It is the same thing though? It’s another case of we don’t have the data because they aren’t getting enough outrage. As soon as there is, then suddenly they find the data.
Re- the reddit post, yes some people are able to restore classic characters that were deleted prior to the cloning service, proving that a portion of the data from original classic that should have been dumped still exists. This points towards: the data never went anywhere and was just flagged to hide it.
Deleted character data is saved. That doesn’t mean clone data was saved.
True but shouldnt all of the character data have been deleted since we had to make a choice to stay or clone? Those of us who werent playing at the time but deleted characters got to stay somehow, those of us who stopped playing and didnt delete were forced to go.
I remember Blizzard saying how impossible it was to bring back Classic servers 10 years ago yet we’re playing WoW classic. Those saying it’s impossible are just parroting the Blizzard PR team. The fact is this data is recoverable. I work in data. Data like this does not go away. If a file is important enough it is recoverable by some means unless it was specifically purged and excluded from all archiving and intentionally overwritten. Vanilla WoW is an 18 year old game. Characters are not much data. It is less than a terabyte guaranteed, and Blizzard is not that desperate for hard drive space that they had to purge this data. What is more likely is they had to make cuts after the lawsuits which includes cuts to customer service in areas where they weren’t being utilized much (Classic WoW for instance) so they removed this feature. Blizzard wouldn’t delete data like this, and if they did they wouldn’t delete the archives. There’s no reason to. They simply don’t have the means to access this data currently and don’t want to put in the effort to do so.
No because deleted characters are not clones and clones are in an entirely different category altogether.
In hindsight they could have moved not-cloned characters to Wrath, actualized all the clones, deleted them and then down the road be able to offer them to returning/all players as a deleted character restore on the cash shop.
For whatever reason they opted not to do anything and they probably had a good reason to make that decision.
Hopefully, as has been posited by some posters, they have a copy or image of all the servers the day before TBCC launched and can pull it from that but I wouldnt hold my breath.
Once the Microsoft merger goes through, maybe we’ll get some competent engineers on the team to restore this data or at least stop making completely nonsensical decisions like purging valuable and potentially profitable data that people want for no reason.
Edit: My character still exists somewhere. Here he is right here:
Posting this in here too.
My character obviously exists in two places yet my account is only linked to the one on Sulfuras.
I bet people who are able to restore their character via the delete functionality can do so because their realm is a realm that still exists on the WotLK classic servers like Whitemane. And the reason they’re able to restore their “deleted” characters is because that character is tied to their account because they have a character in WotLK on the same realm. I no longer own this Scabsmcbutt on Rattlegore anymore because Rattlegore as a realm doesn’t exist anymore on WotLK classic. But the character clearly still exists. Blizzard should re-link this character to my account and I bet they can restore it.
Thank you! I work in data and been in development for 8+ years, I did the calculation based on what I believe the data would look like, all 100 million players would be around 1TB of data, I use 100TB as an example because that’s still not a terribly large amount of data and it would never exceed that.
Someone needs to give us answers… its obvious theres a lot of custumers not satisfy with the service we are getting. We would like an explanation for having hundreds if not thousand of hours deleted from our lifes. Someone from bizzard needs to come in here and give us an appologie and explanation so we can put all thia to rest
All you needed to do was log into it once during TBC and choose Era.
Where I’m from it’s called nagging, children do it in shops to get candy from their parents. “Mom, I want some Candy!” “Mom, I want some Candy!” “Mom, I want some Candy!” “Mom, I want some Candy!” “Mom, I want some Candy!” “Mom, I want some Candy!” “Mom, I want some Candy!” “Mom, I want some Candy!”
Oh god here we go, they remade it, not from the original data but with Legion data. Would you play a 19 year old game on new hardware?
What happens if you have EXACTLY the same data in two places? Doesn’t one get deleted?
It’s gone, you can’t bring that back no matter how much we want it back.
No, it’s because Blizzard didn’t delete the deleted characters database during the purge.
Maybe you should request your account data from Blizzard and see how much it actually uses.
Except we have had the answers, the data is “permanently deleted”.
Still want an apologie for deleting hundreds of hours of my life.
Nah… im done not gona bother leveling an other toon and gearing him up just so Blizzard will delete it. not gona play an other blizzard game… not that they have anything besides WoW classic
stop giving these people hope 
there is none, zero, nada, zilch chance of these clones coming back. EVER. EVER EVER EVER. sorry but it’s time for some tough love.
It’s not deleted. It’s just not where you wanted it to be or even where you decided you wanted it. You had a long time to decide, and you have now lost the chance to have it in Era.
I’ve tried, many times, I’ve tried being nice, being angry, being straight, being sympathetic, being aggressive, I’ve tried it all and they never listen, they believe in conspiracy theories, that Blizzard are hiding the fact they have the data and many other incorrect assumptions.
I really wish someone from Blizzard would come here and tell them in no uncertain terms, it’s not coming back as Era cloning. We may get Wrath cloning if they make Wrath Era realms.
You have this strange idea that it’s your responsibility to do this. No one is listening to you because you have as much credibility on this topic as any of us asking for the clones back. A blue post describing the situation in detail is exactly what we’ve been saying we want, and none of this will stop until we get one. We need to know if ‘permanently deleted’ means permanently deleted (from the servers) or permanently deleted from all data storage devices in blizzard’s possession. This is the crux of the whole issue.
Oh you mean like this?
If you haven’t made a choice for any of your characters since the last time you logged in to either WoW Classic or Burning Crusade Classic, those characters will be moved to Burning Crusade Classic. The Classic Era version of the character will be permanently deleted and unavailable for cloning.
Of course it means gone forever. There are no lines to read between.
And we’re telling you we disagree that there aren’t any lines to read between. The language used in that post doesn’t tell us whether ‘permanently’ deleted means they will simply never choose to bring the clones back, or if the data is literally gone forever. It also doesn’t say if permanently deleted means simply from the servers or from all of blizzard’s storage devices entirely. We are saying that is not enough information to satisfy us.
If they said “Permanently deleted from the servers” then you could be right but they don’t, they just say “Permanently deleted”, which means they are gone forever from everywhere, including backups.
Want more proof? Some unfortunate people have had their clones disappear from the Era realms and when they asked Blizzard to put them back they were told Blizzard couldn’t restore them as the back up data is gone.
Can blizzard open Fresh servers…
Shouldnt have been moved to begin with. The need for them to move characters was actually more work than not because they decided to be greedy with their cloning service. Also TBC sucked as a whole, so I just went back to raiding on retail.