Classic to Retail Character Transfer - or at least Share Account Wide Classic Earnings

Community WoW Community Council
1

“Jump to Retail - What to do with that 5 year Classic Character and their Stuff”

I’ve not brought this up in forum, but touched on it during a community chat and want to express a bit more what it is like to think about leaving the Classic Trilogy and head into Retail with The War Within for myself and several of my friends and family in the Classic RP Community.

Strangely enough, it is not the RP part of the change that is daunting. Some will create new characters and for the rest of us, we will create a retail character, with same name or close to it, and the history of what we went through in RP will still be with us.

What won’t be with us, is those things that in game we worked and strived for…

Some are transmog items that we lovingly sought out and somehow held onto taking up 3/4 of our inventory… and we can hunt those down again, even soloing some of that classic dungeon/raid content once leveled up, but some items have a really low percentage drop rate, especially a rare mount or pet that is our constant companion in game. And a mount like the Legendary Black Qiraji battle tank… that’s impossible to get.

Or how about those orange weapons… We worked hard for Val’anyr, Shadowmourne (got three in our RP guild), and a few others besides. Doable, but there is also that satisfaction of knowing you did this in real time on this character in particular.

And one that affects me personally, Warlord of the Horde. Still not sure why I was crazy enough to do it, and I just ran out of time to try for High Warlord, but I know that when I go back to retail, it won’t be that title that I spent months fighting for that I can change out and fly with some amount of pride over my character’s head. (and let me add, my first time through classic I made Stone Guard and I was always frustrated I could not have that title while playing retail)

Now, I’ve already got my toons in retail and have been enjoying Dragonflight, which is why I’m deciding that Cata Classic is not for me, and to continue my RP journey in The War Within (It also fits a lot of our major RP story arc that we started in guild 5 years ago). But many of my co-classic RPers are making the same choice and their biggest regret is leaving behind their character that is a second skin to them in game for five years.

I know there is some difference in Wrath to current framework, but Classic is now using some newer UI/account sharing features, and I am wondering if they are not so different as to make a character transfer possible. Even from Wrath to Cata some things changed long ago, so cout a Cata character possibly transfer to Retail even more possible once we are forced to watch Deathwing destroy our world.

And if not character transfer, can we get some love towards those items/achievements/pets/mounts/titles to be added to account sharing across classic and retail?

Any help appreciated!
~Okwaho Redwood

8 Likes
2

The largest volume of this request explicitly incentives many collectors and players. To begin playing another format of the game they may not necessarily enjoy.

While that isn’t enough of a reason not to have shared achievements. This sort of addition would create an entire new market for players to buy/sell cross platform. Real money and gold accordingly. Depending which group of people you bought of.
There doesn’t seem to be much to be earned for the masses by a change like this. It’s a speciality clause the benefits only those that have been playing Classic for some time now. Without this being a fundamental change to include cross Blizzard games achievements together. I’m not for a change like this at all.
While my personal views is that it’ll remove a degree off exclusivity for certain items. That may not be a lot, nor enough to warrant a conversation. It’d open the door for much explotation of remove-able items from the game that I believe aren’t even in the API anymore.
I’m not sure how that would work.

3 Likes
3

Personally, I would absolutely use this is it was both directions, I started in retail, and I am very attached to my character,
If I could transfer my main to Classic and back again later, I would absolutely do it, even if it meant losing all items on the character as many items wouldnt exist anymore,

This would be a solid alternative to a zidormi for visiting the old world in retail

2 Likes
4

I personally wouldn’t be a fan of doing this as someone that played classic and retail and it would be a bit weird to do this retroactively as what was announced early was that they wouldn’t do this. I think it makes sense to have some rewards that work in both versions as small incentives to try one or the other but I’m not sure it is the right idea to want to merge both.

5 Likes
5

I don’t think this is a good idea. Reasons:

  • It is unfair to those collectors who didn’t play Classic because it was announced transfers between Classic and Retail were not possible. If it was announced from the beginning they could have farmed their desired items. And at this stage items like the Amani War Bear are not possible to obtain.
  • Some items like the Shadowmourne were easier to obtain in Classic than the original release.
  • We have many guides on what the meta specs are, what mats to farm before the patch goes live which again makes obtaining items in Classic much much easier. It took 94 minutes to defeat The Lich King on heroic difficulty in Classic compared to 46 days on the original release.
  • These items are a great way to tell if someone has been playing since the beginning. And it’s a great incentive for those players to continue playing knowing that they possess something truly unique.
  • There is already plenty to collect in recent expansions of WoW.
5 Likes