Someone has my original name on Sargeras and has not played since late BFA. I know names typically are freed up every few years, would it be pre-patch or expansion launch?
I think it was a pre-patch last time.
Do bear in mind though, it has to be that person’s whole account that’s been inactive for the required time. Not just that specific character.
3 Likes
To expand on this, it’s their entire Bnet account. If they play any game at all with it, the account is considered active.
4 Likes
It’s completely random when names are freed up and it’s not tied to prepatch. The last time it happened was on December 3rd 2022 looking at my characters that I made.
1 Like
It is not random, there is a blizzard article about when they do it. It states new expansion, I just wanted to clarify if it was pre-patch or expansion launch.
Really?
I’ve lost several character names over the years and have rarely been away. I didn’t always have a subscription when I was younger, but I’ve played a substantial amount of time during every expansion.
All 3 of my original characters have had their names taken. They’re on servers I no longer play on.
Yeah he’s not right about that. My account has been active for 10+ years and there are certain servers I forgot I had characters on that the names ended up being taken.
It used to be different.
In the past if you wanted a certain name you would open a ticket in game and request the name be freed up. If the character with the name was inactive for a certain period of time they would free it up.
They moved over to the new way of doing it in Legion I think.
That would be a very old article then.
Currently, the system checks the name and the account that it’s on. If that battle.net account (the whole thing, all games etc.) has been inactive for 2 years, then the name will be released for the person trying to use it.
They no longer do the massive, all at once, name releases near the start of a new expansion.
Here’s the current support article:
https://us.battle.net/support/en/help/article/288423
Originally, people could ticket GMs to take your name and they basically just judged if it was active or not. Not even sure if there was an actual standard for account activity vs character activity vs that.
Then it changed to the Name Purge thing, in which inactive WoW accounts would have their names purged, and they stopped letting GMs do it randomly.
Then it changed again to activity referring to the entire BNET Account.
You likely lost your names at some stage before the current one.