part way down the OP.
"Name Release Policy
With 1000 character slots per shard, we expected you to make a lot of characters, but we’ve been blown away by quite how many… To date, you’ve made a total of 399,501 characters across 64,519 accounts. In fact, one of you has made a total of 277 characters!
Now, some of you have voiced concerns that many names are simply being sat on by level 1 characters that’ll never be played again. This is a fair concern, so we are implementing a system that will allow names of unused characters to be released back into circulation for use by new characters.
Characters will be flagged as ‘inactive’ when the following time thresholds are met:
Level 1-5 characters will be flagged as inactive if they have not been played in the last 30 days
Level 6-20 characters will be flagged as inactive if they have not been played in the last 90 days
Level 21-49 characters will be flagged as inactive if they have not been played in the last 365 days
Level 50 characters will never be flagged as inactive
When a character is flagged as inactive they are not immediately renamed. Instead, their name is simply no longer locked. This allows another player to create a character with that name, at which point the original character will be renamed.
You can remove the inactive flag on a character at any time simply by logging them in.
We will not be activating this policy for at least a two weeks (possibly longer), so if there are any names you don’t want to lose, please ensure you keep the above guidelines in mind!
This is a first pass on this policy, and we may modify it at a later date, however we will give at least 30 days notice for any changes related to releasing names."