Does the “two expansions” rule hold true for WoW Classic names?
The blue posts in that thread refer to “expansions” and presumably to retail WoW specifically, but what about WoW Classic? We have now had a complete Vanilla-Classic and about to have a complete TBC-Classic expansion when Wrath-Classic will launch this fall.
Will the names taken by characters at the start of Vanilla-Classic but not actively played this whole time be opened up for Wrath-Classic? Is that considered to be the “3rd expansion” in this context? Or will will those names still be unavailable during Wrath-Classic?
e.g. if someone reserved a name for Vanilla-Classic at the VERY start of Vanilla-Classic but then never ended up playing that character to date, how long will that name remain locked on that server?
I don’t think names are released in classic. Of course, WLK was the third expansion, so this policy might change. Of course any old link to the inactive name policy don’t work, but maybe something will be published before WLK Classic is released later this year.
Classic Era and Burning Crusade Classic World of Warcraft does not currently allow for names to be released. I don’t know of any changes to the policy or mechanics to change that going into Wrath of the Lich King Classic. If that does change, we’ll likely be updating the following article to reflect it.
Thank you for your reply!
Yes, I hope you will change that policy, because at this point it’s been 2 full game cycles, and it doesn’t seem right that people who reserved the names for vanilla-classic 3 years ago but still haven’t played those characters (and are thus still on the starter realms) still get to keep those names.
Asking here in any of the Support forums won’t change anything. Suggestions to change deliberately implemented design choices are forwarded to the developers only from non-Support forums like Classic General Discussion or from the in-game feedback feature.
Something u may want to consider use the ingame suggestion feature and ask for the option to ticket to see if a name is available they used to do it before the auto release.
We really don’t want to encourage additional tickets if we don’t have to, and would rather have self-help options whenever possible.
If the name release option is introduced in Classic and/or Classic Era it will almost certainly mimic our current system.
In the case of name release for regular World of Warcraft, if the name is available you don’t need GM intervention. If the name is available to be released the system will allow you to create a character with that name and it will update the character that had the name and flag it for a rename. If the name is not available, you would not be able to use it.
On Classic launch day in 2019 I created a character, realized I selected the wrong class in my haste, deleted, and the name was taken by someone not me about 30 seconds later. I call BS on the “names are not released” statement regarding Classic. That was to be my main and I lost the name in 30 seconds after deleting her to remake her because I was under the impression we had at least 24hr, if not longer, of claim to any name we registered. Do we have to actually log in on the character for it to assign it to our accounts?
Your name was not released due to inactivity, but rather because you deleted it, which is different then what the thread was referencing.
I am not aware if name release in classic is different now then this thread from 2 years past, and classic definitely has had several updates since, which is why beating the dead horse is rarely helpful.