Inactive names not being freed up?

[Calrens-moon-guard]

So, I know the policy of inactive character names being freed up at the beginning of every expansion, however there’s a name on Moonguard that has been level 10 since the middle of shadowlands; Kavonan. Is there any bug with the automated system that’s in place? Given that it’s been an expansion I expected it to be free but it simply isn’t. Like, what constitutes an inactive character if not a character that has been level 10 and still in starter gear since Shadowlands lmao.

[Mairek-medivh]

Names get released if the player has not used the Battle.net account for 2 expansions. So if the name you want was active during Shadowlands, then you’ll have to wait probably for 12.0.

That Name is Taken

[Pawgwalker-dalaran]

You don’t even have to play WoW or buy another expansion, all you have to do is log into any battlenet game and I think even logging into battlenet itself resets the timer.

[Mairek-medivh]

Yep, here is a post of a CM giving a bit of clarification on that policy.

Seeking clarity on updated policy

Alright. It does appear to be at a Battle.net level, so if you are active on any license, it resets the timer for name release. I believe it’s worked that way for awhile but we didn’t have it specified Of course, this is subject to change, as we are working to try to be as fair as possible to those who want to reserve specific names and also those who want to use a name that may have well been completely forgotten by the original user. If anything changes we’ll update that article to reflect …

[Pawgwalker-dalaran]

Yeah I was in that thread and had them clarify on some of it. It’s still kind of stupid and annoying though, definitely needs to be changed.

[Calrens-moon-guard]

So, for clarity, if I never played wow, I could make a character, reserve a ton of names, log out, and then play like, for instance, Heroes of the Storm, or Overwatch, and reserve names for a game I do not play in the slightest? And there’s no revision of this policy? At all? They’re… happy with this? What’s the point of the policy then if you’re expecting players to NOT play the game for like what, 4 years, and not touch blizzard games? This isn’t an account name, this is a name for a player on ONE specific server? Given what you both described it’s far from automated if it’s never going to happen lmfao.

[Regnyl-duskwood (Regnyl)]

its frustrating as all heck, especially when every name you try to use for a character is already taken, and you’re forced to either use special characters thus making the name sound weird, or just give up on it.

[Imaydie-moon-guard]

At this point I’d be happy if they opened up having a space as long as it had at least one letter in front of and one letter behind it.

Not sure why they haven’t opened that up. It would solve a lot of this taken name issue.