All races playable despite expansion....

[Sukurachi]

I haven't made any characters with accented names, but playing on a North American server, there is an entire population of people who DO normally use accents in their written language. French Canadians play on N.A. servers. So I can see how it might be very problematic for us to lose the ability to use the accents we normally use in our everyday writing.

I presume that there are accents in Spanish as well?

That said, I've managed to name over 30 toons, and never needed accents.

[Shinryu Masaki]

French Canadians play on N.A. servers. So I can see how it might be very problematic for us to lose the ability to use the accents we normally use in our everyday writing.

*raises hand*

I'm one of them. I'm not sure if this is still the case today, but at least during the first few years of WoW if we where to buy the french version of the game we where thrown unto the Euro servers, and people there back then only talked in their native language, so you'd see like 7 or 8 different language at the same time in the chat channels. The time zones difference also made it hell to group with people and do raids. That's why there's a lot of French Canadians playing on the American servers. Same time zones, only one language used, it was for the best and the only logical solution. Though most Americans don't even know since we almost never speak French, though there are some French only guilds scattered here and there on the American servers.

[Sukurachi]

I know quite a few French-only (or nearly) guilds. Almost everyone I meet here who plays WoW plays in a French guild.

[Maizou]

Err... accented characters were banned from character names in like... 4.3.

At least on NA realms. Existed characters with the accents were allowed to keep them, but you can't make any new ones with them.

From 4.3 patch notes:

"- North American realms (excluding Brazilian, Latin American, and Oceanic realms) no longer permit letters with accents in character or guild names. Existing character and guild names with special characters will be unaffected by this change."

It became a hassle for people to report those with accented names, and as such, it had to change, as not everyone on North America is used to accented letters, unfortunately.

[Chimera]

Err... accented characters were banned from character names in like... 4.3.

At least on NA realms. Existed characters with the accents were allowed to keep them, but you can't make any new ones with them.

From 4.3 patch notes:

"- North American realms (excluding Brazilian, Latin American, and Oceanic realms) no longer permit letters with accents in character or guild names. Existing character and guild names with special characters will be unaffected by this change."

It became a hassle for people to report those with accented names, and as such, it had to change, as not everyone on North America is used to accented letters, unfortunately.

Um, do you mean servers like US? American? Cause i literally just tried it out and made a character with an accented letter right now on Cenarion Circle (im not keeping him tho, was just trying it out)

[Sukurachi]

yup I also just made a toon on my US server called "désirée" and it allowed it. (I was actually surprised the name wasn't already taken)

[Maizou]

Just telling you what was in the patch notes.

[Lisaara]

Well we're informing you they pulled that back it seemed.

[Raiyen]

They must have because my mage with accents I only made last week and I am in the US...

[Maizou]

Well we're informing you they pulled that back it seemed.

I find it odd they'd change it without even announcing it. Seeing as it was a pretty big QQ fest on the official forums when it happened. O_o

[Sukurachi]

maybe the idea was "announce it" then hope people would think it's in place and stop (ab)using accents?

I can't believe that Blizz doesn't know that it would be problematic for non-anglophones to remove the ability to use accents.

[Lisaara]

It's not the first time they did stuff unannounced.

[Shinryu Masaki]

I've been thinking, it's possible they didn't go through with it due to the new Report system they implemented, since it allows us to report players by just right clicking their names in the chat window without having to try to type it at all. Well that's one reason at the very least that I can think of.

[Lisaara]

Thats a good reason.

[Raiyen]

I didn't think about that either, but that would make sense.

[Royi]

accents are needed for the endless amount of thousands of 5 year old forgotten names on accounts who will never subscribe again to wow.

(IE someone back in 2005 took the name Shadow and subscribed for 1 month, got to level 12 and then quit)

I'm sure plenty of people would like a name like that for instance. They need a better way of recycling unused names that haven't been actually used within the past year. Instead of taking away the option of making a rogue with the name "šhadow"

[Helsinki]

True. lol I guess I am annoyed that I had to upgrade to get races but now that is not necessary. xD I am not like pissy or anything. Just more annoyed I guess.

You would have had to eventually buy all the expansions anyway. Anybody who wishes to play the full version of the game does. But new players aren't likely to buy all of them right off the bat - they'll want to test the waters before dropping all that cash, so I think it's great they can play any race. Personally it never made sense to me that they couldn't.