Why can someone who only plays Sea of Thieves Hold WoW character names hostage?

Community General Discussion
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Imagine that someone is playing Sea of Thieves, Tony Hawk Pro skater 3+4, Crash Bandicoot 4, Arc Rumble, Avowed, Outerworlds 2, or the latest Call of Duty (that come out every 2 years) on the same old Battle.net account once every 2-4 years after having played WoW once and uninstalled it leaving behind their less than < Lv 20 character 8 years ago with the name you REALLY wanted to have only to be left with Ëáìöæÿâô or something as a choice.
(They can technically have a max of 195 character names per Battlenet account)

Why does the 2xpac (4 yearsish) drop off HAVE to happen at the Battlenet level, and why can it not happen at the WoW Account level again? EDIT: OR Use the same system as Diablo (as pointed out below)

There are literal RMT transactions that take place because someone is out there selling names.

Using the Diablo system or having the dropoff BACK at the WoW Account Level would force these people to have to be more proactive about their login habits and easier for Blizz to identify with the rest of their backend data, putting a huge dent if not a stop to it from happening.

It’s along the same reasons you forced players to pay for a sub every once in a while, and not just completely sustain off wow tokens.

Just set it back to Account level, as long as people log into their wow account once every 2 xpacs all their character names are safe.

I’m not even asking to have it back at the Character level like it was Pre MoP.

I’m asking for it NOT to be on the Battle.net level like you made it in SL because it’s not a smart idea to put it on a level where no one has to play the game anymore and just has to try the latest call of duty title once when they drop a new one every 2 years since the name dropoff is 4ish years.

EDIT:
Or, as someone pointed out, just use the same system Diablo uses.

  • It would help curb in game harassment by being able to block the account not just the alt

  • It would curb the RMT of names. Especially on RP servers.

  • Anyone can have any character name they wanted.

  • No one would ever be forced to rename.

  • Cross faction guild/party/raid joining and such would be easier as invites and such would be working at the battletag level.

There’s not really any drawback unless you hate seeing someone with the same name as you?

Ironically there are probably people who I’m sure would give their alts all the same name too.

No one that is only ever playing Sea of Thieves, Arc Rumble, or Avowed should be able to affect someone that is playing WoW.

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Or you could create your own name.

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why are you defending this? its a 20yo game with names being held hostage for RMT

what they need to do is have some sperate been display name and actual backend nameid, allowing multiple people to have the name “Jim” on Sargeras but if you want to invite the “Jim” you’re looking for, you simply /invite Jim-2194

kills the RMT freaks overnight and nobody has to stress about names or use accent garbage.

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I have to say I honestly love this idea I’ve heard it floating around since battletags came out. They even did it with Diablo.

  • It fixes name in use issues
  • It fixes RMT of hostage names
  • It fixes guild inviting issues cross faction (as everyone is btag based now)
  • It helps to stop harassment via alts since you just blocked everyone on their account not just that character.

It’s insane that people would defend the RMT of names, and just as crazy why blizzard doesn’t utilize what they already have and instead squander their time creating poor policies.

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There are 240 servers. Surely, on one of them, you can find a name that you want…

And now with cross server everything, it doesnt even really matter…unless you plan to be a solo only player that doesn’t want to join a guild with crafters

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Clearly the only solution is to delete WoW.

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They really should change it so you have to log into WoW to keep your names.
Other Battlenet games should not count. Not that I care one way, or another.
As I have zero issues coming up with names. But no one should be able to save
names on one game. By logging into a complete different game.

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Why not? It costs Blizz nothing, but taking away character identity when people take breaks would pretty much guarantee that they are never coming back.

The knowledge that I would have to struggle to rename all of my characters would definitely keep me away.

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I’m sure the knowledge that someone who doesn’t even play the game anymore and plays a totally different game is still able to keep the name a new player would have liked has been the case of keeping many away already.

If you log into your wow account once every 2 xpacs you’d keep your names, how is that different for you? Do you play these other games instead? You wouldn’t have to rename any of your characters as long as you actively play the game you have them on.

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Find a different name.

How do you even know they only play sea of thieves?

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idk, I haven’t paid for WOW since tokens launched.

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Yep.

I have vast armies of level 1’s, in many wows, who take a name. Anniv I squat a few names since day 1. for the blood elf to come.

See this has a fix. Allow last name. See in eve…I have this name too far an amarr based alt I have.

and so do at least 3 others. they add a last name. As eve supports that. and thus all the warhammer 40K geeks get to be Ivixia too.

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The degree to which I do not believe people are holding names to auction off for real money, nor that it would kill off real money transactions overnight, cannot possibly be understated.

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How much are people selling names for? I never thought it was that serious, lol.

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Technically according to an easy google search, quite a bit.

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That’s fine, better than just straight up deleting names if I ever dare to take a break from the game. I’m still not hot at the idea of having dozens of Legolas running around and can’t figure out which one is which number.

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Any semblance of a name shortage could be resolved if Blizzard gave us the ability to use one space and/or one apostrophe plus allowing more characters (even 2) in our names.

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they may nab a wannabe streamer who needs if for their brand maybe.

Or some dude who really just must that name. If that ocd on the matter, its gonna cost them.

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I’ve always been a supporter of Blizzard more aggressively releasing names to be used. On larger servers getting a name you want can be a chore. For one of my characters on Area 52, I tried somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 different names before resorting to using an accent out of frustration. It shouldn’t be like that.

Except there ISN’T cross server everything yet. We’re in some weird in between where a lot of things are until you run into the thing that isn’t and crafting is one of the big culprits.

The name release policy is already four years of not logging into the battlenet – not even specifically WoW, as the OP pointed out. This is far too long, IMO. If you aren’t playing for over two years, you’re no longer playing. Whatever names you reserved should be made available to the people who ARE still playing. Not to mention, the people who are still playing should be the first worry of the company, not the people who have been gone for years.

Except if names were more available, there wouldn’t be so much struggle. Further, I argue if something that simple would keep you away, are you really interested in actually playing again? Likely not.

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So I would lose my 23 years old character name because I decided to take a break for 4 little years?

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