THE WOW FOREVER COLLECTION · DISPATCH · RESEARCH CHECKED OCTOBER 28, 2026
Short answer: Early Name Reservation for WoW Forever opened on October 27 and most of the first few hours went badly. Europe was delayed for about two and a half hours. North America opened on time into login queues, "retrieving server information" disconnects, greyed-out rulesets and "No realms are currently available". Blizzard has confirmed two bugs in writing: the restricted-name list was blocking ordinary names (anything containing "c-o-n" is its example), fixed with the next realm restart in each region, and Oceanic players lose access to the Roleplay rulesets if they make a Normal or PvP character first. On top of that, Horde character creation on the PvP ruleset is being throttled for faction balance, which Blizzard warned could happen but never said would start during reservation. Blizzard has not addressed the login problems, refunds or calls for a wipe. Reservation runs until November 3, so if you still have slots, nothing is lost yet.
The reservation forum was a wall of red by the evening. The single biggest thread, "Waited In Queue Only To Be Disconnected", passed 350 posts and 6,000 views, and Kaivax's restricted-name post collected 335 replies in about six hours. This is what we could pin down, sorted into what Blizzard has said and what players reported.
What happened, region by region
Europe. Reservation was scheduled for 18:00 CET (17:00 UTC). Instead, the Battle.net launcher showed a notice that technical difficulties had delayed it, with no new time. A player thread titled "Name Reservations for WoW: Forever DELAYED" went up at 18:07 UTC and had over 20,000 views by the next morning, and a second thread asking Blizzard to "set a new time" so everyone could start on equal footing reached 145 posts. Outputlag reported that the EU servers came up at about 20:32 CET and that Blizzard's support account told one player on X that "the issue is still being worked on" while it was down. Blizzard did not set a new start time, so whoever happened to retry at the right moment got first pick.
North America. The window opened at 1:00 p.m. PDT. For roughly the first hour, players described the same loop: a login queue of 150 or so, then a disconnect at "retrieving server information", then the queue again from the back. Players who got through often found every ruleset greyed out, and backing out to retry put them into the disconnect loop. The two errors that show up again and again in the threads are "Access to this realm requires an account with a valid access license" (WOW51900337) and "No realms are currently available" (WOW51900309). Several players who stayed on the Roleplay ruleset said it refused them for well over an hour after the others worked.
The result was uneven. One player wrote that they were fifth in the queue at 12:58 p.m. and spent an hour and a half disconnecting, while their partner, on the cheaper pack, "was in within 15 minutes and had his names." Others reported no trouble at all and were done in minutes. By the evening, posters on both sides of the argument agreed the servers had settled and new attempts were going through.
Oceanic. Oceanic players connect to Australian servers in the North America region, so their window opened at the same instant, early on the morning of October 28 in Australia. They got the queues too, plus a bug of their own (below). The "Just Disappointed" thread, started by a player who woke at 5:50 a.m. and could not get in until about 7, grew to 179 posts overnight.
Russian-language clients in Europe. A smaller but sharper complaint: players using the ruRU client say they cannot reach any ruleset, and that Cyrillic names fail on the English client. Several EU threads raise it. Blizzard has not replied in any of them that we can find.
What Blizzard has confirmed
Kaivax has written two posts about reservation, and both are about specific bugs rather than the login trouble.
The restricted-name bug
Forever keeps a restricted name list separate from the profanity filter, for "major Warcraft lore characters or names that are blocked for technical reasons." Kaivax posted at 01:28 UTC on October 28 that a bug "caused the game to be overly restrictive with some names. For example, it has been incorrectly restricting names containing 'c-o-n'." The fix arrives "with the next realm restarts in each region," and anyone who got "That name is restricted" for a name they think should be allowed is told to try again afterwards.
Players listed plenty of other strings that seemed to trip it. One poster tested Duc, Con, Nom, Braid and Roi and said Ducky, Conman, Nominal, Stonebraid and Roidrager were all rejected. Outputlag collected reports of Connie and names with "gm" in them, such as Frogmage, being blocked. Blizzard has only named "c-o-n", so treat the rest as player reports.
Two things are worth knowing. The fix does nothing for names that come back as already taken. And Blizzard has not given a restart time, which a lot of the replies are unhappy about, because whoever is online when the restart lands gets first shot at every name the bug was blocking.
The Oceanic Roleplay bug
At 20:02 UTC on October 27, two minutes into the North America window, Kaivax posted that Oceanic players on Australian servers "must create any characters on Roleplay or Roleplay-PvP rulesets before creating characters on Normal or PvP rulesets." Make a Normal or PvP character first and "the Roleplay and Roleplay-PvP rulesets will no longer be available for subsequent characters." Blizzard says it only affects Oceanic players on Australian hardware and it is "working on a fix for it urgently." There has been no follow-up saying it is fixed.
If you are in Oceania and want an RP character, make it before anything else. If you already made a Normal or PvP character, Blizzard has not said whether the fix will give you the RP rulesets back, so it may be worth waiting for that rather than spending another slot.
The Horde PvP throttle
The message players kept quoting was "Creation of that type of character is currently throttled", and it was showing up on Horde characters on the PvP ruleset. The EU thread "Faction balance locks already in place for name reservations" opened at 19:42 UTC, before North America had even started, and similar threads followed on the US forums: "Horde PVP server full?!", "Why is Horde Faction locked?", "Mega Server: Faction Imbalance Is Already a Problem" and a dozen more.
This is the system Blizzard described in its ruleset article on October 22. For the PvP ruleset, it said, Forever "will include systems intended to help keep Horde and Alliance populations closer together, similar to the approach introduced in Season of Discovery, where new character creation could be temporarily limited for a faction when additional balance support was needed." That article did not say whether it would run during reservation, and the reservation article does not mention faction balance at all. We flagged that open question in our name reservation guide. The answer turned out to be yes.
The word that matters is "temporarily". Most of the people who hit it reported getting through after retrying: "every guildie so far has just waited a few minutes and got all three characters in," wrote one, and the player who opened "Population Imbalance? Seriously?" edited it to say they had made their Orc. It is a throttle on the rate of Horde creation compared with Alliance, not a closed door. Blizzard has not published the ratio that triggers it.
The complaints have two halves. Some players are angry that a paid head start is subject to balance limits at all. Others, mostly Horde guild organisers, are worried about what it means for November 4, when far more people try to make characters at once. Replies pushing back point out that Season of Discovery used the same system and it worked out for people willing to wait. Both are fair. If you are rolling Horde on PvP, the practical choices are to keep retrying this week, make your Horde characters on another ruleset if you are not set on PvP, or accept that launch day may involve waiting. Remember the PvP faction lock: your first PvP character decides your faction there. Our ruleset explainer has the full rules.
Refunds, wipes and the "names were gone in ten minutes" argument
The other big strand is fairness. "We Want a Refund!" reached 153 posts, "Just refunded because:" 108, and "My case for why they should wipe all the names and try this again" 92. The case for a wipe is that this was not an ordinary queue: some players got stuck in a loop that had nothing to do with when they arrived, while others walked straight in, so first come, first served did not work the way it was sold.
The case against is in the same threads. Blizzard's own reservation article says names are "first-come, first-served" and "desired names cannot be guaranteed", and a second round would mostly reward whoever wins the next login race. Several posters also point out that a wipe would punish the people who got in fairly. A handful of posts claim streamers were let in early; we found no evidence for that, and Blizzard has not commented.
Blizzard has not said anything about refunds, compensation or a wipe. A wipe would be a big reversal a week before launch, so we would not plan around one.
What to do if you still have slots
- Got "That name is restricted"? Try the name again after the next realm restart in your region. Blizzard has not said when that is.
- Oceanic and want RP or RP-PvP? Make those characters first, before any Normal or PvP character.
- Horde on PvP and throttled? Wait a few minutes and retry. It has been clearing for most people.
- Want to delete a test character? Be careful. One player reports "character deletion failed" for hours, and Blizzard has not said whether a deleted reservation gives the slot back or how long the name stays held.
- Names gone? Forever uses a first and last name, and only the full combination has to be unique in your region. A different surname is usually enough to keep the first name you wanted. Our name generator can help if you are out of ideas.
If you are also picking a race while you are in there, keep in mind that the October 26 racial pass changed Human, Dwarf, Tauren, Orc and Skyborne the night before. The best race for every class page is up to date with it.
What to watch this week
The restart that carries the name fix, and whether Blizzard announces a time for it. A follow-up on the Oceanic RP bug. Any word at all on the login problems or the Russian client. And the faction throttle, because it is the best preview we have of what launch looks like on the PvP ruleset. The October 21 stress test went smoothly on the same hardware, which is part of why this went over so badly. Launch is November 4.
Sources: Kaivax, Blizzard forums, Overly Restrictive Name Check and Fix Incoming - October 27 (October 28, 2026, 01:28 UTC; also posted on the EU forums); Kaivax, Blizzard forums, Name Reservation Issue for Oceanic Players (October 27, 2026, 20:02 UTC); Blizzard, [Updated 10/22] Choose Your Ruleset in World of Warcraft: Forever (October 22, 2026); Blizzard, Claim Your World of Warcraft: Forever Character Names (October 20, 2026); Steven Mills, Outputlag, WoW: Forever was blocking every name with "con" in it (October 27, 2026); Wowhead, Blizzard Announces Name Reservation Issue for Oceanic Players in WoW: Forever (October 27, 2026); EU forum threads, October 27 to 28, 2026: Name Reservations for WoW: Forever DELAYED, Set a new time for name reservation, Faction balance locks already in place for name reservations, RU-locale client has no ruleset access; US forum threads, October 27 to 28, 2026: Waited In Queue Only To Be Disconnected, Name reservation broken, Roleplay Name Reservation, Population Imbalance? Seriously?, Mega Server: Faction Imbalance Is Already a Problem, Horde PvP Faction Lock Is Preventing Guilds and Friends From Playing Together, Just Disappointed, We Want a Refund!, My case for why they should wipe all the names, Character Deletion Failed Forever Name Reservation.