Posted Tue, Jul 24, 2012 by Martuk
We’re building our Guild Wars 2 name reservation list on July 31. We’re only reserving character names from active Guild Wars accounts, which is why you’ll need to log in at least once in 2012 before we build the list in order to be considered an active Guild Wars player.
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.
Source: ArenaNet Dev Blog