I wanted to offer some feedback on what is a dawning downside of faction locked servers: players reserving names during faction locks with no intent to play on said character at launch or with explicit intention to grief other parties at launch.
If the above seems hyperbolic, please bear with me.
As a player who predetermined their faction after consulting with friends; my choice at launch, although it wasn’t clear in the 2 or so minutes provided, was to either reserve my names on the ‘wrong’ faction and guard them like a clutch of eggs or wait until the faction of my choosing became available. I and several other longstanding members of my classic guild lost their names to poachers whilst waiting for the imbalance to correct itself (names that went unreserved on any of the vastly more populous NA realms, for reference).
A simple /who on either faction confirms that none of those namesakes were logged in playing the game moments, minutes, or hours after they were created and what likelihood they have of doing so remains to be seen… though there is explicit mention of name poaching on the OCE discord, which leaves little doubt besides.
I would like to propose the following for future faction-locked servers: decoupling of names to character factions or a reduction in the ability for players to spam names until toon limit below a certain threshold of total characters on the server.
Personally speaking, I can continue to enjoy the game with or without the name I have used throughout various incarnations of classic but I will sorely miss the guildmates who have decided to forgo playing this iteration of classic due to the obvious hostility couched in the aforementioned.
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Lost my chosen name in the first 30 seconds. I know because I had it copy pasted, got in almost immediately and it was gone. That person is actually playing so maybe it’s not so bad but god it feels awful knowing they exist.
I wish they had name res or a way to handle naming better, much MUCH better than what it has been today.
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Yeah it wasn’t just OCE. The NA PvP server its like all of the names I wanted were poached and not used. I have them added to my friends list, and /whoing them they have never logged in to the game to be actually played. It feels bad but it is what it is I suppose.
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The problem is no one has the right to any name above anyone else so it is all first come first serve. Even if your favorite name got jacked by some dudes bank alt. Them’s the breaks.
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I reserved about 10 names when I first logged in: Create random character, select a name, and saved for future use. I even missed out on a few that I wanted. Sure, I’m only using one now but the alt army will come eventually.
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I’m sure name “poaching” happens… on the other hand a LOT of people have played a LOT of characters over the years. You log in and you try to save all the names you’ve used. You can only play one at a time and in classic variants you might not be playing your first alt for quite some time.
So the fact any given name isn’t logged in doesn’t really mean much currently.
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I had so many people message me telling me that I stole their name.
While I recognize the agency of each player to enter whatever name they choose into the field, and without begrudging them for doing so if that happens to coincide with a name I had hoped to use - discovering you have lost access to a name like ‘meta’ or ‘bis’ has a very distinct feeling to sequentially losing access to a raft of unique names and the serialized 1 letter variations of said names from your guild roster.
Thanks for the feedback - I welcome any thoughts to the contrary as well, just wanted to see what the consensus was on this.
I have a character name ive used in every MMO since I played EQ 2001. I lost it in WoW due to a server change. Thankfully I was able to get it on the new server. I was worried it would get taken but I logged in a hour after servers went live and it was still available.
I got my name stolen. XD
I’m assuming posting on the forums led to it.
Shrug It’s lame, but that’s the nature of the internet. Trolling and the like. =/
The rush to secure names on new servers is its own mini game and that game has so many … “bugs”! 
All my names were taken when I logged in except for my main one. lol
People were making their characters when the window was open for the faction they wanted. It would be either Horde or Alliance. And they probably did not log on those characters yet as it was so early in the launch.
Nothing to see here…Move along. No issue
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I lost the name uwu and owo =(
But i got every other name i cared about so is fine =)
So long as they actually use them, then it’s fine. I’m worried people may just be trolling others and holding a name hostage.
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i hoped to get boo or skully, but i’m lucky i got this one
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This cant be serious, bro acting like someone stole his dog lmao
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Don’t comment if you’re just gonna be a rude SOB 
You publicly are whining on the forums no less, ill comment whatever i like 
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I only made one character because classic eats up a lot of time so I’m going to focus on my Rogue and leave it at that.
Got my name I wanted but I logged in the second the servers went live.
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Agreed. I am rather fond of the name Ragebar and I am glad I got it, but if someone got it before me then it’s just me being too slow.