Hey gang. I’ve been tossing around the idea of purging some old characters of mine. I haven’t really played most of my high level characters in years and have been making new characters in between taking breaks.
The main reason is that either the character I am playing as no longer interests me from a roleplay standpoint or I no longer RP with the person I normally do and is a rather integral part of those characters. I’m on the fence as it feels like they are taking up space and they feel like a constant reminder of better/different times. However I am also worried I may regret deleting them as some of them are rather old and have fond memories.
Have any of you purged old characters to “start over”? Did you regret it?
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I have deleted characters before and regretted it, but mostly I don’t. I usually recycle names and ideas nowadays so I don’t completely lose those characters, but instead I reinvent them.
I think it’s good to let go sometimes. You can always restore a character too.
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I’ve deleted quite a few of my earlier characters over the years. Sometimes I restore them and turn them into someone new, sometimes I restore them and they’re mostly the same. The only character I can never see myself deleting is this guy (that I post on). I’ve had this character since about… late 2012? Early 2013?
I thinned out my roster and my accounts earlier this year. It felt really good.
I’ve been running 3 WoW subs for years, but Shadowlands, reduced my /played time drastically. DF has increased it, but I knew I was no longer interested in running a third sub that at this point, I rarely ever logged into anyway.
I had 4 max level chars and a few lower ones there, but three of the max I didn’t really care about. Cleaned out their banks, etc and deleted them. The 4th max, I moved to my 2nd sub. Deleted the lowbies without a thought and then I canceled my 3rd sub, so I am now down to two subs.
After that, I ended up cleaning, shuffling and reorganizing my two remaining subs and that involved deleting a few max levels. The chars I still have, are the ones I still care about.
If I was forced to delete what I have now, I could except for Norman here. He’s the oldest char I have and will be here until the end.
I did a “purge” way back in like WotLK or Cata or something of almost everything but my warrior (this character). I came to regret it and wound up having GMs restore several lost characters over the years, although many of them lost their original names due to being deleted. Most of those purged characters never became actively played again but they have some pleasant memories for me which I guess was the main source of regret.
If a character reminds you of better times, I wouldn’t delete it… those memories might feel bitter compared to the present but you’d probably regret trashing them, even if it only means pushing them to the restore screen. Just losing a character name can feel like a loss.
That said, I don’t mind deleting newer high-level characters. Characters from the past few years represent little time or social commitment compared to old ones so it doesn’t really bug me to delete things I don’t play. But that doesn’t sound like what you’re talking about.
Yes, i have purged five characters i created because either the RP ran its coarse or the people/reason i liked to play them had gone inactive.
I’ve never regretted it. I think part of the reason is because I’m not an alt-oholic. They were created, leveled, and developed for a purpose. I think most alts people create first and then find a place to put those alts in. I think you grow too attached if you created it before needing it.
I say do it! And, write something up for it to go down for a cause. Like a death in battle or attempting to reach beyond your limits. Perhaps have your new character be a result or some how affected by the previous one. That way it’s a fresh start, but also not a total loss of self.
For me, in most instances of deleting characters, it’s usually a one that’s seldom played; most likely one that I made for a rp character concept but, for one reason or another, didn’t fully commit to. Since they were usually low levels I barely played, there wasn’t too much grief in getting rid of them, especially after character restores became a thing.
There was one instance I recall where I deleted my characters from before I moved to Wyrmrest, again for space. I can’t say I ever really regretted it, but I can certainly see why someone would.
My second worst habit is making a new character, getting frustrated that it’s not going as well as my mains, then deleting them later and then having an itch to start them again later. I can’t tell you how many Blood Elf Mages I have yanked back and forth between the realms of life and death.
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Never. I put the work into my old characters back when the game took a significant time and effort to level and gear up. They’ll exist until the servers die.
Now its so easy to level and gear a toon that they’re essentially worthless to me. I can just make another and get it to 70 in like three days of game time. I feel no attachments to them and could just move the gold on one character fo another and then /delete them, even at 70.
I really hate this about post-Shadowlands WoW. I know we can’t go back but even as recently as BfA I have strong memories of leveling allied races, the questing routes they took and the stories I took them through, and stuff like that. The characters I leveled post-Shadowlands idk who they are even, they’re just randos I knocked out in a weekend
I guess there’s a wide range of opinion you could have about the value of the leveling experience and how long it should take, but after the level squish it just barely exists as meaningful content at all
I moved servers before, I paid for a single character transfer, one of my more sentimental characters, the rest I deleted from two different servers, and rerolled what I could on the new server.
Don’t regret it at all. No one that I knew was on those two old servers, it was like being away from everything. It felt liberating to start over. I made a lot of mistakes in game on my play style when I first started, by starting over I have been able to level professions more efficiently.
If you are fond of the characters maybe keep them, but start over on a new server, maybe eventually you will decide whether to transfer a character or delete it.
If they’re a character that just never worked as well as I wanted them to, I tend to delete. If they’re a character I have had some great memories on, I tend to purge or shelve them IC and keep them around OOC in case I want to reuse them for a new character.
Certain characters on my roster will never be purged. Like this one. If I use one extensively, I’m less likely to purge it.
Mostly I’ll purge low level characters I haven’t found an RP use for. If I think about purging a character over level 50, I’m more likely to rename and race change than delete. Then I sit on the old names saved on low level alts just in case I want to come back to a character.
Can’t say I’ve ever purged my characters… Never really felt the need to. I treasure every one of 'em, even if the RP on them has died out, or the guilds they were in ceased to be. Plus, just because they’ve lost the RP, or lost their guilds or groups, that doesn’t mean that their story is over - just that it’s time for them to get into a new one!
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I have regretted deleting certain characters before the restore feature came into existence. I’ve also regretted deleting a couple characters after that point that weren’t level 50+ (they had been above 50 previously, but then the level squish happened) on the mistaken belief that I would remember to undelete them before they went away.
If your characters are level 50+, though, you don’t need to worry about regretting it. They will be on the restore list, and if you want them back, you can bring back one character per week at any time.
If the characters in question are meaningful to you but are, for whatever reason, below level 50, I recommend leveling them to 50 before you delete them just so you don’t have to chance it.
liotuse the goat with the sauce
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I used to awhile ago but nowadays I don’t name my characters with very unique personal names in game but with rather generic fantasy monikers so if I can re-write later if the concept doesn’t work. Especially after I’ve leveled a character, gotten gear, pvp’d etc.
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Not unless they’re like level 1-2 maybe. Waste of my time to just erase all that from existence
I have actual, professionally diagnosed OCD and let me tell you, OCD and WoW DO NOT AGREE. This is how bad it is:
- All characters must have their bags and banks organized EXACTLY the same with the exact same bag types
- I have to be actively playing a character or I don’t want them messing up how I order them
- NEVER more than 3 characters on my account
- All characters must be on one realm
Here is the really crazy one
- All of my characters must have comparable zoom levels on their character select backdrops. This means no evoker because they’re super zoomed out, no Tauren, no Zandalari. Blood Elf, Draenei, nelves, humans. orcs and a few others are kosher.
So yes, I am constantly purging characters. This whole account must be purged
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I have purged and restored characters so many times. I used to be able to create so easily, but I find these days, I keep going back to the old ones. Sometimes the purge feels good for a bit though! I do axe a lot of fledgling concepts, but the old ones that are well established very often come back!