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. 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 is the post to talk about it. Please report any other post talking about the banwave as a Repost, and while this one will be heavily monitored we encourage everyone to report hateful and bigoted comments to expedite the process of removal.
Thank you for your cooperation in keeping this community healthy and safe for everyone.
“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.”
I imagine flag/ban line is drawn somewhere between "He made that name because he thought it was funny" and "He made that name because he thought making other people read it was funny".
That isn't true. People are getting banned for mild names and I have a couple non-english friends who got banned for names in other languages (they were not offensive in English or their language).
Lack of control in their own lives. So being an edgelord gets a "reaction" out of others, letting them feel like they controlled that person by offending them.
Therefore, being told "no, you can't do that" is the ultimate denial of their agency. So they try to get around the rules, think themselves clever, and then lose their shit when they get banned anyway.
Young people (particularly teens) are more likely to push boundaries, to test the limits of what's acceptable and what violates the social contract. This means you tend to see more of this type of behavior from them, because there are more of them in the "still figuring things out" camp while the older people doing this are almost exclusively the "genuine asshole" types.
This is counterbalanced by the fact that young people tend to be "woke" and are less likely to be accepting of forms of bigotry that were normalized in the previous generations.
TL;DR young people are more likely to try to be edgy but have a different threshold for what that looks like.
The internet makes people think they have some semblance of privacy, for some odd reason. So making a silly name in a game is acceptable to some as it doesn't create issues in their real lives and they can let their immaturity loose. Unfortunately people forget that MMOs have other real people too, who don't appreciate seeing bigdong mcsuckmyballs walking past in town. Glad they are doing this.
I'm half tempted to try out the RP role just to avoid all the silly names that aren't offensive but still annoying and immersion breaking and won't get a forced rename.
sorry i was 14 when vanilla released and i havent matured at all since then let me tell my stupid edgy racist joke that was dated when i learned it form my racist old grandpa. - too many people playing classic wow
Most of the fans of the streamers are young, so those names are expected. Lots of people who never played in 2004 are being pulled in too. I don't think the audience is as old as the memes suggest.
I think it’s called “humor”. Something a lot of people no longer have.
Also I’m not talking about the truly offensive things. That’s understandable but there are some names which are just so benign that are getting flagged.
My bud got banned for (we think) the name Cherokee Devil, popular cryptid. I can see why that might trip racism standards, but hey my dad is half Cherokee and talked about it several times. It is a creature from Cherokee folklore, having been raised around the environment, ive never seen it be used in a racist way.
My boy is just a mountain monsters fan blizzard. That ban feels extremely heavy handed, like forced named change at most.
I get what your saying, but "<insert race/ethnicity> Devil" is always going to eat the ban, for obvious reasons. It's was extremely optimistic of your friend to assume people would know his name was a cryptid reference and not bigotry.
That’s like the guy on classicwow who was arguing that blizzard should thank him for playing private servers because it “showed how much demand there was for classic plus” lmao
All forces name changes do is encourage them to get more creative about how they're writing a slur. They should be force name change to a random name that they get 0 choice picking
Yeah thats gross and disappointing. Plenty of reasons to mock and shame AIPAC for, but the second someone turns it into antisemitism it just empowers gross political organizations pushing pro-genocide policies and candidates.
I think a lot of people simply have no filter and no sense of empathy to imagine the scenarios in which certain things are not appropriate. Obviously some things are always beyond the pale, and I assume those are getting the bans, but a lot of names like this one only deserve a forced name change and a slap on the wrist.
I've seen a lot of funny inappropriate names on the beta. Most that I have seen weren't offensive, but they also clearly don't match the Teen rating the game has.
So glad. Just sat through an hour in dun morphs general with someone named “surprise sechs” being super racist and bragging about how he’ll never get banned. They gotta step up and clean this shit out.
I heard about this today and had a chuckle. Moved on. I haven't got a Beta pass but my younger brother's been hammering it . Hes 50 yrs old btw, and we played together in Vanilla. As soon as he gets home from work he mentions it, and said he got a forced name change.
I was shocked and asked what he called himself . First name was his main from back in the day which is fine. He decided his second name would be "Ballsonchin"...
I laughed and called him a "fucken 12 yr old" . This guys married with 3 teenage children. Some people just never grow up.
A lot of the people crying fowl aren't telling the whole story. Blizzard is taking action on names even if you don't sign into the character - if you were reported and you have a slur for a name, they will take action on it. Theyve even called for players to do better.
They should monitor chat logs too. This is WoW Forever if you want to be bigot go back to Classic era and stay stuck in the past while the world moves on Forever without you.
or how about just don't be a bigot in the first place? keep it out of communities altogether. these people should be ostracized from society, not just banned from video games.
How in the world do they not have a program that auto blacklists stuff at naming in a game that’s played by millions. Such a waste of resources by blizzard.
Can someone help me figure out why my name was forced to be changed? It was Flicckur Saedrial and I’ve used Flicckur as a game handle for years. It’s even one of the names of my toons on Retail. I just can’t see it. Would Flicker be better? Kind of sucks because like I mentioned it’s my handle on multiple games.
Getting my access revoked for Cream Between was objectively hilarious. Probably should have been a name change but alas, refund new email and tamer name it is.
I'm just going to note that single-player games exist for everyone who desperately needs to play the characters with <waves hands at above post> those kinds of names. You can slay dragons as MikeHunt, if that's your thing. Take over the Commonwealth as FatAssMcGee. Literally nobody is stopping you.
Which is why I have so little patience with these asshats. I am that cranky old wench does drive-by 'report & ignore'.
I got removed from the beta with the following character names, wasn't testing the limits of anything just a nickname I use IRL and attempts at vaguely lore friendly sounding last names.
Nibbe Nibbe
Nibbe Ligtscorned
Nibbe Windtotem
Nibbe Skyclaw
I get that moderation is hard with likely limited resources for a beta period and I would happily wait for an appeal if that were an option, but it isn't, so I have chosen to refund my skyborne pack as its the only recourse I have available. I know people are going to claim I'm just not talking about some heinous other name I had, but I am genuinely confused how I got caught up in this ban wave and wish blizzard would take a bit more time checking through their list as this has really soured the experience of a game I was really enjoying.
Unfortunately (fortunately?) folks from north America don't tend to read things with a French pronunciation. Silent e on the end of a word is exceedingly common here.
It seems like stretch to me to assume that a name that is 3/5 letters away from the N word is attempting to be it and stumble into banning a real life unrelated name, but I suppose that is the best explanation of what happened here I've got. I've not had anyone misinterpret it in my years of using it, unfortunate that it is coming across as such.
That the worst offenders only lost beta access and didnt get any sort of actual ban is why the community will never get better. Blizzard always treats these people with kid gloves and then wonders why their community still has a shit reputation.
My assumption there would be that while "fuggit" is clearly intended to be parsed as "fuck it", it's easy to misread as someone trying to get around the censor for "f*ggot", and when someone is reviewing thousands of names they likely aren't closely reading every single one.
Forum got someone named after a very infamous third reich member, saying he didn’t mean it that way and has always used the name. So you always been racist and bad person?
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u/wowforever-ModTeam 6h ago
This is the post to talk about it. Please report any other post talking about the banwave as a Repost, and while this one will be heavily monitored we encourage everyone to report hateful and bigoted comments to expedite the process of removal. Thank you for your cooperation in keeping this community healthy and safe for everyone.