What is your character name plan for World of Warcraft: Forever?

With the release of World of Warcraft: Forever rapidly approaching, I am starting to think ahead about what classes and races I’m going to play first so I don’t spend precious gaming time staring at the character creation screen on launch night. One of the stickiest questions is: what naming scheme will I use for my Forever characters?

If you’re anything like me, you’ve rolled World of Warcraft characters with the perfect name in mind before you even decided what they looked like (or even what class they were). On the flip side of that coin, you’ve also gazed agonizingly at the “name” field with your brain desperately trying to manufacture something epic, cool, and easy to pronounce.

Forever is going to exponentially grow that perfect-name-chasing difficulty by adding secondary names. This is something that no flavor of World of Warcraft has included before, and it calls for a bit of strategizing before we roll our Forever characters.

Maybe each of your toons will have their own lore-appropriate secondary name. It’s not hard to guess what you’ll see when you are sent to meet a Rockbrew or a Cogsprocket or a Moonleaf, and giving your characters a run-of-the-mill secondary name definitely aligns with the “world as the main character” vibe of Forever.

However, there are plenty of other options. Perhaps your characters are all members of an established clan of Azeroth. Some, like Runetotem, seem to be restricted, but others like Shadowsong (which we thoroughly researched on this week’s Lore Watch) are acceptable.

You could also invent your own clan and assign all of your characters to it. The idea of several Human and Forsaken characters of the same family who all end up as Azeroth’s greatest adventurers pleases me. Imagine running into your now-zombified cousin in the middle of an enormous, pointless clash outside of Southshore.

Maybe your entire roster of heroes has adopted the same secondary name. A ragtag group of Tauren, Trolls, and Orcs who were rejected by everyone but each other and adopted the secondary name “Alliancepwn” would actually be pretty cool.

Of course, players have been taking the joke route with character names since the very earliest days of World of Warcraft. An additional name increases the comedic potential greatly, and I’d bet my mechanostrider that I’ll come across several characters on launch night whose names cause me to spit out my Scalding Mornbrew.

With both primary and secondary names, what each of your characters is called has enough possibilities to keep even N’zoth happy. So what’s your name strategy for Forever going to be? Don’t forget that early name reservation officially opens on October 27!