Early name reservation for World of Warcraft: Forever opened on October 27 and runs through November 3, one week ahead of the November 4 launch. It did not open cleanly. Within about nine hours, community manager Kaivax had posted about two separate bugs on the official forums — one that can permanently cost an Oceanic player one of their three character slots, and one that has been rejecting names with no good reason.

Original editorial illustration by RealmList, generated for this article. This is artwork, not game footage or official promotional material.

The rules that did not change

Everything Blizzard published on October 20 still stands:

• Window: October 27 through November 3. Start times were 18:00 CET in Europe and 1:00 p.m. PDT in North America on October 27, then 07:00 local in Korea and Taiwan on October 28.
• Who can reserve: owners of the Skyborne Heroic Pack, Skyborne Epic Pack, Warcraft Forever Collection or Collector's Edition — and only on the WoW account the purchase was made for. A subscription alone does not get you in.
• How many: three characters total across every ruleset. Two on PvP leaves one for Normal or Roleplay.
• How: first come, first served, on the full first-name-plus-surname pair, which has to be unique across your whole region because Forever has no realms.

If you have not started yet, the window has most of a week left. The two bugs below are the things to know before you spend a slot.

Confirmed bug 1: Oceanic players lose the Roleplay rulesets

Posted by Kaivax on October 27 in the official Forever forum:

"Attention Oceanic players connecting to Australian-based servers! Due to a bug, you must create any characters on Roleplay or Roleplay-PvP rulesets before creating characters on Normal or PvP rulesets. If you first create a character on the Normal or PvP ruleset, the Roleplay and Roleplay-PvP rulesets will no longer be available for subsequent characters. This issue should only be present for players in the Oceanic region who are connecting to Australian servers, and we're working on a fix for it urgently."

Two things follow from this. First, the workaround is simple and worth repeating: if you are in Oceania and want any roleplay character at all, make it first. Second, this settles a question that had been open since October 22 — Roleplay-PvP is selectable during reservation. Blizzard had only ever said it was working to have the ruleset ready in time; a blue post telling Oceanic players which order to create characters in only makes sense if the ruleset is live. Our RP-PvP ruleset coverage has the background on why that mattered.

One caveat on scope: Blizzard says the bug is limited to Oceanic players on Australian servers. Players in other regions have reported rulesets not appearing, but Blizzard has not confirmed that for anyone outside Oceania.

Confirmed bug 2: the name filter is too strict

Posted by Kaivax in a second thread, titled for October 27 and timestamped 1:28 a.m. on October 28 in the forum's own display — Blue Tracker logs the same post as 01:28 UTC on October 28:

"In WoW Forever, we've been working on the restricted name list, which is a list the game uses to check for non-profane names that we wish to restrict, such as major Warcraft lore characters or names that are blocked for technical reasons. Today we've determined that we have a bug in the process that caused the game to be overly restrictive with some names. For example, it has been incorrectly restricting names containing 'c-o-n'. With the next realm restarts in each region, we're going to implement the fix. Afterward, if you previously received a message that said 'That name is restricted' for a name that you think should have been allowed, please feel free to try again."

The practical takeaway: if you were told your name was restricted and you think that was wrong, try it again after your region's next realm restart. Blizzard did not publish restart times.

The example it gave — names containing "con" — is a substring match, not a whole-word one, which is why the failure looks so arbitrary: it would catch a large share of ordinary fantasy names that happen to contain those three letters in order. Players in the thread reported other short strings being blocked as well, including "nom". Those additional strings are player reports, not confirmed by Blizzard; only "c-o-n" comes from the blue post.

What players are reporting that Blizzard has not confirmed

Three things are circulating that rest on community reporting rather than a blue post, and should be read that way:

• Login queues and repeated disconnects. Warcraft Tavern noted both on October 27 while reporting that reservation was open for NA and EU. Forum replies describe queues followed by disconnects and rulesets that would not load.
• A delayed European opening. WoWSoD Pro's October 28 update describes roughly a two-and-a-half hour delay in Europe. That figure comes from that single site; Blizzard has not published anything about it.
• Horde creation throttled on the PvP ruleset. The same update reports players hitting the message "Creation of that type of character is currently throttled", with most getting through after retrying. This is consistent with the one-faction-per-account rule on PvP rulesets, but the throttling message itself is not something Blizzard has explained.

Blizzard has acknowledged neither the queues nor any delay as of this writing. The window runs a full week, so congestion easing is plausible — but that is our inference, not a statement from Blizzard.

If you still have slots left

1. Oceanic players: make Roleplay or Roleplay-PvP characters first. Nothing else about your plan matters as much as this ordering.
2. Retry any name that was rejected after your region's next realm restart — assuming it was not simply taken by someone faster.
3. Decide your ruleset before you spend a slot. On PvP, your first character fixes your faction for that ruleset, and all three slots share one cap.
4. Have two backup surnames. Because Forever has no realms, uniqueness is judged across your entire region, and the surname is the cheapest way to keep the first name you actually want.

And the standing caveat from Blizzard's own announcement: names go first come, first served, and a reserved name is not guaranteed. Reservation is a head start, not a claim.

::note Verified on October 29, 2026. The reservation window, start times, eligibility packs, three-character cap and first-come-first-served rule come from Blizzard's official announcement of October 20. Both bugs come from Kaivax blue posts on the official US forums: the Oceanic ruleset bug posted October 27, and the over-restrictive name check titled for October 27 and timestamped October 28 at 1:28 a.m. in the forum display, logged as 01:28 UTC by Blue Tracker; Icy Veins reproduced the second post in full. Only the substring "c-o-n" is confirmed by Blizzard; other reported blocked strings such as "nom" are player reports. Login queues, disconnects, the reported two-and-a-half hour European delay and Horde throttling on the PvP ruleset come from Warcraft Tavern and WoWSoD Pro and from forum replies, and Blizzard has not confirmed any of them. Blizzard has published no realm restart times for the name filter fix and no fix timeline for the Oceanic bug beyond "urgently". Reservation closes November 3 and Forever launches November 4, 2026. ::