Blizzard’s decision to give WoW Forever characters first and last names was supposed to give players more freedom. Instead, its opened a whole can of worms for the development team.
Blizzard confirmed earlier this week that it was issuing forced name changes to some characters created during the Beta. However, some players have had their Beta access revoked entirely for names deemed far enough outside of the Code of Conduct.
Blizzard says “The Customer Service team cannot and will not assist with any appeals” with a new system to enforce naming rules coming into place on the Beta shortly.
However, there has been plenty of noise on social media from players claiming they were removed from the beta over relatively harmless names. Senior Game Producer, Tom Ellis, has now pushed back on some of those claims in the tweet shared below:
This is the second instance of Blizzard confirming that the bans/forced name changes were handed out by actual humans, though if you take a look at social media, quite a few seem to have slipped through the net (but we won’t post the examples here).
You then get the other side of the coin, where people are claiming to be banned for harmless names that they have been using on Retail/Classic realms for years, with some even being banned for character names they never even logged in with.
Has Blizzard Created a Problem for Itself?
The two-name system is a major change from traditional Modern/Classic WoW. Blizzard intended for this to give players more freedom, particularly with Forever moving away from the traditional realm structure. But, unsurprisingly, players immediately started getting creative with it.
If the naming system continues to generate disputes after launch, Blizzard may eventually have to consider whether the extra flexibility is worth the moderation headache. After all, the old one-name system has managed to survive over two decades of players trying to sneak questionable names past Blizzard’s naming filters!
Either way, early name reservation for WoW Forever opens 27th October, until 3rd November, the day before the official launch. This service will be open to players who have purchased qualifying upgrades.
Did you manage to survive the ban wave?
