WoW Forever: bug blocked allowed names, fix incoming

If WoW Forever told you a name was restricted when it plainly was not, you were not imagining it. On 28 October Blizzard community manager Kaivax confirmed on the World of Warcraft forums that the restricted name list has a bug that makes it far stricter than intended.

The list is meant to block names that are not profane but still cannot be used, such as the names of major Warcraft lore characters or names that cause technical problems. Because of the bug it has also been catching ordinary names. The example Blizzard gave is any name containing the letters c-o-n, which were being refused even though nothing is wrong with them.

According to Kaivax, the fix goes live with the next realm restarts in each region. Players who saw the message that a name is restricted, for a name that should be allowed, can try it again once the restart has happened in their region. Blizzard did not give a time for the European restart.

The bug came on top of a rocky start: in Europe name reservation opened nearly 3 hours late on 27 October. The rest of the rules are unchanged. Each account can hold 3 names across all rulesets, so it helps to decide which ruleset you will play on before using a slot.

Reservation stays open until 3 November. WoW Forever launches in Europe at 23:00 London time on 4 November, which is midnight on 5 November in Central Europe.