It’s gone, it’s been confirmed.
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I didn’t know this til now but the Whitemane server is booming in population because of the free transfers, especially from Faerlina. I already copied my character at TBC launch cuz there was no way I was losing my fully naxx geared character. I think people should still have the option to make the clone, and it should be free. Even though I paid, making that correction for other people is OK with me. It should have been free all along.
It’s gone, it’s been confirmed.
So they cloned everyone’s character anyway… but charged people to access it. LOL man Blizzard is so sleazy.
And basically they deleted characters that people didn’t pay to keep by removing the snapshot.
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Data storage at that scale isn’t costless.
Lol these devs have no clue what are they talking about whatsoever. Bunch of clowns.
Characters are just files. They’re overinflating how much space the characters actually took. It was just a way for them to extort money.
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So the people who developed Classic Era and are doing the same for Hardcore are wrong, the people who actually know what went on? I don’t think it’s them who are the clowns.
In your extensive knowledge, how much data does a Warcraft character take up? then multiply that by hundreds of millions per realm.
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What difference does that make? What would they be besides files?
Lots of files = lots of data = storage costs of some kind.
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I’m curious how large the database or storage for it was, but they’ll never tell us unless it was actually too large. There is no reason to keep how large it was secret unless they want to make an excuse for not keeping it.
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Lol, aside from the fact that I don’t think anyone has even asked them this question, you are talking about proprietary technical data. There absolutely are good reasons for something like that.
So am I, but in my opinion it’s a lot bigger than people think.
I would say terabytes per realm.
when they cloned the characters, they effectively DOUBLED their character data. why would they just commit to keeping that indefinitely, when no doubt most of those characters are long dead and abandoned? you can clearly tell who here has never had a big boy job managing projects and such 
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Describing something in GB, TB, or even PB isn’t a huge deal.
For all you know, the whole thing may not even have reached 1 TB. They can easily say something like almost a PB, or 100s, 100s, or 10000s of TBs. If we knew the ballpark for how large it is, then we know how much it would cost… and if it’s nothing, then there was no reason to get rid of the data except that they disrespect their customers.
No, but keeping the multiple backups of all the characters is. They didn’t have just one back up but many, as someone who has worked partly in data storage I know it’s far more than you think.
Except the cost of it.
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Lol they havent developed anything, they stole someone elses work and now they are reaping profit. These guys dont even know how to start a computer, they are just doing hc, because its the hip thing to do and they are struggling to even do that. Literally team of 3people did a better job implementing hc over a year ago. So glad i rerolled on a pserver its just much higher quality of service. 
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This would genuinely shock me.
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If the backup doesn’t change, then there’s no need to keep copying the backup. There’s multiple backups due to data changing. Maybe you should get edumicating in this field more before talking about it.
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One TB? no way. at least 1 PB.
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You’re just guessing. What makes you think it’s a PB? The individual files are unlikely to reach the GB range (I could be wrong but it seems unlikely), meaning they’re a fraction of a GB, meaning that having a billion characters wouldn’t mean much.
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I worked at an ISP and knew how much space the data took for each customer, so it’s personal experience.
Just the quest data would be a lot. We can’t know how they set the database up.
Anyway, this is all just guessing from all of us, it’s not coming back and it’s been confirmed.
Assuming only 10 million cloned characters (and I suspect the actual number is significantly — maybe an order of magnitude — higher) to fit it in one TB each clone would have to fit into 100 kb.
That strikes me as impossible.