LOL Blizzard gave away the name of one of my characters

I had an orc named Piccolo on a server I no longer played on for years. I just got an email about it today.

"We at Blizzard Entertainment understand how important character names are to our players. It is for that reason that we will, on rare occasions and with careful consideration, opt to make available the name of a character which has been inactive for an extended period of time. We have determined that this is an appropriate course of action in this case, due to the inactivity of the character listed above. We have provided the character in question with a temporary name, and you will be prompted to select a new character name upon your next log-in. When selecting the new character's name, please be mindful of our Naming Policy (http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/20421)."

I had to laugh because someone really wanted an Orc named Piccolo so bad they took it from me. You never know folks. If you take a break from WOW you may come back and have all your character names stolen.

This isn't really new. I request names to be released all the time because you never know if someone is ever going to come back and play that character/account. Nobody owns a name and if they've been inactive for long enough the name should be allowed to go to someone else if they want it.

ya i lost a name i was keeping on a server ebony i had it since the server opened when i moved from the server i keep a level one with the name forgot to logon that char it was taken very fast in the end.....


Could be worse some games remove chars after so many years/months

It's fine with me, if a character isn't being played for an extended period, why shouldn't someone who's going to use the name have it? If they're not going to use the name, they will probably lose the name in turn.

I wonder how long a toon has to be inactive, before you can grab the name.

Or if that policy is the same across various games?

don't think the EU gamemasters would do that - at least never heard of

EU has the same policy as US. Neither EU or US has released exact details of what qualifies an account as "inactive long enough" but general speculation is accounts that haven't been active in a year can be petitioned for names. I'd guess other things play into it too that make it up to individual GM's discretion, like if an account has a history of long periods between active subscriptions, or in the case of pinotnoir's toon, if the account's been active but they haven't logged into that particular server in years.

https://eu.battle.net/support/en/art...ased-for-reuse

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Originally Posted by Asterix

don't think the EU gamemasters would do that - at least never heard of

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I play on EU, and I actually petitioned for a name that was taken on a realm I moved to a while back - turns out the name wasn't "inactive enough" even though it wasn't available on the armory (which was fine, I just found myself a new name). They did investigate and were willing to give me the name if it'd been inactive long enough though.

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Originally Posted by Saqor

I play on EU, and I actually petitioned for a name that was taken on a realm I moved to a while back - turns out the name wasn't "inactive enough" even though it wasn't available on the armory (which was fine, I just found myself a new name). They did investigate and were willing to give me the name if it'd been inactive long enough though.

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hmm... cool stuff.

Thanks for the info.

A sub lvl 10 horde on Frostmourne has had the name "Dtox" for a few years now... it has caused me some anguish...

I dislike that they don't just automatically open the names after a few years. Especially if you're trying to build the names of your team around a theme, waiting to see if maybe yes maybe no they free up a name for you is too much of a pain, and I play on a launch day server with a dramatically decreased population since wrath (mannoroth).

I bet if they really wanted to inflate their subscriber numbers, they would send people emails when their character name is about to be recycled, with a reminder that simply paying $15 and logging in once, you can keep the name... I bet more than a few people will pay up just to hold the name.

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Originally Posted by daviddoran

I bet if they really wanted to inflate their subscriber numbers, they would send people emails when their character name is about to be recycled, with a reminder that simply paying $15 and logging in once, you can keep the name... I bet more than a few people will pay up just to hold the name.

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i opened a ticket it took 3 days trying to get the name ebony on my server and i got it :D