This is important.
Before the level squish, characters at level 50+ were permanent in your undelete list while lower levels lasted a set amount of months and low levels weren’t saved at all.
Post level squish, what is the cutoff point for characters becoming permanent? Level 10? 20? 30? Does anyone know?
The Support Article knows… I was expecting it to still show the old values but no, they updated it 3 weeks ago 
Characters that you delete in-game remain in our database for a period of time, depending on the character’s level.
| IF YOUR CHARACTER IS… | IS IT ELIGIBLE FOR RESTORATION? |
|---|---|
| Under level 10 | No |
| Between level 10 and 29 | Yes, within 90 days of deletion. |
| Between level 30 and 49 | Yes, within 120 days of deletion. |
| Level 50 or higher | Yes |
Aren’t those just the old values? My old characters would’ve been deleted by now using this metric.
It was updated 3 weeks ago so as far as I can tell, these are the current values. So if a character is level 48 for example, they will remain in the undelete list for 120 days (4 months) before being purged.
I would think these durations would have started from launch of shadowlands if this is the case. So you would not see them deleted from the list yet.
How does it handle characters who were undeletable 50+ before the squish but now hover around the 30’s?
That I do not know, it depends whether deleted characters got squished or not.
It’s important to point out that character delete is not intended to be a bank for old characters you will want back later, so if you are concerned, you should start restoring those that may fall foul of it. You can restore 1 character every 7 days.
Nah, it’s quite the opposite. I’d like my whole list cleared but can’t delete characters from the undelete list for the most unintuitive reasoning ever, I guess. It’s really annoying to have a bunch of permanent characters hanging around that I made just to try things out.
With the way things appear to be, most of my undelete list will go away in some 90 days or so.
Are their levels showing as squished in the undelete list? If so, I would say you are right. Hopefully a blue can confirm later.
I really hope so. The option to irrevocably double-delete a character from the undelete list should’ve been implemented years ago!
In some ways I’m not so sure. The Undelete function was introduced because players (and hackers, mischevous brothers etc) were deleting characters, then opening tickets to get them back, despite deletion being intended as permanent. If they introduced an option for players to permanently delete… there will still be those players that would open a ticket to get them back again
Sounds to me like you are using your delete list as extra character slots. Most people never go near the undelete option.
A permanent delete option is not needed.
Nope. I want these dregs gone. Gone, I say! Yet they linger. Hence my question.
Anything that is 49 or less will be gone in up to 4 months. The counter may have reset when Shadowlands came out.
I can only hope. I want my bin scrubbed.
My experience is all of those are treated like before because I still have a few Death Knight Twinks from before who needed to be level 56 to be kept forever and now should have been deleted by their current levels but are still there.
So my hypothesis is until you restore and delete them again they are still flagged as kept forever in the list even when after the squish they should be in the To Delete range.
Really, a 3 year necro?
I’m surprised too.
Already having tested this, I can affirm this is incorrect and my old death knight is forever.