Blizzard now lets you pay to change your Battle.net name as often as you want

Your “Battletag,” simply put, is your name on Battle.net. Not your Real ID, which is a separate ,”optional layer of identity” that enables additional features between online friends who choose to share their real names, but just a convenient handle or alias—a “nick,” as we used to call them on IRC. Battletags don't have to be unique (Blizzard tacks a number onto the end of each to differentiate them), and, aside from the limits imposed by Blizzard's naming policy, you can make it whatever you want. 

What you can't do (or at least haven't been able to do until now) is change your Battletag more than once. Blizzard's standing policy gave every user one free Battletag change, but after that you were stuck. So if you one day came to regret your decision to call yourself XxMrSwagNutz420xX, well, that was just too bad. But that policy has how changed, and you may now change your Battletag as often as you like—as long as you're willing to pay for it. 

The Battletag Name Change is now available for $10 as a Battle.net Game Service. You can buy as many as you want, meaning that you can finally indulge your impulsive, mercurial love of nominative determinism in the online world, and it won't have any effect on your friends list or other such online paraphernalia. And as was previously the case, the first change remains free. Blizzard didn't say why it made the change—as far as I can tell, it didn't even say it had made the change at all, it was just noticed by some sharp-eyed Redditors—but given how long people have been asking for this option, it's nice that it's finally happened.   

Seeing as you've made it this far, if you're looking for inspirations for your next Battletag, I highly recommend following the wonderful @battlenet_txt Twitter account to see some astonishing names which made it through Blizzard's filter.

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.