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.