Blizzard opened the beta for World of Warcraft: Forever on September 17, ahead of a November 4 launch. Streamer Asmongold says his guild network, Olympus, quickly passed 30,000 members. Players accused its members of flooding city chat with spam and slurs. On September 24, Blizzard forced name changes on characters that broke its naming rules and removed beta access for the worst cases. Senior game producer Tom Ellis said 0.18% of names earned a ban. He told the banned players, "I read the list. No sympathy. Be a better human next time." By Saturday night, Ellis had deleted his X account. GameRant reported Sunday that he had received threats of doxxing and violence, and that people had tried to dig up his old posts.

1. These Names Were Never Allowed (Tom Ellis, Blizzard)

The developer says people read every banned name, and WoW never allowed any of them.

People checked every banned name by hand. In a forum post, Blizzard said the development team made the calls and "individually reviewed" each one. Ellis wrote on X, "Multiple unfortunate humans read through every name that was removed from beta today."

These names were always against the rules. Ellis said names like these "would have not been allowed in any variation of WoW at any time in its history." He said Blizzard's automatic filter just wasn't ready for the game's new first-and-last name system. "We naively thought after twenty years folks knew what was and wasn't OK," he wrote.

Some complainers left out their worst names. Ellis said his team checked every Reddit post and tweet about the bans. He wrote that so far, each player who posted "three cheeky or just inappropriate names" had "a 4th character they have accidentally omitted." "It's our database, we can see every character you've created," he added.

Silly names likely just got a rename. Ellis said anyone claiming a ban over a name like "Billy Mcsuckmahballz" was "telling little white lies." That character "likely just received a forced name change," he wrote.

2. The Guild Is Just Big, and Critics Should Relax (Asmongold)

The streamer mocks the complaints and the players who want his guild gone.

He jokes about the guild's critics. Asmongold co-founded the streaming group One True King, or OTK, and left it in 2025. He joked that Olympus is the "most inclusive community" in the game. He announced sub-guilds called Olympus Gay and Olympus XXL, with Olympus Kitchen and Olympus Laundry "to include the ladies as well."

He jokes that everyone will end up in Olympus. "There are the people who are in Olympus and the people who aren't in Olympus yet," he said.

He says the critics are too sensitive. Some players want Blizzard to ban him from the beta over the guild's size. He called the complainers "fat in real life" and "snowflakes." Blizzard hasn't banned him.

He jokes that muting the guild is the real offense. A player built a mod that hides his guild's chat. In a sarcastic reply on X, Asmongold wrote, "This is either a hate crime or racism, I'm not sure which one yet."

3. But Other Players Want a Way to Tune It Out (Solastro, Sodapoppin)

These players say the guild's spam makes public chat hard to use, so they're working around it.

A former fan built a mod to hide the guild. A player named Solastro, who says he was once a big Asmongold fan, made OlympusMute. It hides chat from anyone in an Olympus guild and turns down their invites. He told 404 Media the chat fills with "/yell messages that often include slurs (with special characters to not get flagged), racist chants, misogynistic terms, etc." About 2,000 people downloaded the mod in under a day.

Players can't easily avoid the guild on the new servers. In older versions of WoW, players could skip a streamer's server. WoW: Forever groups players by ruleset instead, so they can't dodge a giant streamer guild that way.

Even an OTK co-owner went Horde to get away. Streamer Chance "Sodapoppin" Morris co-owns OTK, the group Asmongold co-founded. He called Olympus members "very obnoxious," "very spammy" and "very fanatical." He's now playing Horde to avoid their chat spam on the Alliance side.

Where This Lands

Blizzard says people read every banned name, and Ellis says none of them would ever have been allowed in WoW. Asmongold mocks the complaints and calls his critics "snowflakes." Solastro and Sodapoppin say the guild's spam fills public chat, so they're muting it or playing on the other side. Ellis is off X after the reported threats. Blizzard said on September 24 that its automatic name filter would be coming online "very shortly." The beta runs until October 21, and the full game launches November 4.

Sources