community manager Eric Musco posted some clarification regarding the Name Renewal program that starts november 12, 2013. Bascially if you have a 30+ character you don’t really need to do anything, but if you have toons below that level, it will be a good idea to read the details below.

Character names poll for prefered and f2p | 11.06.2013, 12:39 PM

Hey Liron!

I wanted to clear up how the Name Renewal will work to alleviate any concerns that you have. You are obviously a subscriber right now, this means that even if you unsubscribe today, you will be completely unaffected. The reason is that you would then become a preferred status player. Preferred players are completely unaffected as long as they logged in to those specific characters within the last 90 days. Being how the name renewal is next week, that is far less than 90 days 🙂

Here are the exact rules for Character Name Renewal:

If you are a Free-to-Play player:

• If your character is below level 10, and you have not played that character in the last 60 days, your character will be flagged for rename.
• If your character is below level 30, and you have not played that character in the last 120 days, your character will be flagged for rename.
• Characters level 30 and above will be unaffected.

If you are a Preferred Status player:

• If your character is below level 10, and you have not played that character in the last 90 days, your character will be flagged for rename
• If your character is below level 30, and you have not played that character in the last 180 days, your character will be flagged for rename.
• Characters level 30 and above will be unaffected.

If you are or become a Subscriber:

• You will be unaffected by this

As of right now this is a one time name renewal, so if you are unaffected on the 12th then you will not have to follow these rules unless we do a renewal again at a later date. Of course if we do that we will notify players of it so they can save their names.

TLDR – Nope, you are completely unaffected by this (except that some names might open up that you want!)

I’ve been checking my wanted names by adding them to my friends list. Sometimes it flashes the details of the character very quickly and I can see what level the character is at. A lot of the names I want are above level 30, unfortunately. There are a few that are below 30, so I’m hoping they are f2p characters and are past the window of time so I can pick them up.
I’ve also figured out that there are a bunch of names that have been added to the ‘do-not-use’ list since launch. So there were some names allowed at launch, but now they are not allowed for one reason or another.