Forced Character name change

Support Customer Support
1

I’d like to share my most recent experience with customer support and warn anyone attempting to get help from them that you will likely be lied to, and banned if you attempt to take action into your own hands.
It appears that much like everything else in WoW, the customer support system is a game of RNG. If you roll a good GM you’ll have a good time, but if you roll a bad one (The majority of them) you’re going to have an annoying experience.

I recently decided to play classic wow TBC again and went to log onto my character I made on the very first day of classic wow who is level 60 (and had been transferred over to the tbc servers on the very first day of tbc classic release) to find that my characters name had been forced to rename for no reason? His name was (Defias) which isn’t breaking any of the terms or conditions for a forced name change.

I checked to see if my name had been taken but luckily I was able to save it on an alt, I then made a ticket to see if I could get my name changed back since it was my original name and since I had it saved now on an alt.

I’ll summarise what happened with the tickets, I sent my first ticket & told them the situation and 3 DAYS later this was the response I got from GM no.1-

(Not entirely certain of the circumstances that forced you to change your character’s name, but if you have a character whose name you want to use for another, we could swap the names around for you. You just need to confirm with us which two characters they are.)

So I thought all was well, I replied to the ticket giving the characters names I’d like to have swapped, logged into my character, spent my whole weekend playing on him, And spent a lot of my gold on him buying training for all his skills & epic riding.

A further 2 DAYS later I get this response from a different GM-

(Unfortunately, name changes are not available for WoW Classic and The Burning Crusade Classic characters at this time. You’ll want to wait for that service to become available in game before you can change the names of these characters. Customer Support will not be able to swap character names for you while this service is unavailable.)

They ended the message there without even letting me respond and explain the situation, So I sent another
Ticket saying how the first GM said it was fine and how disappointed I was with the wait time & would like a live chat, As my gold and time had been completely wasted with this misinformation.

I am extremely disappointed with this service. I have played the game for well over a decade and I am repaid with nothing but lies and having my time wasted after being victim to a bug that I had no control over. I’m sure that it is well within their means to make this simple change for me, which would mean so much to me. If this is the customer support I can expect in the future, then Blizzard can expect the loss of another customer.

With Game Masters now lying to their customers, treating them poorly, All on top of them not even being willing to chat and only ever responding through a ticket response (They used to ask if you had time to chat if you were online), I can only hope I never have to contact support again. A warning to anyone who might be thinking about contacting customer support, don’t waste your time. You will not be treated like a valued customer.

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Well live chat isnt for this kinda thing and GM mite not have realized you were talking classic not retail so thats probably where he gave u the wrong information by mistake GM are human after all and that is why u were told no in the 2nd ticket classic and retail have 2 different policies in regards to what was availble then and and whats availble in retail.

Paid name changes werent availble till 2007 which is WOTLK so it wouldnt be availble in TBCC.

Im sorry u got told no but to tell people not to open tickets is teh worst thing u can do GMS are bound by policy and sometimes mistakes do happen.

5 Likes
3

This is most likely due to npcs in the game known as The Defias Brotherhood, a band of assassins.

Cannot name yourself after npcs or groups in game

May not have been your intention but i speculate that this is why the name was changed.

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4

They did look into the character and must have seen it was on a classic server as the first GM originally said (Not entirely certain of the circumstances that forced you to change your character’s name)

5

I think i gota agree to mastadon point on it being named defias its like having king in the name it a title or part of a group in game which isnt allowed.

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The first GM said (Not entirely certain of the circumstances that forced you to change your character’s name) So I’m
Not sure if that is the issue as I had it all through classic with no problems, Only when I had left the game and come back after a few months the forced name change was made.

7

Having it for a long time has no bearing on the name change.
Blizzard is reactive towards name changes. They don’t examine each name in the data base. Instead they only react if the name is brought to their attention.

A mistake and a lie are two quite different things. Have you never made a mistake? Or were you telling lies?

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Yes but the first GM has said (Not entirely certain of the circumstances that forced you to change your character’s name)

Also you are allowed to name your character after Npc/organisations with stipulations

Generally
Speaking the Major
Lore characters should have there names reserved and not accessible, Iv pulled this directly from a customer support representative

9

Sometimes a GM may be new or just made an error that a superior caught. No one is perfect, and regularly you will see the staff admitting to them being very much human. It wasn’t an outright lie, it would have been an error on the part of the first GM.

As for the forced name change, perhaps the name had been reported and the name change pushed through the system during the time you had not played the character, and had just been waiting all this time for you to log back in for the rename. I’m trying to dredge up the specifics on naming, but what Mastadon said is very likely to be the case. There are name generators out there so that you’re not taking the name of some big chunk of the lore.

Considering how vast the lore is - there will always be ones that might not have made that list.

And just because…

Being told no is not a bad GM. They have rules they must follow. If the Powers That Be has a rule set in place, they have to follow what is dictated to them. And since you’ve likely not encountered any vast numbers of that staffing pool? That is just hyperbole on your part. I’ve spoken with dozens of GMs over my many years of playing, and even though I might not have liked what they told me, that never made any of them bad GMs.

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Well regardless this mistake did cost me a lot of time, Something I don’t have a lot of, & if a mistake was made especially by a company of this size I expect them to fix it

11

Personally, I would appeal the decision but I can see the argument against having a name that is exactly the same as an in-game group/faction.

Something like “The Defias Avengers” should be ok where “the Defias Brotherhood” can be problematic.

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Theres nothing to fix they cant just give u a name change because a GM made a mistake other wise theyd have to do it for millions of other players.

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I never wanted to change my name in the first place it was forced on me, and i’m more salty at the time and gold I wasted as originally they said they would do it for them only to turn back on what they said after 2 days of playing, Which may not seem a lot to you bit 2 days off is big for me.

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Summarizations can be embellished. Appeal the decision via the email that was sent to you. It’s all you can really do. Unfortunately, the Blue posters here have no say in how the ticket is eventually resolved.

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I see what you are saying but I was only called Defias, Not The Defias brotherhood, My name was never a full copy of the faction, OR a npc name. & If that was the reason shouldn’t I have been told by the GM? instead of (Not entirely certain of the circumstances that forced you to change your character’s name)

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Either way, you will have to follow up with the GM staff. No one in this forum can change the outcome of your tickets.

1 Like
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Hey! thanks so much for the advice, Do you know what the processes are of doing that? I can’t seem to find how to do it the only option I have is to review the ticket

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You can appeal it here:

https://us.battle.net/support/en/help/contact/1453/ticket

I’d say prepare for the worst but hope for the best. Especially with it being the Classic iteration, they really do stick with how things were back then. If your name was reported and flagged, a GM upheld it and left you with the forced name change. But that ticket path I left for you will allow you to appeal it and/or the situation you find yourself in now. I do wish you luck.

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Yes, it is.

Naming yourself anything that is in the game is against the rules.

Doesn’t matter, it was “adjacent” to something that is very recognizable.

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That is incorrect.