All races playable despite expansion....

[Kalliope]

Basic WoW includes BC, and has for a while.

[Ziarre]

Yes, but you're still buying the expansion by buying vanilla WoW, so I still counted it.

Even without paying for BC, it's an easy $100 to be caught up to Mists once it launches.

That's with: Vanilla+BC at $20, Wrath at $20, Cataclysm at $20, and Mists at $40. Ouch!

[Shade]

/cry

When I first read this I thought it meant that I would be able to race change my worgen hunter into a panda before MoP comes out. I was SUPER excited because I had hoped it ment that I could have a panda with an accented name. I'm so ticked that if I race change my hunter to a panda in MoP, I won't be able to keep her name.

Bah this doesn't do what I want it to do!

[Lisaara]

I really like it, tbh. It's a nice gesture for people to get to play their races and it hooks them it. IMHO, it's a good marketing move.

[Raiyen]

/cry

When I first read this I thought it meant that I would be able to race change my worgen hunter into a panda before MoP comes out. I was SUPER excited because I had hoped it ment that I could have a panda with an accented name. I'm so ticked that if I race change my hunter to a panda in MoP, I won't be able to keep her name.

Bah this doesn't do what I want it to do!

Won't lie. When I first saw it on FB before reading the actual comments, I was thinking the same thing. I was like FINALLY FREE RACE CHANGE! :D Oh well...lol

[Zangor]

/cry

When I first read this I thought it meant that I would be able to race change my worgen hunter into a panda before MoP comes out. I was SUPER excited because I had hoped it ment that I could have a panda with an accented name. I'm so ticked that if I race change my hunter to a panda in MoP, I won't be able to keep her name.

Bah this doesn't do what I want it to do!

except that the restriction on names would come with the pre expansion patch anyway and not just when pandaria is actually available to everyone. also you dont have to change your name when you race change as far as i know

[Shade]

/cry

When I first read this I thought it meant that I would be able to race change my worgen hunter into a panda before MoP comes out. I was SUPER excited because I had hoped it ment that I could have a panda with an accented name. I'm so ticked that if I race change my hunter to a panda in MoP, I won't be able to keep her name.

Bah this doesn't do what I want it to do!

except that the restriction on names would come with the pre expansion patch anyway and not just when pandaria is actually available to everyone. also you dont have to change your name when you race change as far as i know

Thought that the name restrictions would be in Pandaria not the patch. In beta I had to change my name because of the accented character, so I am betting that if I do race change her, I will have to change her name as well.

[Zangor]

exactly....the patch is all the system changes coming with pandaria...just a month earlier so the naming UI and other systems would come with the patch and not the expansion. so even if pandas coulb be chosen before september 25th names with accents would still be unavailable

[Chimera]

When i spent the money to re-customize my character because i was high lvled but was seriously depressed with how he looked like, i do believe his name was wiped and that i had to re-enter a name. I -was- name changing him to match his new self so dont quote me on my experience, but i do have a strong feeling you have to re-type the characters name.

If the name doesnt need to be retyped, then i think it appears fully typed in the name bar and may or may not be highlighted if it is. Whether this affects accented characters or not, i dont know the server he is on is literally the ONLY server ive discovered that i play on where his current name was not already taken. And i made it up completely from scratch! I didnt even try to look first if there was a char with his new name already existing so i was in real luck.

[Raiyen]

I may be wrong, but I thought when they did mention the whole accent name thing, they stated that if you wanted a name with an accent in it to do it before they implemented it. So my mage that has two accents in it, as long as I don't race/faction/realm change her, her name should remain the same. (From the way I understood it.)

I think it is stupid for them to remove that btw...it's hard enough coming up with good names and sometimes an accent makes it so much better, but removing that, it is going to be even harder to come up with names. There are what, 10 million players worldwide? x_x

[Ziarre]

On the other side of the fence, do you know how bloody hard it is to type the name of someone whose name starts with a special character?

[TygerDarkstorm]

Have them send you a whisper. Then hit enter->type /invite shift+left click player name into chat.

[Chimera]

They may be offline or it could be to block someone thats doing rude things but isnt actually speaking to create the shift+click method of acquiring their name :/

But really, its not that hard to google alt-codes and look up each alt character >_>

[Ziarre]

...If I have to do research just to type someone's name, then there is a problem.

[Vephriel]

I think it is stupid for them to remove that btw...it's hard enough coming up with good names and sometimes an accent makes it so much better, but removing that, it is going to be even harder to come up with names. There are what, 10 million players worldwide? x_x

True, but that number doesn't come into account for names. You're not up against every player, only the ones on your specific realm.

As for myself, I'm a little tired of the ridiculous looking names that are just filled with nonsensical accents. For every player that uses them correctly or with restraint, there's three times as many that are just obnoxious about them. I won't be sad to see them go.

[Slickrock]

...If I have to do research just to type someone's name, then there is a problem.

Totally this.

[Hilde]

Wonderful, because I have pre-ordered the collectors edition and will be at work till 5 o'clock on the reelase date, so I'll be able to roll my pandas in the evening on release. I'll race change my shaman and roll a priest panda, my panda monk will have to wait but at least I can panda around a bit on release.

[Wain]

I personally see this as a trivial change. For starters the overwhelming majority of active subscribers will be buying the expansion anyway. Out of pure curiosity, I wonder if the change was made for simplicity and administration (the more checks you have to have for various expansions the more complicated everything becomes) or whether it's an added enticement for people trying out WoW for the first time. Perhaps a bit of both.

As for accented names, I'm all for their removal, or at least blocking. On Mac it's fairly easy to type accented characters, in Windows it's confusing and messy. I've never seen a single use where I haven't felt "that person is sadly desperate to have that name despite the fact someone else has it and they lack the imagination to come up with something else". Perhaps that's unkind of me, but that's what it always makes me feel.

[Kalliope]

I've never seen a single use where I haven't felt "that person is sadly desperate to have that name despite the fact someone else has it and they lack the imagination to come up with something else". Perhaps that's unkind of me, but that's what it always makes me feel.

Absolutely seconded. Unless an accent is used properly (and I personally have never seen that happen), then the player just comes off as uncreative.

[Meggers]

I appreciate this because that means I can start my panda shaman despite not having the xpac right off the bat if that's what ends up happening to me.