“However, as we mentioned in a previous blog post, your Guild Wars character names will not be reserved indefinitely. You must create a Guild Wars 2 character with the same name as your Guild Wars character during the Headstart Access period or on launch day. Shortly after launch, we’ll free up all the unclaimed names for new Guild Wars 2 players to use.”
http://www.arena.net/blog/reserve-your-guild-wars-character-name-for-guild-wars-2-by-july-31
That is just for reference. But, GW1 name reservations were supposed to drop a day after the head start access. It has now been well over a month. No word, just wondering when I will be able to buy some character slots and make one for each class. I am a PvPer so I do have a valid reason for wanting one of each class right now. It would help to try them out and see how some of their skills/traits work.
I’ve run into this several times now with different names while trying to make up new characters. This has been over the course of time since release day. I believe these reserved names have not been taken by their current owners. I tested this by attempting to create a character under a name on a friends GW1 account that he was not going to use for GW2. It is still reserved, same exact message.
It doesn’t seem like this would be a tough fix and my brain is too stubborn to come up with other things I like currently. If i knew reservations weren’t going to unlock a day after making new characters anyways, it would be a lot less annoying. Maybe this requires a lot of changing and needs to be deployed in a whole patch. With Anet being this busy I would understand. Still, I would have expected this to be automated or just changed after release day like they said would happen.