Back after ~11 years. My gnome is now a goblin?

Wanted to try WoW again after roughly 11 years. I played through pandaria and maxed characters there. While I’m mostly interested in classic, I thought I’d pop into retail just to see things. I noticed one of my main characters, what was once a gnome warlock is now a goblin. -I also noticed 1 or 2 high level characters missing.

I’ve never paid or received a race change or faction change. I also do not recall the exact server I played on so long ago. I’m assuming something happened with a server merge, or with the creation of warbands (not entirely sure what that is, but I have an idea from searching) while I was gone that resulted in the race change.

Is it viable to open a support ticket to get my race changed back to gnome? I do not care to play a goblin at all. Also wondering what happened to my missing high level characters (70 BC druid, max level cata shaman). I tried the undelete character tool at login but it didn’t find anything for those.

Nothing has happened in the game or with server merges that would change a character’s race.

Your character names might have been unassigned, in which case you will see a partial name and some randon number as a name for them, and in that case you must change the name before logging in. Maybe your original name is still available.

My first thought from your description is that you were hacked, and someone else was using your account, perhaps to shuffle gold between factions or realms, back when that was necessary. But that’s just a thought; I certainly have no evidence for it, other than it fits the observations.

Your missing characters might be on other servers, or might have been transferred and deleted from other servers. So check any server you apparently have toons on.

Also, try the Item Restoration page https://us.battle.net/support/en/restoration This is not to restore an item in your case, but just to see the full list of characters associated with your account, which is shown when you start restoration. That might give you more information.

Once you have gathered all the info you can, then by all means make a support ticket, ask what happened, and ask if your characters can be restored to their original races/realms.

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I see, I find it weird it that one character was race changed (maybe transferred?) considering I have another with about 3x the gold on them. I do see my lost characters in the item restoration tool, nothing on the servers. And I do recognize most of the server names now, so hoping it wasn’t a hack.

While I’ll miss my old shaman that I spent most of the game on I guess not much point in trying to get them restored. I’d probably just be lost on them in all the new game information anyway.

If I was hacked would I have received some sort of notification or email? I don’t recall ever receiving one and I’ve been playing other blizzard games over the years so I’ve been on my Bnet, just not WoW. A quick google says I can’t see past logins.

Appreciate your reply and info.

Two other things I just thought of

  1. In your Account section on the website here, you should be able to look up your Billing/Payment history. If it goes back that far, look for charges for race or realm change.

  2. Your lost characters may have been transferred to other realms and then deleted. Trying Restore Character on those realms may yield something. The characters have to be somewhere, and if they were of any reasonable level, they should be undeletable.

And again, do make a ticket. I’ve heard nothing but good about Blizzard’s response to cases of suspected hacking.

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Great idea, it worked. I didn’t even notice the server name difference in the item restoration page. They did not even show up as existing when I was looking at the realm list, but on switching servers they loaded and are now there. I did check the billing & transaction history and there is nothing, only my expansion purchases. All my items are there for my characters too, including gold so I don’t think my account got hacked.

Last thing I’ll look into is just the race change on my Gnome. Which I’ll open a ticket for, although I don’t think it was hacked.

Thanks so much for your help, your ideas found my lost characters.

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One other thought. A bit wild, but …

Is that character your are posting on - Rhazek - the Goblin Warlock that you think was originally your Gnome?

Rhazek is a strange name to give a Gnome. It fits a Goblin, but not a Gnome. Did your Gnome have a different name?

And you say you see no Race Change in your Billing History. Even if you had been hacked, Billing would have a record of that.

Is it possible that this is a different character, and your Gnome is still out there somewhere?

Yeah, it’s the same one. Name is the correct one and original - was inspired by a sorcerer from another universe, I remember naming the gnome. Yeah nothing in history. Possible sure, but I remember raiding in ice crown with this character and the gear from that/achievements is there. I’m not that senile, I swear!

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