Sorry in advance if this is the wrong place to ask but I’m curious about the policy.
It says the name will be automatically released once the character name in use is inactive for at least two expansions.
Does it mean the day they stopped logging in and exactly wait till 2 years later? Or is it referring to the days when pre expansion patches days.
For example, this name I want has been inactive since 2018 (think during Legion) does that mean I have to wait till sometime this year when Shadowlands launched already or whenever the expansion after Shadowlands pre patch comes out?
Thanks in Advance.
The entire account needs to be inactive for two expansions, not just the character.
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Yes sorry that’s what I mean the whole account
I’d assume that means that if the account has been inactive for two expansion cycles, then it’s released. That’s typically about 4 years.
So, for example, if an account was last active during Mists of Pandaria, the names on that account would be available now.
And I’m guessing names from Warlords of Draenor would be available with Shadowlands. Legion would be the expansion after Shadowlands.
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Developers release the names now sporadically over the games cycle, and with out announcement. But the criteria should be as noted, it’s just done at certain times not necessarily corresponding to when the expansion releases.
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It means two complete expansions later. So if they last logged in toward the end of legion, they were inactive for BFA, then they are also inactive for shadowlands, the name will be released after that. So around the time that the expansion after shadowlands is released, give or take a few months.
Keep in mind, a character may be inactive ( I have some inactive since Classic) while the account has still be active. I have played in BfA.
Someone mentioned on the forums some months ago that a wave of name releases had happened, so I was able to find a server that had this rather common name.
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Sorry for necro’ing this, but does an account being active = paying a sub? Or can I play with a trial character and not worry about losing names on older characters on the account? (Not a class trial, but a new lv1 character.)
I would believe one has to have a sub. Otherwise, it’ll be easily abuseable.
The account just has to has activity, not necessarily paid time. You can log in to any unpaid account and play characters level 20 or lower (soon one level 10 or lower?) to create activity. You do not need to have a specific f2p license.
If paid time were a criteria, people with accounts that were only free to play wouldd be forced to name change their characters every couple of years and I have never seen a forum post discussing this as an issue.
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Just wanted to confirm that this is how it works. This only applies to the WoW license that you log into though, it does not count for the entire Battle.net account.
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