Quote Originally Posted by Devils_Lawyer View Post

If a game company starts deleting inactive characters their reputation is gonna drop like a stone tied to an anvil.
It's not actually a new thing, though they would generally just flag a character for rename before deleting an inactive one. Many games do such a thing but it's usually after a lot longer than a year (unless it's like the case of WoW where you can request a name to be freed up, they'll do so if the one holding it is on an account thats been inactive for a certain time and the character is of lower level)

That said, I really don't think this game needs names cleared up. As others said it's really only an issue if you want an unoriginal name or something silly like words forming a phrase rather than an actual name.