World of Warcraft: Forever would-be Connors hit a wall this week, as a filter bug blocked their names during early reservations.
The issue happened as Blizzard opened early reservations on October 27 for players who had paid for the perk. Expectedly, complaints about queues and disconnects were soon being slung across its forums, but there was another, more unpredictable error: every user name containing the letters “con” was unavailable.
Since names were first come, first served, every failed login mattered, but it looked like after the beta spent loads of effort cracking down on offensive names, the filter had grown jumpy.
Why WoW Forever kept saying “That name is restricted”
A Blizzard community manager owned up to the problem on the official forums.
The game checks every name against a restricted list designed to stop players masquerading as major Warcraft lore characters, along with names blocked for technical reasons. A bug made that list far stricter than intended, and it had been “incorrectly restricting names containing ‘c-o-n’.” So Connor was out, and so were Falcon, Deacon, Constance, and a few others.
Blizzard said the fix would roll out with the next realm restarts in each region. Anyone who had been turned away could then try their name again.
The fix may placate players who simply wanted their usual name back, but plenty of others took issue with how the perk worked in the first place. Early reservation was limited to buyers of the Skyborne Heroic Pack, Skyborne Epic Pack or Warcraft Forever Collection, starting at $29.99. Each account could claim three names, and every two-part name had to be unique across an entire region.
One player said they had skipped a real-life appointment to secure their name and still lost it. Another post, which ended with a refund request, called the whole event “a lottery disguised as a scheduled event.”
The reservation window stays open until November 3, a day before Forever launches. It caps a month of friction for the game’s community, after players demanded a streamer ban when Blizzard only took back his gifted gold.
I’m Abhishek Sharma, an author at TigerJek.com. I enjoy exploring games, testing different strategies, and turning what I learn into clear, useful guides. My goal is to help players understand the game better and improve without the usual confusion.
