A few months ago I submitted a ticket to Blizzard and got my own name, Simon, freed up so that I could create a character called Simon.
Originally, it was only going to be for my Monk for MoP, but on the spur of the moment one day I decided to pay the £6 to rename my main to Simon.
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...simon/advanced
A few things that I thought about before doing it.
- I was already on first name only terms for most of the people I play WoW with.
- It removes the uniqueness of your name, my previous name was only used by one other person in the world.
- Not many people get to use there own name, so it makes me feel unique in a different way.
- You can only do it for one character, all my other characters still follow my old style of names, so people don't always recognise me.
- I had changed my name before when I changed realm and I didn't see how it could cause any problems.
People might say it removes your anonymity, but anyone who wants to put effort into some basic google searching can probably find the real names of most people who use the same alias across multiple websites.
For anyone who is unsure of how to do it, simply create a ticket and explain that the name you want is taken and ask if it is possible for them to make the name available. (The account it is taken on needs to be inactive for this to happen)
My question is simple. Would you, will you, or have you changed a characters name to your real first name?