In November of 2021, Blizzard launched the World of Warcraft "Season of Mastery" classic realms. A 'real life' friend and I decided to create some characters as my friend had not played WoW in many years and wanted to get back into the game. Having started a guild in the past, we decided to start another guild for casual players like ourselves that just enjoyed playing the game at our own pace and participating in battleground and world PvP.
Since the dawning of the meme on the ridiculousness of the American new media that came from the "Let's Go Brandon" incident perpetrated by NBC (full video can be seen here: https://youtu.be/u9UjgITXUJ4) , I had wanted to form a guild in World of Warcraft bearing the name of the hilarious meme… So I did.
In order to form a guild in World of Warcraft, you must first 'purchase' a "Guild Charter" in game (using in game currency). When you purchase the charter, you must assign the desired name for the guild at time of purchase. So, I purchased the charter for 10 silver and assigned the name "Lets Go Brandon" (apostrophes are not allowed). Once the charter for the guild has been purchased, you must then seek out 10 other players in the game to "sign" the charter before the guild can be formed. Obviously, my friend signed the charter leaving 9 more players needed to form the guild. I then began advertising messages though the in game chat channels looking for people to sign the charter and form the guild. Obviously, when you are seeking signatures, you advertise the name of the guild. Within an hour, I had found the remaining 9 signatures required and the guild "Lets Go Brandon" was formed.
Once the guild was formed, it was then time to seek out more members and start building the numbers. Advertising in the public chat channels in the game, I used the following verbiage:
"<Lets Go Brandon> is recruiting. We are a group of casual, friendly and diverse players leveling up for end game raiding and PvP (both BG and World). All are welcome- unless you are a |)ick"
There were many reactions to the name of the guild- the majority all positive. What I found especially odd is that most of the negative responses were some how associating the phrase "Let's Go Brandon" with supporters of the former President Donald Trump. When people tried to make this association I would respond to them laying out the facts that:
Everyone I laid out the above facts to had no response other than to resort to name calling, unfounded accusations and hateful attacks on my personal character. A few were also unable to understand how we could be a "diverse" group, as advertised- which I think speaks volumes to their bigotry of stereotypes and association. I believe they probably then "reported" the guild name to Blizzard.
Within 2 days of "Lets Go Brandon" being formed and the number of members increasing at a large rate with little advertisement, Blizzard forced a name change of the guild. They did so with out reaching out to me for any type of explanation or opportunity to contest the reports.
So, I obviously appealed the action. Below is the transcript of the tickets between Blizzard and myself.
I should also point out that the name of my character that started the guild and would be the "Guild Master" was "Lesgobrndn"- it wasn't until the third Blizzard representative (Todd aka "Xatrex") responded that they forced my character's name to be changed- again, without any prior notification or opportunity to defend myself. I have been a paying customer without no interruptions in my subscription since 2006.
For reference, here is the link to the "In-Game Code of Conduct" which contains their extremely vague "naming policy" they pointed me to in the ticket:
https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/42673.
As stated in my ticket, I have responsibly been reporting other character and guild names; however, only 1 of the names I have reported has resulted in a forced name change. Here is the list of names I have reported which are on the same game server in which my guild and character resides: