I had two classic characters that seem to be gone. I hadn’t played them in a while but decided to log in and work on them a bit since retail has been slowing down. But they’re both gone. One was around lvl 49 and one was around 12. I’m posting on one of the deleted characters now but they’re not showing up in-game.
The Undelete button says I have no deleted characters.
They force-moved all non-activated characters to TBCC now to be found in Wrath.
So, I should install Wrath to find them?
Yes. Or roll some new ones - Please do not shoot the messenger.
Oh I won’t shoot the messenger, I just don’t understand why they did that. I had no interest in TBCC, and am really not all that hyped about Wrath since it’s 3.3 wrath and I didn’t like the changes in Wrath after 3.1. I just want to work on Classic, in Classic. If I want to do Wrath I’ll start a toon in Wrath.
You are not alone. As you can see from the thread I linked, more than you have returned to find - or not find - their characters gone from Era. I played at that time, found it strange, and sent almost all my toon to the Era servers. Wrath is, as you say, not so fun in the last patch. TBCC was OK, Wraht is at best meh, with achievements and the new zones as the only upside in my opinion.
I don’t even see an option to install Wrath separately, I just see “classic” which I re-installed. The old one got uninstalled somehow. The characters are still in the armory, obviously since I’m on one, I just don’t see a way to restore them. I guess I’ll have to make my first call to support in about 10 years.
There is no way to restore them, I think.
Most likely they were ported up through the expansions if you didn’t opt in to keep them on the Era servers.
Not sure why the Wrath client isn’t available for you to download though under the “Classic” options on the battlenet app.
Still, calling support wouldn’t hurt.
I put in a ticket. I’ll see what they say. That’s too bad if they’re gone, since I probably won’t play classic anymore, then. I was just poking along slowly when the mood struck. I never expected them to do something like this.
EDIT: They responded that the characters are not recoverable. I needed to log in to Wrath, I guess, or something. So, I’m officially done with Classic. They also suggested that I enable phone something on my account /shrug.
Let’s not kid ourselves, you already were. You are complaining about changes that happened almost three years ago. If you didn’t know until now, you didn’t care all along.
Fair point. But I did plan to come back, and I just did. I just waited too long.
FWIW, I did find my character still exists in WotLK, but it’s only WotLK talents, now. I don’t know why they thought it was helpful or useful to move a vanilla character that had completely skipped TBCC into Wrath. I mean, if I wanted to move to Wrath, I would have logged into Wrath and ported my character, right?
Look, it’s gonna sound like I am defending Blizzard but I’m not … exactly. Let me just say that they did not move anyones characters. The classic servers themselves transitioned to TBC and then on to Wotlk. This is just like the original servers and should have been a surprise to exactly no one. You log in one day and it’s vanilla era, you log in the next day and it’s TBC. No character migrations, no transfers, just the game continuing on like it always does.
Ok, now there part where I am actually critical of Blizzard. They chose to turn pure Classic era into a cash grab. If you wanted to play Classic-only they made it available, but you had to opt into it and likely pay for the privilege to do so. There were many ways they could have handled it, and they chose the greediest way possible.
I see. So I really do have to start a new character over in Vanilla. But that also does not explain why the Vanilla server of the same name is still there with no characters in it.
I think they should not have done it that way. They should have had you log into a TBCC server and then clone your character there if you wanted to continue in the next expansion.
Honestly they should have just cloned everything and let people play both at the same time but they were greedy and saw an opportunity to grab some cash. Blizzard has disappointed me here and there but this one was a pretty bitter pill for me. We pay them 15 bucks a month just to play the stupid game and when they discover some low cost way to keep us happy they just see another opportunity to gouge us again. It’s obscene and I try not to think about it too much.
The explanation - as from Blizz - is that technically the original Classic realms progressed through TBCC and Wrath C. And the Era servers are a copy, a by-product; and you had to want to go there.
I think this is hair-splitting, and that they should have just left the clones - or at the very least sent out an e-mail about the deletion of the clones to all players.
Disclaimer. I have no interest in clones, one way or the other, I kept almost all my toons in Era, and thus I am still happily playing. Of course cloning the couple I let stay in the progressing server would be nice, but I would probably not pay even if I got the possibility. I just like everybody to be most happy without harming others 
you new here?
yes they purged all the classic characters. If you didn’t cough up the ransom money, your characters are gone.
I don’t agree with that. Classic was made for the expressed intent that players could re-experience Vanilla. There was no mention of TBC or Wrath. That wasn’t even on the radar until much later. These characters were created for Vanilla.
Now yes, they did give ample warning what they were doing. But some people go on hiatus. Some people just stop paying attention. Don’t check their e-mail. Whatever. Granted, those aren’t great excuses. But what it boils down to is that it was IDIOTIC that the default action was for those characters to be automatically transferred to TBC and eventually Wrath. That was not what people signed up for. That was just Blizz being lazy in the way they progressed the servers and cloned Classic Era realms. And then Blizzard’s greed made you have to pay to keep your characters in both.
OP, it sucks but your characters are gone from classic era. Blizz handled the whole situation horribly. You should have paid attention to what was going on, but the responsibility should not have been on the players. These characters were made for Vanilla Classic, not TBC or any other expansion. They should not have been moved unless the players took action to do so.
That is about as incorrect as you can get. It might have been true in your particular echo chamber, but on the forums and in the game itself there was a massive demand for TBC and beyond.
You’re looking for the game version toggle to switch to the wotlk server,
once you’re in classic launcher, above the launch button is a “Game Version” pull down menu
Different versions for Classic era and wotlk expac where your characters should be
Not new, but I guess I did miss the memo. I didn’t realize it until my avatar turned into level 0 with no face, like you see now. What was the ransom money about? Did I need to pay something ?