WoW Forever names and factions: the name filter fix, Horde locks on PvP and the end of name reservation

In the last days of name reservation for WoW Forever, between 28 October and 1 November 2026, Blizzard's community team wrote one post about names and none about factions; a few answers came from Customer Support on the forum. Here is what is official, what comes from players and the press, and what is still unclear, as of the evening of 1 November.

The name filter fix

On 28 October at 01:28 UTC (02:28 CET), Kaivax, Community Manager, posted Overly Restrictive Name Check and Fix Incoming on the US forum, with the same text on the EU forum. The game checks every name against a restricted name list: names that are not profane but that Blizzard wants to block, such as major Warcraft lore characters or names blocked for technical reasons. A bug in that process made the check "overly restrictive": for example, it refused every name containing "c-o-n".

Blizzard said the fix would come "with the next realm restarts in each region", without a time, and that anyone who had received "That name is restricted" could try again afterwards. It is the only blue post in the topic, which has reached 666 messages.

How the fix went, according to players

These reports come from the official forum and from IGN, and are not confirmed by Blizzard:

• from the afternoon of 28 October several players found a workaround: go back, switch to another ruleset, return to the original one and try the name again. It worked for some, not for all;
• on 29 October IGN wrote that the fix should have gone live with the restart, but that some players were still reporting problems. IGN managed to reserve "Concon Concon", so the "c-o-n" case looks solved, and it quoted a player who listed 23 refused names containing "nurse";
• on 1 November some players still see names refused as "restricted" or as "Mature Language".

Blizzard has not said whether the fix reached everyone.

Oceanic players and Roleplay

On 27 October Kaivax had warned Oceanic players on Australian servers: because of a bug, they had to create their Roleplay or Roleplay-PvP characters first, otherwise the two roleplaying rulesets were no longer available. His post has not been updated. According to players in the same topic, Roleplay-PvP has worked since the night between 29 and 30 October (UTC) and Roleplay since the following night. The only word from Blizzard comes from Customer Support: on 31 October Vrakthris wrote in a support topic that the team had "addressed" the Oceanic issue the day before, and that "hopefully" it is resolved.

In the same topic he confirmed another problem in North America, still open on 31 October: some characters created on Roleplay end up on Roleplay-PvP, or on Normal, and the team is looking into it.

Faction locks on the PvP ruleset

What players report (not confirmed by Blizzard). Since the first evening of reservations, 27 October, in North America and in Europe, many players cannot create Horde characters on the PvP ruleset: the game answers "This faction is currently unavailable on this ruleset due to population imbalance". The lock comes and goes. On 31 October a topic on the European forum spoke of the fourth day in a row, while other players got through by trying every hour or so. A few players also report the message on Normal or Roleplay, which the official rules do not mention.

What Blizzard says. No community manager or developer has commented on these locks. Customer Support on the forum has only said that it has no role in population balance and, in the words of one agent, that the balance "is recalculated throughout the day", so it is worth trying again later. The official basis is the rulesets article, in its version of 22 October: on the PvP rulesets Forever uses systems to keep the Horde and the Alliance closer, "similar to the approach introduced in Season of Discovery", where creating characters of one faction could be temporarily limited. The same article says that on the PvP ruleset each account can only create characters of one faction. Blizzard has not given a threshold or a duration for the locks.

What Kris Zierhut said to the press. In the interview with Mein-MMO, recorded at the end of the beta and published in German on 28 October, the principal designer says that on PvP realms faction balance is enforced strictly: once you create a Horde character there, you cannot create an Alliance one. In the beta the ratio was about 51.7% Horde and 48.3% Alliance. It is a statement reported by the press, in German, not a Blizzard article, and it does not mention the temporary locks.

Roleplay-PvP. The rulesets article lists Normal, Roleplay and Hardcore as the rulesets where you can have both factions, and says nothing either way about Roleplay-PvP. The only clue that the one-faction rule applies there too comes from players: on 30 October one of them reported that the game refused an Alliance character on Roleplay because the account had Horde characters on Roleplay-PvP. It is not confirmed.

The podcast of 29 October has a two-minute chapter called "Faction Locks" (from 53:59); we have not transcribed it yet.

One name per region

This part is official and explains a common complaint: the full name, main name plus secondary name, must be unique within the region, not within the ruleset (Create a Name of Your Own, 21 September, repeated in the Starter Guide of 28 October). A name taken by anyone on Normal is therefore taken on PvP and Roleplay too, and the other way round. Customer Support says the same: creating a name on one ruleset prevents its use anywhere in that region. Two characters can share a main name if the secondary name is different.

This also explains one of the reports we listed as unconfirmed on 27 October: a name reserved on one ruleset that shows as taken on the others. More on rulesets in our rulesets guide.

Reservations close on 3 November

Early Name Reservation is open "through November 3", in Blizzard's words, with no closing time. The rules are those of the official article: up to three characters in total across all rulesets, first come, first served, for owners of the Skyborne Heroic Pack, the Skyborne Epic Pack or the Warcraft Forever Collection. With no time given, it is safer not to leave it to the evening of 3 November.

Then comes the launch, on 4 November at 3:00 p.m. PST, midnight CET: all the times by region are in our launch article.

What we don't know yet

• Whether the name fix has reached everyone.
• Threshold, duration and rules of the faction locks, and how they will work at launch.
• Whether Roleplay-PvP also has the one-faction-per-account rule.
• The exact closing time of reservations on 3 November.
• When the North American bug that moves characters to another ruleset will be fixed.