This post is an inquiry as the title says here… I am curious if anything has been done now in the last several years in regards to character names being “frozen” to accounts that themselves are inactive, or to characters that are going unplayed.
I ask, because of my previous Classic/TBC main whom’s name I had to alter in Wrath when doing a realm transfer. I swapped his name to simply have an “ä” rather than a simple “a” to retain my name in some mild form of what the character had bore for over 5 years…
I have religiously checked over all these years to see if it was available and have not seen it free in what has been 15 years, nor once have I seen the character as something you could search for, or anything of the like.
Now I know this could mean the character is simply being hoarded by someone as a lower than 10 level character…but has there been anything ever decided upon to have action taken when such is the case?
The character is there, the account is inactive of a login for an extended period of time, or the character itself isn’t precent ingame for that extended period of time…is there anything, any way, any hope to see that this doesn’t simply leave the character’s name forever frozen by someone who could simply go “I’m quitting, I’ma make this level 1 alt and just cancel my account” and have that be the end all, be all to see a name doomed from being accessible to any other of the playerbase?
Names would free up if a person’s account has been inactive for a couple of expansions as far as I am aware. And since you do not know the status of anyone elses account, kind of hard to say whether the person who has the name has kept the account active.
pretty if it hasnt been freed up by now the account still active but the name is being banked i think it the bnet account has to be inactive for 2 expac.
See thats what I was curious of. …I know it could mean the Bnet account…but if someone has said name just sitting there, plays another game on Bnet, but their WoW account has been unplayed for what could be since…lets say…MoP, the name is just sitting there and has been frozen up for what would be 8 years of an inactive login to WoW from that Bnet account that is instead just being used to play Hearthstone.
And while that is valid from your perspective, it’s also valid from the current owner’s perspective that it’s still in their possession. It isn’t always the case, but there are numerous reasons that a person could be away from the game, and easily half of that list could be considered something out of their control.
While it is a minimum of four years at this time, that could easily be eaten up by military deployment or medical staycation, as a couple examples. How fair would it be to them to have names they also cherish taken away from them?
You do have the option of sending mail to that character on the realms you want it on to see if you can come to some sort of agreement to free it up, as well.
I appreciate your answer, Ekon, very much, and I totally understand your point and reasoning. I can very easily sympathize and empathize if that was such a fact…but the name is on a character that isn’t even able to be searched through the reason search, as it is not of a level to appear…
I would hardly be able to believe it as “cherished” if it is such…that you made the character and have never played it in any way.
There are a few ways for a character to not appear on the Armory.
The main reason is, as you mentioned, the character is below level 10. But the character can also be well above that level and just not logged into for a long enough time for it to fall off of server and API caching. It may bear some resemblance to someone’s lost family member and they desire just to hold onto it as a memory and leave it untouched.
I do not mean to sound snide in that previous response, but I am sure you get what I am saying there. If the name was of such meaning that you make a character to bear it…then just sit them there for what now has been 11-12 years just…for the character to be unplayed…it makes it a tad bit hard for me to believe it was something the person was really passionate to have and see themselves with on a character in the game…and not just “hey look at that name on my character list”. Hahah.
How would u like it if u were realy attached to a name but were saving it for the right toon only to have it stolen from u because u took a break from wow.
I’d feel fine, most of all when it’s sat locked up for 12 years on an unplayed character…just holding the name for over a decade and shown no intent to see use cause “i was saving it”
I’d feel more the fool to keep it away from another that will make purpose and take enjoyment from it, rather than it wasted for me to do neither.
While I think everyone can feel where you’re coming from, that character did have the name on the server before you. If you did not want to use the accented character, you could have stayed in your original realm.
There is a quite long ongoing thread (not to mention the individual ones that pop up) asking for help in finding old accounts. Those users are usually very grateful to get their accounts back and reclaim characters thought lost. Sure sometimes the names have been released, but often they still seem to be around and that has to be a very good feeling.
If you think the system should change in someway to be quicker or less strict, you can make a post over in General or via the in game suggestion box. Unfortunately no feedback from here will get passed along.
That you are aware of. You don’t even know that the WoW license is inactive, or was ever inactive. For all you know, the character is someone’s bank alt and is used regularly and has been since it was created.
My bank character was created at the beginning of Burning Crusade. She is logged into every day that I play. She is level 2. No, you cannot have her name, either.
You keep saying that, but you have no idea if the character is played or not.
All the player needs to do is log into his Bnet account once every other expansion. He doesn’t even need to play or even log into the character. Simply logging into the Bnet account with preserve his names for two more expansions. That is by design.
That is correct. If he has logged into his Bnet account (even just to play Hearthstone), his names will be preserved. That’s how a Blizzard rep explained it to me anyway.
That said, if you’d like to see a change in how names are freed up, I’d recommend you take some time and think about how you’d like it to work. Then write up a thorough, detailed, constructive suggestion and submit it through the in-game suggestion feature.
My daughter has a character on her account that she modeled and named after her grandfather when he passed. She uses it for her banking / AH sales character. She has her own little guild with just that character that she used for extra storage space. He doesn’t show in the armory or in any searches but her account is active and she plays almost daily. It would be sad if she lost that character.