WoW Forever: beta mail goes to the wrong character, players say

In WoW Forever every character has a first name and a second name. Blizzard's post on the system, published on 21 September, says the full name must be unique within a region, so another player can have the same first name as you; the post does not mention mail. Since 18 September, players on the beta have reported in threads on Blizzard's EU and US forums that the mail does not look at the full name. According to their reports, it goes by the first name only: a letter to one character often goes to the first character created with that first name instead, and writing from that character to another with the same first name fails with the message that you cannot send mail to yourself. We found one news report on the problem so far, and Blizzard has not confirmed it.

Most reports come from players who gave several of their own characters the same first name and told them apart by the second, which the naming system allows. Some players say it goes further: letters from friends and guildmates never arrived, and mail can end up with another player's character that shares the first name. One player says a character of theirs keeps receiving items and gold from people they do not know. Some also say group invites mix up characters with the same first name in the same way.

The news report says the auction house is affected too. Items bought there, and the money from items sold, arrive by mail, and according to an earlier report so does dungeon loot a player left behind on the beta. Some players on the forums say a purchase or the money from a sale never arrived, but it is not clear whether the name problem is the cause, and another player says all their auction mail came through. None of the reports say whether returned dungeon loot is affected.

Workarounds have had mixed results. Players say deleting the character that gets the letters does not help, because the mail then goes to another character with the same first name, and writing the name with a hyphen between first and second name worked for one player but not for others. What has worked for several players is a character whose first name they have not used on any other character: its mail arrives normally. The news report's advice is to avoid anything that uses mail until Blizzard fixes it.

The problem is not on the list of known issues Blizzard posted as the beta opened, last updated on 18 September, and we found no reply from Blizzard staff in the forum threads about it, EU or US. One player wrote on 21 September that mail between their own characters worked again, but others reported the problem on 22 and 23 September. On the evening of 24 September Blizzard took the beta down to install a new build and said a full list of changes and updated known issues would follow. Whether that build changes anything about mail is not yet known. The beta runs until 21 October.