So New World has some good news and some bad news for everyone today, and really it’s just one bit of news that’ll strike you one way or the other depending on where you’re standing: Amazon has announced that it’s going to start expiring character names for folks who haven’t played in a while.
“New World will be adding a name expiration for characters who haven’t played for an extended period of time,” the studio says. “Beginning on October 15, the following change will be in effect: after 6 months of inactivity, character names will be made available to be taken by new characters. That includes characters who haven’t played for six months prior to October 15.”
“In this case, if a player creates a new character, they may choose an expired name. If this happens, the character’s name that has been taken will have to choose a new name, and the Play button will be replaced with a Rename one. In order to maintain your name, you must login to the world with the character in question. This change is meant to provide more naming options for characters logging into New World in preparation for our console release.”
This kind of name expiration event isn’t unheard of in MMOs and will surely be welcomed by new players, who might argue it’s unfair for lapsed players to sit on the cool names for eternity without playing. Many New World players are probably already used to losing their names thanks to frequent server merges and fresh starts. On the other hand, New World is already struggling with retention and reacquisition of lapsed players (not to mention the image problem conjured by this focus on console players); taking away PC players’ names isn’t going to help any of that.
On the other other hand, all players have to do is log in once every six months to keep their precious names, so maybe folks should just give Amazon another login to count. At least we’re keeping our characters. (Some games delete those too!)
New World will be adding a name expiration for characters who haven't played for an extended period of time.
Beginning on October 15, the following change will be in effect: after 6 months of inactivity, character names will be made available to be taken by new characters. That…
— New World Game Status (@NWGameStatus) July 17, 2024
