Following the conclusion of the World of Warcraft Forever beta, Blizzard enabled character creation for players who purchased Skyborne packs, allowing them to reserve their desired names. However, a significant number of these players encountered a "restricted" message when attempting to reserve their names.
Despite the initial issues with the name reservation system, the problem persisted for some users. Blizzard has since addressed the situation, attributing the errors to a bugged name filter. Community manager Kaivax explained on the WoW Forever forums that the filter was intended to restrict certain profane names and names of major Warcraft lore characters or those blocked for technical reasons. He noted a bug in the process that made the filter overly restrictive, incorrectly blocking names containing specific letter combinations like 'c-o-n'.
Players reported that the filter was overly aggressive, even blocking names of generic NPCs or common words. One player highlighted how names containing 'nurse' were restricted, despite 'Nurse' and 'Officer' not being considered major Warcraft lore characters. This player listed 23 different names containing 'nurse' that they were unable to reserve.
According to Kaivax, fixes were intended to go live with a server restart. While some players continue to report residual issues, the specific 'c-o-n' combination mentioned by Kaivax appears to have been resolved, with at least one player successfully reserving the name 'Concon Concon'. This overly strict name filter issue is separate from WoW Forever's general stringency regarding character names. Earlier in the beta, Blizzard had to confirm that human moderators were reviewing character name bans after player concerns were raised. Principal game designer Kris Zierhut has indicated that the development team is highly focused on enhancing the social aspects of the MMO.