That was the philosophy in the early days of WoW. They wanted to let people keep the names of their beloved characters.
Eventually though, as the years went by, the number of names taken by players who had not logged in for years was high. New players, or players creating new chars, were impacted because there were very few names they might want to play.
Something had to be done… So they manually released very old names if the account was inactive for years, but only if someone put in a ticket and asked. That was eating up manpower and a lot of people did not know they even COULD ask. They just got frustrated and gave up.
Eventually, about a decade ago, they automated it. If someone does not log in to the account for more than 2 expansions (around 4 years) then the names get automatically changed to namenumbers. That does NOT mean your name was taken! It means it was freed up automatically.
Accept the name change and try to put it back to the old name. If that works, then nobody took the name and you can still have it If it does not work, the name is taken and you can’t have it back.
Now, if there was a naming violation, then you need to either appeal it, or accept the name change and pick something else.
What? Blizzard does not name characters for you or move them around without game wide notice that a server is closing. If Blizzard names it then it is something like Evilitedk1234 until you pick a new name. I might be tired but it sounds like you said Blizzard moved your character and renamed it to evilbetrolin which seems unlikely.
not sure why this has a heart. tried mentioning that the original post was with my orc dk evilite but was changed to evilbetrollin. an alt i made in 2014 2015 to play with a friend who was lvling an alt at the time. sorry if it was not clear enough. in other thread which seems like you are trying to bad mouth me on simple ways, i also tried to explain. some cooments were made on my ipad so that could have something to do with it but i dont think it should have. used to be pretty helpfull for pvp in mop. or at least i like to think so.
also sorry for cursing…but i do what i do and i put thought in my names, especially in high or full pop servers… if blizz wants to give a vacay to someone who has played on and off since 2007 or 08 so be it. i can find other games.
I’m curious what phrases you think were “bad mouthing” you?
It appears to me they were trying to be helpful and explain blizzard policies toward releasing names, even going so far as to link specific articles and threads by blizzard.
Just because it isn’t the answer you want to hear doesn’t make it incorrect or “bad mouthing”.
not anything like that…some edits must have been made. unless i get full proof otherwise i will believe otherwise but i did make a post to support about it. i also did go to what perl posted in another post and it just kept loading and loading which is why i said no answer. its not about an answer i want or dont want but a reasonable explanation which i feel like blizzard did better when i heard a real voice, had real help, like during a ten day free trial and got stuck in a tree as a night elf. blizz was they’re to help me out…even if it was a free trial…
You have 2 choices your not gona like number . blizzard not gonana rename ur toons the old names if someone taken them on your hiatus thats on you not blizzard.
When you log into the tooons with numbers you will get a chance to rename you can choose the same name as long as its not already claimed.
You can pay for a paid name change if you dont like the current one blizzard wont give u a free change unless it violates naming rules and the changed it to something apropriate.
I get the sense that OP is referring to Wrath and Cata-era retail characters, not Wrath/Cata Classic characters. My guess is that OP hasn’t played in several expansions and their character names were released in accordance with policy.
So I’m clear on the name release/preservation rules:
As long as we log in to any character on the Bnet account within the two expansions, that qualifies to retain the names on ALL characters on ALL licenses on that BNet account regardless of whether any of the licenses are funded. Is that correct?
It’d be for just that account, not all of your wow accounts. They set it up where you don’t need to log onto each of your toons to keep their names. It’d be need to be a paid account as inactive - as in unpaid - would fall within the name release system
Is this documented anywhere? Maybe some official help article or something? I had never heard of name preservation requiring paid game time. Plenty of people play on level 20s and it’d be a bit cruel to swipe their character name.
