alliance) at least. Most of time people would just AFK, joining the game with a “defeatist” mentality, it’s really annoying for a few others who actually try and want to win, so it’s kinda typical move from Alliance that join the games and think it’s “lost already anyway.” Usually making up russian “premades” as an excuse. But the thing is they can be defeated if there is communication, I had plenty of wins versus russians.
On the other hand, I loved that event for the nostalgia though.
They’ve used to release such names about every 6 months or so, when they actually had to care about amount of characters/accounts per realm. No idea why it’s every 2 expansions now, one would think that as WoW gets bigger and more characters get created, the increased need would be followed by increased supply. Alas, it’s not so.
There are alternate nicknames though. Or “special” letters.
“Every 2 expansions”… 
2-3 years per expansion… that means this could happen just once or twice per decade, and its very unlikely some inactive player to leave the game for 5 years without return and check it out for at least few days.
Says Kaløyan, a lvl 20 Nelf Hunter…
Tbh, sometimes you just have to be patient, I recently bagged a name on one of the realms I play on, that I had been wanting for years…it may help, if you pick a low population Realm. Otherwise, view it as a very rare drop.
That hes twink 
Worst part is, they were probably thinking of Atheist…
Thats my main character and Im active 24/7 with it 
I hate this word “twink”…
Im not a twink, I just play my end-game which is 20 level as Starter Edition.
Twinks are toxic/cancerous players who get everything OP from max skill professions + OP trinkets.
The new word for these Fkers is “Veterans”. They just sub one time and stop their XP at level 20 with enchants, flasks, etc. They cant play if they are active subs cuz they cant queue in normal BGs with levelers.