I recently wanted to come back to my lvl 60 character Zurk on WOW Classic realms but found to my dismay that it had automatically been transferred to a WOTLK realm instead - I evidently missed out on the character clone service to bring Zurk onto the perma-classic realms back in the day. I think the assumption that people would want to transfer to WOTLK was fundamentally flawed and was a very poor decision made by Blizzard.
I’d like the ability to copy this character back to WOW Classic perma-realms and I don’t see why this service isn’t available - nor do I see why the character was transferred automatically to WOTLK.
I had a full raid geared level 60 that I’d love to go back to on WOW Classic but really don’t want to play on WOTLK.
Hey Faraday - unfortunately this topic has been widely discussed in forums, discord and all sort of Classic Era venues without success.
We also have heard from Blizzard the clone service is something that will not be reinstated, which is of course a pity, especially now that Era is pickung up momentum and people want to get back.
My advice, although it may sound bad, is to check out Classic Era and consider coming back from scratch. I know this is no answer to your wishes, but at least you know that char would live to remain on Era forever.
I ain’t ever gonna resubscribe unless my characters that were forcefully deleted from classic realms with NO noticed given to us players being away (WHILE AT THE SAME TIME BLIZZARD MARKETING E-MAILS CONSTANTLY DROP INTO OUR INBOXES) are going to be restored.
In the support ticket I was told to make noise SO LET’S MAKE NOISE.
Blizzard says all the old characters have been deleted, so bringing clone service back wouldn’t be possible. They must have had a good reason to do that as it was easy money for them; not just in classic but also the other way around for people who skipped TBC and stayed on vanilla for a while.
I case you didn’t know, the natural progression was from Classic 2019 to TBC 2021 then to Wrath. Era realms were added at the start of TBC 2021 and you had to choose to go to them, you were lucky Blizzard allowed that.
If you didn’t choose to move to Era in the 18 months you had to choose in, then you were naturally progressed to Wrath.
That train left the perron. if you had started levelling a char on Era you would be done by now.
Most other people managed to clone (or at least make a choice) in the 18 month window we had. You are not a special snowflake, just get on with the levelling
They are on the right type of realm due to the realms natural progression. Era is not part of that progression.
And you had a LONG TIME to just log into them ONCE to get them on Era.
Edit: In your other post about this you mention consent, since you don’t own the characters Blizzard can do what they like with them. They could have just deleted them all if you didn’t choose.
I will simply say here that, shoudl they reactivate the service, I would be happy to use it. I love calssic and I’m re-lvlinga a new char but I’m not sure I’ll stay here after 60 simply cuz I do not wanna go trough that struggle all over again with a medium (although growing) population size. That would mean an even higher effort from me to get again what I already had (since there would be less pugs around and the few around would most likely prefer “bis” raid composition). Not wanna spend another year raiding as a holy pal to get some ret gear.
Instead having the cloning service back and thus my main pg back would increase by alot my likelyhood to keep playing, since I would have my bis gear back, I would still have alot of things to do and gear to get, gold to help me lvling up other pgs (and I mean to buy some stuff from ah and mounts at 40, not boost ofc) and gear to do pvp ofc.
Atm I’m enjoying classic era for the lvling, but I’m sure in a month, with most player at 60, many other players would start feeling like me and prefer to simply quit.
To add the service back would be a win-win for blizz. Although I would limit it to 1 pg per account (or server).
Last thing: do not tell me they deleted the files, it is not true. Hard to believe they would have been that dumb, since the marginal cost of keeping those files would have been really, really, really low. Most likely they closed the service just cuz it had an overall cost higher than the return (and that would explain the lower price during the last month, it was just to get some money back to pay the bills xD). To reopen it now would be the best option imo
Is there actually an official blue post on this, or do people keep quoting the “I heard from Blizz” guy? It’s 2023. Data is cheap. I find it highly unlikely Blizzard would actually throw that data permanently away. It’s most definitely archived somewhere and they’re at the present moment not willing to restore the system unless there’s enough interest in it.
To those also gatekeeping who get to keep their 60s because “you didn’t buy it earlier when I did”: shame on you. We shouldn’t be blamed for not willing to shell out more money at a time when it made little sense to do so. Paying to copy to Era when TBC came out was a long-term investment with no guarantee it would pay off. It’s been 4 years and now there’s an influx to return. Four years. I didn’t feel motivated to shell out that cash then, and didn’t know the service would end/close. I also should’ve have been made to choose/pay in the first place.
Additionally shame to people saying “just level again”. Not all of us have that amount of time or are willing to be okay with throwing away ~20 days of played time we had already invested.
It makes sense to return to the game now. There’s thousands online. There were ~8 people when TBC launched (not kidding, I checked multiple times). I would pay for the service now if it was brought back. Now is the time people are probably more willing to use it than before – those on the fence then, like I was.
You would get the character from about May 2020 from memory. They could not allow the clone after that date due to the items you may have picked up in TBC or Wrath.
I’m not sure they said deleted but may have said unavailable, and companies do purge data though.
They claim characters are deleted on a support page:
I genuinely don’t understand why they stopped the service, as storage is cheap (like you say) and it should have been a very simple function in the server code. If I had to design this cloning system i would have copied the characters to classic and tbc servers and just have a deleted or inactive flag on one of them. Then the cloning service only had to change a 1 to a 0 in the database. So it wouldn’t have cost them anything to keep it up and every clone is easy money. That’s also why i believe them when they say characters are deleted: it makes zero sense to cancel the service unless it was no longer (technically) possible to offer it. They still offer free realm transfers for example.
It sucks for everyone who was too late and i hope they can still bring it back, but i wouldn’t get my hopes up. I regretted cloning my priest 6 months ago but now I’m glad I did. A shame my hunter is gone though.
I know it’s not completely gone, i mean it’s shame the possible clone is gone.
It was a conscious decision to move my alliance characters to TBC and keep my horde ones on era. It was 6 months or so ago that I realised I still like vanilla wow more than I thought and I bought a clone of my main alliance character. Right now i would pay to also get my hunter back. I’m not angry it’s no longer possible, it’s just a shame it’s now gone from era.
And the expansion items can’t be a reason. By the time I bought my priest back, it was level 69.5 and sitting in Shattrath. The clone was level 60 with the items it had about a month before the expansion. The copies of every character already existed and so the only thing the clone service had to do was activate them. That’s why i don’t understand blizzard removing their simple cash cow. It was obvious some people would eventually return to era.
I totally understand you. I miss my 3 60s from the 2019 and 2020 Journey too.
I moved my 2 Chars from SoM over with mats and Gold so I don‘t need that - just to log in into my old chars from time to time since so many hours were dropped in.
resubscribe unless my characters that were forcefully deleted from classic realms with NO noticed given to us players being away (WHILE AT THE SAME TIME BLIZZARD MARKETING E-MAILS CONSTANTLY DROP INTO OUR INBOXES) are going to be restored.
RESTORE OUR VANILLA CHARACTERS!!!