The extremist view is that any character that has not been played in the last few weeks should lose their name, even if the account is active.
I have 5 licenses. I have never reserved a name. I think it’s way less common than you think it is to reserve that many names.
That would be terrible.
I never said it was common, I was saying it was possible to have that many characters per license, per Bnet.
I have 5 accounts. They are not all full, but I have no idea how many characters I have.
Just bring up character map then select javanese. It’s easy.
I just have 2, but only one WoW account active. I had to clean up my character list on that one because I was at 58 characters a few weeks ago. Most I don’t even log on, play or w/e. 
Nobody would want that. My specific example was a character that hasn’t logged in since BFA. They’re still lvl 50 with that awful azerite gear on.
Lapsing for one expansion is too soon to lose a name. Two is longer, but fair. Maybe shaving that down to one and a half, but definitely not just one expansion.
Didn’t they update the policy? From what I understand, if ppl log into their bnet account every few years, there character names don’t go inactive.
You’ll love this: people can basically keep their names indefinitely. The rule is as follows:
All the character names in a Battle.net account automatically become available after the Battle.net account remained inactive for two expansions.
What did we find out that actually means? If someone logs into Bnet and plays a game of Hearthstone once a year, they keep their WoW names.
Should be a purge or something, there’s a name I’ve been wanting for years but can’t get it cause some L12 noob has it and as far as I can tell hasn’t logged in on that toon in years and still hasn’t been freed up.
Now I have couple lowbies on other servers and their names have been forcefully changed which I don’t care about since I don’t play on them but the fact of the matter is their names were forcibly taken without my permission so it is possible for Bliz to do that to others as well but why don’t they?
Honestly it should be if you don’t have a WoW sub for 2 years, you risk losing your names
Motivate people to keep an active sub if they want to keep their names
It won’t be. Their Bnet account just needs to remain active. They don’t even need to play WoW.
Blizzard doesn’t take names from people anymore. They haven’t done that in probably a decade. So either that happened before the change or the names were somehow against the rules and changed for that reason.
They still maybe active on the account.
Yeah this is actually ridiculous l m a o
I think it is, too. Used to be, if it was two expansions of WoW itself that you were inactive for, your names were released. But they stealth changed it a while back and now that’s why we don’t see name releases.
What we need is the option for one space, hyphen or apostrophe. That gives people the option for a last name or the cultural naming conventions we see on NPCs and opens up more naming possibilities.
A blue confirmed in another thread that it’s even worse than this:
ANY activity in ANY Blizzard game resets the timer. You could log into Hearthstone once every three years and never touch WoW again, and all your names will still be there “ten” years from now.
EDIT: Oh and you can even just log into a <20 character, with no game time and still reset the timer.
Continuing the discussion from Seeking clarity on updated policy:
This happened sometime in the past 4 years and I doubt the name was offensive since it was just a normal name.
You get someone that doesn’t know the rules or is someone’s “friend” or even just someone trying to be nice and they will make the change.
Would they get disciplined for it? Maybe but if like the profession gaining bug at the start of the expac and again at the ZC zone it’ll be minor and they won’t roll it back as they should.
Ever since they input this “names will be automatically purged by this policy so STOP OPENING TICKETS” nonsense in, you can safely assume any name you ever might remotely consider will be nigh impossible to get.
The requirements for name-purging are far too forgiving. Should be limited to 2 years of an inactive WoW license, not 4 years inactive Battle.net account. That is downright silly.
Will it ever change? No. Never. You know how they say “never say never”? I’m. Saying. Never.
Then that was under the old rules.
Nope. Forced name change is only for being against the rules. False reports aren’t going to get a sanction and you get an email that tells you it was against the rules so you can appeal it. That other person would also have to then wait for the name to be released.
They do clear them out but keep in mind that they don’t need to play that character, just play a character on the account.