I’ve just come back into the game after a long absence.
I have a lot of alts, and I’ve been updating them a few at a time, update gear, clear quests, etc…
Now, I find that many of the alts that I already updated have reverted back to their old status and I have to go through the whole process again.
Is this a known issue? It’s a pain in the rear.
How are you finding that they have reverted back to a previous state?
What type of gear updates are you doing? Just getting new gear from quests or drops? Or did you do the Gear Update on the character select screen for your characters?
Do you have several of the same named alts on different realms? With Warbands, all realms are showed on the same screen so that could cause some confusion.
Do you have any names of the characters in question?
If the characters haven’t been accessed for a while, they do regain the option for a gear update.
Just don’t forget to empty the mailboxen.
How long were you away from the game?
We had a level squish at the start of the previous expansion (Dragonflight) if I remember correctly, so the levels of the characters you remember would have dropped in accordance to the squish.
I’m talking about the ‘Gear update’ option that is available when you first log in that allows you to update to new gear, clear your quest log, and port you to your faction capital city.
I did this with several of my toons, updated their gear, cleaned out their mailbox, etc… Only to find days later that those same toons have reverted back to their old status.
Is there a difference in the way the game treats your toon between selecting a character from the warband character list, as opposed to selecting them from the realm list?
Kyzera asked in the first reply how you were determining this. That is not normal behavior.
The gear update option however is also not a one-time thing and will keep popping up every 60 days a character under level 61 is inactive.
Quoting myself as it wasn’t answered and may be what is going on.
So on the new character selection screen, even though you can see all your characters, you are still logged into a specific realm. I haven’t checked lately, but what I’ve seen is that sometimes characters from a realm I’m NOT logged into will show gear update available. If I actually log into that realm, I think the gear update no longer shows. Or maybe it’s only after I also select the character, can’t remember, but either way, there’s not really a gear update available. If you’re not logged into the realm of the character - which you will know because it will tell you that you need to switch to that realm to use gear update - try that and see if the option goes away.
If it does, I’d still call it a bug, but a relatively minor one.
Which characters, Merren? The Gear Update system should give you that option if you have been inactive on the character for 60 days. If it had only been a few days that would likely be a bug.
If I’m understanding this correctly, you did the Gear Update before, then it was available again? That will happen because the Gear Update happens after the character in inactive for 60 days.
There is also the fact that the Gear Update itself gets updated periodically to ensure that the iLvl of the updated gear falls in line with the current progression.
I don’t think this is the issue here, as the OP said it was just a few days later that the character had (seemingly) reverted.
Though one could argue that 60 days is just “a few days” in the grand scheme of things 
It was less than 60 days since I updated the first ones.
The thing that bothers me the most is having to clean out mailboxes again, it’s a pain in the butt.
Well, looked into it there are only four characters that were accessed within the last day, so I’m going to base it off of that.
Level 42 Night Elf Priest - Used the Gear Update system 11/22. Looking at the items in active and deleted inventory it appears the deleted items that match using the Gear Update system was created 8/31.
Level 63 Human Warlock - Used the Gear Update system 8/31, which is what they have equipped currently. No Update items in their deleted inventory.
Level 27 Human Paladin - Used the Gear Update system 11/22. The Gear Update items previously created, which you recently deleted were created 8/31. There is a set of weapons that were created after the initial Gear Update item creation, but that is usually because part of the process provides a way for a character to acquire weapons that might be for a different spec (i.e. 2 one-hand swords, 1 two-hand sword, 1 main hand sword, 1 shield, etc…). That item is usually in your inventory when you log in and will generate those items when you click it.
Level 26 Gnome Death Knight - Used the Gear Update system on 11/15 - though appears to have generated weapons again on 11/22, which fits with what I described above. Previous use of Gear Update system as indicated by other Gear Update items in the inventory were created 9/11.
Perhaps because you generated the weapons again on two of your characters and you seem to have gear from when you used the system previously you assumed you had the option twice in a short amount of time?
Haha so “a few days” was indeed 60 days in this case
I think it was primarily the ability to create the various weapons for different specs that caused the confusion. That plus not being able to see the creation date probably doesn’t help. 
And what if you have a bunch of Level 70s across multiple servers that have been inactive well over 60 days but aren’t getting the gear update option even when on the right server? Is there anything I can do to trigger it?
Note: Gear Update is not available on Starter Edition accounts.
Characters level 10-70 who have not logged in for 60 days are eligible for Gear Update.
To use Gear Update make sure you are logged in to the correct realm, then use the Gear Update interface to the left.
If your character is eligible and you try to enter the world without using the Gear Update interface, you will receive a warning that you are forfeiting the Gear Update. If you accidentally forfeited Gear Update, Customer Support cannot assist.
Could the Gear Update have been forfeited at some point?
Definitely not forfeited - I very deliberately avoided logging into any of them once I hit 70 during the War Within prepatch event because they had horrid pre-squish BFA gear lol and I couldn’t afford to buy them event gear.
[ETA: given that the one Gear Update that is showing up is for a Level 10 placeholder, I’m guessing there’s a hiccup somewhere with the new Level 70 limit and/or possibly a hiccup with toons leveled to 70 via the WW prepatch event. It could maybe possibly also be the fact that I pulled currency off the various toons, but that seems unlikely since it didn’t require actually logging onto the toons in question and would still have been over 60 days ago at this point.]
Do you have any names of the characters? It’s probably best to put in a bug report honestly, as that sounds like what it may be. Collecting currency could be bugged and have done it unintentionally, I have no idea.