Blizzard is banning players who it feels have created highly offensive character names in the World of Warcraft: Forever beta, and warned fans against “testing” the system.
While Forever, a new version of World of Warcraft that’s meant to act as a sort of “Classic+” experience, doesn’t launch until November 4, the beta was made available last week and it was immediately flooded by players. One of the new features in the game is dual names, so you can have a first and second name for your character. This opened the floodgates to some hilarious character names, but also some that crossed Blizzard’s line.
In a post on the Blizzard forum, the company issued a no-nonsense warning to forever beta players, saying actual humans were looking at character names to ban those it considers to be out of line.
“We are in the process of issuing forced name changes to characters found to be in violation of our character naming policies that were created in the Forever Beta,” Blizzard said. “Additionally, we have removed beta access for some users who created names that were far outside of our Code of Conduct. The use of dual names has allowed players new levels of creativity and personalization with your characters, some took this opportunity to reveal too much about themselves and will no longer be participating in this Beta.
“The World of Warcraft team takes the safety and inclusiveness of our game very seriously. These actions were performed directly by the World of Warcraft Development team and were individually reviewed. The Customer Service team cannot and will not assist with any appeals. Our system for enforcing naming standards will be coming online very shortly, we would appreciate testers refraining from ‘testing’ this system, as you run the risk of being actioned and losing access to the Beta. Please keep your character names respectful and within policy.”
This week, some players took to social media to complain that they had been unfairly booted out of the beta due to their character names, and questioned whether humans were behind the decisions. “My name is Devil Tootsalot,” said one player. “How is that highly offensive? Are you guys auto-moderating this? There is no way a human banned my name.”
But senior game producer Tom Ellis defended Blizzard’s tough stance here, tweeting to say players were probably banned because of a character they created but aren’t necessarily playing.
“Anyone saying they were removed from beta for naming their character ‘Billy Mcsuckmahballz’ is telling little white lies,” Ellis insisted. “That character likely just received a forced name change.
“Multiple unfortunate humans read through every name that was removed from beta today. If you’re genuinely confused, remember that it’s our database, we can see every character you’ve created, not just the one you’re playing.
“I read the list. No sympathy. Be a better human next time.”
Creating funny names for World of Warcraft has been a community tradition ever since the game launched over 20 years ago, and Blizzard has also had to work to prevent genuinely offensive names over that time period, too. But with the launch of Forever, Blizzard now faces an influx of potentially problematic character names all over again as players rekindle memories of World of Warcraft back in 2004 and 2005. The question is, will Blizzard be able to keep up with the huge number of launch players the popularity of the beta suggests is coming its way?
Wesley Yin-Poole
Director, News
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
