Guild Wars 2: Reserve your name

(Update: The last chance to reserve your Guild Wars 2 name in Guild Wars is July 31.)

Did you know you can reserve your Guild Wars 2 name before the game releases? All active players of Guild Wars will have their names reserved.

An active player is anyone who logs to Guild Wars between January 1, 2012, and the day ArenaNet builds the name reservation system for Guild Wars 2. When Guild Wars 2 releases, log in during the 3-day Headstart Access period or the official start day and claim your name. If you don’t make it on during that time, you’ll be too late. On the second day after release, ArenaNet indicates they’ll release all the unclaimed Guild Wars names. Since there are over 20 million Guild Wars names, that’s a good policy.

Warning: Guild Wars only accepts two words or more for character names. (Names are restricted to 19 characters.) That means you can’t reserve one-word names in Guild Wars. If you want to reserve a one-word name (No more Kingslayers, please.) you’ll have to rush on during the Headstart Access period and grab it.

Don’t forget, if you ever played Guild Wars, you still have an account. If you’ve lost your original game, you can download it, again, here.

Don’t have Guild Wars? And you call yourself a gamer?!

Go buy it. It’s a great game, a bit dated, now (Thus, the whole Guild Wars 2 thing.), but still a great game. It’s just $29.99 for the Guild Wars Trilogy, which includes the original Guild Wars and the two expansions, Nightfall and Factions.*

TLDR Recap

• You can reserve your Guild Wars character names for Guild Wars 2.
• You need an active Guild Wars account.
• Active account: You logged to Guild Wars at least once since January 1, 2012.
• Activate your Guild Wars account and reserve your character name simply my logging in.
• Never played Guild Wars? You can still reserve character names if you buy the game and create characters.
• Guild Wars character names are two words or more.
• Guild Wars names are 19 characters or less.
• If you want a one-word name, you’ll need to log to Guild Wars 2 during the Headstart Access period to reserve those.
• Daenerys Targaryen and Katniss Everdeen are already taken.

*No, I don’t get a cent for recommending this to you. It’s just a great deal for a fun game. I’ll let you know when my inner capitalist rears its ugly head.