Please bring character cloning back to Classic ERA (Rant)

Hi Blizzard,

I recently logged into Classic Era after all the hype building online, after a couple year break I was really excited to get back to raiding and playing my old Character now that some of my other friends have returned and are actively playing. Upon logging in I realized all of my characters are gone, they have all been migrated to TBC/Wrath.

Last I remembered, all of my characters were still on classic era, available to play for a small fee. I didn’t initially pay the fee because I was enjoying other wow expansions, or taking a break altogether, but the thought never crossed my mind that my character data would be deleted. Afterall, why would that thought cross my mind? Never in the history of Warcraft has one of my characters been deleted without my approval, and other services like character transfers, and race changes, have always remained permanently installed in the game once they were created. I had no reason to suspect I would ever lose the ability to play my classic era characters. It felt like a real blindside to be direct.

For me, Classic Era from 2019-2020 was a really special time - I was able to connect with old friends and relive an experience that really mattered to me. It might sound strange to say, but some of the best times in my life have been playing World of Warcraft. I’ve made real life friends and connections that have had a huge impact on me, and even helped me land my current job. I invested literally thousands of hours in my characters, and was able to accomplish building characters that I dreamed of getting to play again ever since being a kid. Those characters really matter to me, and I never expected that data would be deleted under any circumstances.

I’ve read a lot of immature players making comments like “blizzard is a scam” “blizzard is trying to rob us of more money” in reference to the cloning service which I think is silly. I recognize Blizzard is a business and I’m happy to pay a one time fee for character migration services, I actually think its a smart business model and I don’t mind it at all given the servers remain active. With that said, having my character data removed from era, while many of my friends continue to play because they paid for the cloning service when it was available feels like a robbery of all the time, effort, and emotion I invested into building my classic era characters.

From what I have heard it was only like $5 dollars to clone your character, and if I could go back in time I would have taken that deal. It’s unfortunate it wasn’t made clear to players that cloning would be shut down and feels extremely unfair. I would be happy to pay even $25 or $30 dollars like some of the other character services are rated at to have my old character back, but not having the option at all feels like a disgrace to the player base when many people are running around with their old characters still in tact.

Please Blizzard, reinstate classic era character cloning. It’s genuinely a huge deal. All my friends have returned and are playing and raiding again, and yet I am left out. I want to return to the character that is most meaningful to me and that I identify with the most. I don’t want to start over. I’ve played this game for approaching 20 years now, and it would mean a lot. Thank you.

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I also was taking a break from the game and missed it now all my friends are playing. And I cannot play or raid with them please bring back cloning blizzard this is unfair

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I’m sure you can find it if you do a Google search, unfortunately there has already been a blue post about clones. Any characters that were not cloned before the deadline were deleted. Sorry :heart:

i had 4 60’s. 2 of my toons on both classic and tbc right when it was about to launch but didn’t end up playing tbc and just left the other 2 on classic only, i quit and only came back on dragonflight launch and went to check out classic the other day and only see two of my toons on classic and then on wotlk only 3, come to find out about this whole cloning mess after submitting a ticket, how could they do this over a year later and didn’t even send an email telling me i have to come back and make a choice regarding my toons i had no clue and as far as i knew i already made my choice since the launch of tbc and already paid for two clones they need to fix this mess. i had my mage and war on both classic and tbc but somehow only my war is on classic and wotlk, mage only on classic? now its even more confusing. They should of left everything how it was, all my toons on classic and only the two clones i paid for that were on tbc to wotlk simple.

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hi. it looks like you are asking for your clones back. well i’ve developed a helpful script to answer all your questions about the clones and their likelihood of coming back! please enjoy.

the clones were on sale for $5 for ages, people weren’t buying them because “classic era is dead duuuuude”
then some streamers started talking about how era is good and now you want your dang clones. well too bad. you’re not getting them. the data is gone.
you people aren’t even gonna get a blue response, because they consider the matter closed:

The Character Clone service has been retired. All clones that were not activated before July 26, 2022 were deleted.

All clones that were not activated before July 26, 2022 were deleted.

were deleted

deleted

I hope this has been helpful for you.
:expressionless:

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Please blizzard we need clones back again

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The return of the clones!! Just got to make the first page all threads on wanting our clones!! lol.

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Eyr - the amount of times I’ve seen you respond on this issue, taking joy in the fact that so many people lost their characters, is very telling about who you are and what is missing from your real life.

Rather than trolling people who lost their character data on the wow forums for a meager hit of bully-dopamine, I would reccomend taking steps to improve yourself outside of warcraft so you can return to Azeroth a happy, reasonable, and friendly person.

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Arthie - See above

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even if my life was perfect in every way, I would give you the same answer :expressionless:
not everything is an online psychotherapy session

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As much as I’d like to see this happen it is highly unlikely. Whoever is in charge of these kind of decisions has made it clear they don’t care in the least. I’m also hopeful these same people lose there positions after Microsoft completes its acquisition of Activision Blizzard. At which point I won’t care.

pretty sure they were deleted, they gave multiple chances to clone your character, even gave warnings they were going away as well as the characters

I think you miss the point. Sure blizzard mentioned clones are no longer available. But there was no real reason for this to have been canceled to begin with. It shows blizzard is really out of touch with their classic community. I fail to understand why they would delete data from characters in classic SOM in the first place. Sure, maybe the service wasn’t being used, but does that warrant a complete removal of the character or service to begin with? If the data happens to still be available, blizzard should allow this service to become available again. At the current moment, only those people who did not transfer their character to WOTLK benefited. It simply doesn’t make sense from a business perspective.

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I never saw a single warning, not once. Clearly the communication about this was insufficient given there are dozens of threads with dozens to hundreds of replies and comments about this issue. It was clearly a mistake.

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Please reopen clones!

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Im sorry OP, Era cloning is no longer an option available to us.

Perhaps your friends can help you level and get raid ready since starting over is the only real available path for someone in your situation. If you don’t want to start over I guess that means you could also opt to not play Era. Those are your only choices though.

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That is completely ridiculous and completely unfair. I had no idea this service would ever be retired until the last few days when I realized my characters were gone. I spent thousands of hours on these characters and I absolutely demand they are reinstated.

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I have never been one to complain or badmouth blizzard but this is an absolute betrayl and I have lose an immense amount of faith in the company. If I can’t trust my character data will still exist, why play?

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= Blizzard’s fault.

Its not but its certainly you’re prerogative to tell yourself otherwise.

Its not like they were keeping it a secret so Im not sure what kind of response you’re expecting from this admission you had no idea what was going on.

I wish you lots of luck with that but I don’t think it’s going to end well for you.

It’s not yours. That’s Blizzard’s property.

You’re right, I just never cared to say what everyone is thinking when you see those comments or posts.

They’re a free bump doesn’t matter what they say we’re free to ask for what we want. Got to keep the clone threads lit!

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