Release The Names!

So if you haven't heard Blizzard is finally doing something many believe should have been done for quite some time now. What is it you may ask? Well characters who have not been logged on World of Warcraft since November 13th 2008 will run the risk of losing their name. Say what? It means if you or anyone has a character who has not logged in since that date someone creating a new character or using a paid name change will have the option to use that name. Yes I know this is pretty big news.

If you want the official news release you can read it here

Now I for one am all for this announcement. You see for years now it has been a running joke that it is not only near impossible to name your characters anything close to what you want. There has been videos even joking at the matter posting gibberish and some how some way someone has the name. This process has resulted in the popularity of using unique spellings and special characters to have some semblance of the name you wanted.

My only argument to this is 6 years seems like a very long time I would have gone with 2010, but will actually see how this works itself out. Now I now some people are thinking as they always do that this is some sort of money grab. Why because they think players are going to buy a subscription to a game they haven't played in 6 years just to keep their name? I really think not. They other argument is this is going to generate a nice amount of money for Blizzard on paid name changes. Don't get me wrong, I am sure many people will use this opportunity to use the service, but in no one do I think this was Blizzard's major incentive to do this. They care about the players no matter what anyone thinks and truthfully in my mind they are doing this for the newer players who will actually not have a bad experience when creating their new characters