We're Freeing up Old Character Names

Characters whose names are taken are not lost - their progress and items are still intact. They just need to pick a new name when they log in.

This name expiration was designed to be as permissive as possible. Every character on an account accessed recently is safe, and that duration is set to an entire year.

Hopefully the name you want will be available when The Awakening launches!

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Waitubold wrote:

Q: Are you also freeing up old character names from deleted characters, even if the players are still active? That might free up quite a few, too.

Deleted characters names are already freed as soon as they're deleted. A name is available unless a character exists with that name.