Narissis

I have a mighty need for those sandy beach elements from the shore of the Kallisti island.

I'm not sure you've understood what the name release function is and how it works. Name release frees up the names of low-level characters that haven't been logged into in a long time, so that a player can take over a name that's being squatted by an unplayed character. Not having it turned on at first will give people with characters on Victory the opportunity to log into them to refresh their activity timers, so that other players can't grab away the names from players who might want to come back following the onboarding. Of course, once the name release is turned on at a later date, any idle names tied up on inactive characters would then become available to take over. So it's not about 'not letting players name their toons as they want'; it's about giving players some lead time to not lose the names they already have. Also, I'm pretty sure character names are stored per shard, not across all of Homecoming, which would mean there can be no name conflicts with other shards. So unless I'm terribly wrong about that, a name already being in use elsewhere on HC is no concern.