Hi - I’m just looking to see if anyone has an answer for this issue I’ve encountered. There’s two different names on Tichondrius I have tried to get use for a character I’m intending to level and have as an alt, and both show the green checkmark when in character creation. Hit finish, pick starting zone, and it tells me the name is unavailable because it’s taken by a player.
Is this…a bug, and it should be showing the red X in creation? Or does this mean that the character is on an inactive account but not available until next expansion? If anyone could offer some assistance that would be swell!
(also posting to general discussion for visibility - will delete if that’s not allowed!)
The names in question are most likely blocked for some reason then. The could be trademarked, lore characters, contain a title, and/or other words that are on the blocked list.
While the green check mark indicates the name isn’t taken, the message that it’s unavailable would indicate the name is blocked for some reason.
this also is the case for hunter pet naming as well as battle pets regardless if they actually can battle or not.
typically names resulting from name change services or gms changing someones toons name go on a sort of internal list that starts at i believe 90 days ? after that time the name is supposedly free’d for use by players if they decide to claim it. Provided it doesnt relate to terms such as those stated above in the quote by Eilis.
Majority of the time names that would pose either references to pop culture and or in some way shape or form someone or something at blizz are generally on the reserved list.
That’s what I thought at first too - but the two names are, on an armory search, nearly maxed out with people having named their characters them. And on other servers, I get the red X when I try to use them. I actually previously got the X with one of them, so all this kind of makes me hesitant to say them in case someone sees this and swoops in to troll LOL
the other thing to know too is that if someone makes a toon with a given name then never logs into that specific toon at all but their account either at the wow level or b net level is still active in some form thatll prevent the name from being claimed by another by the time the future wow expansion drops too i believe.
Also… a name holder character that was created to hold a name, but never logged in to the game, has a special status.
The character is never actually created in the database until it has its first login.
A “character with that name exists” flag would not be set but the name is still held pending its being applied to a character that will be created upon login.