So, I posted about this in a CC thread, but figured I’d check here to see if one of the CS agents might know.
In this article, it says that characters below level 50 will perma-delete after 120 days. But… it’s not happening.
These level 35 warriors have been deleted for almost a decade now. Those level 24 death knights were deleted during the pre-patch of Shadowlands. The 45s were deleted in BFA. All of these SHOULD have been deleted by now, according to the article, but they aren’t.
I am well aware that customer support cannot manually delete them. But is there any way of finding out why they aren’t deleting?
I just restored one of the 24 DKs, logged in, and deleted her again - I was thinking maybe there was a bug with the level squish that used her original level (58) in the calculations and by restoring, maybe that will trigger the deletion 3 months from now.
As someone with OCD, having no control over permanently deleting things like this is very hard on me. And unfortunately since I can’t hide the restore character button, it nags at me. So if there’s any way for me to find out a way to get rid of them, I’d appreciate it - even if it’s what I just did, restore and delete again after logging in, then wait 3-4 months.
I do wish you guys would just add a permanently delete button, but I know that’s not likely lol. But figured it can’t hurt to see if there’s a reason they aren’t, and if there’s a way to fix it.
If I remember any toon that was deleted pre-level-squish will not be deleted until it is restored and then deleted again, since the level you see is the pre-squish level.
Only characters below 10 are permanently deleted so I don’t even think restoring and deleting the DKs would work. DKs created before the squish were level 55 and 58 which doesn’t squish to the “new character” threshold. I still have a baker’s dozen of level 24 DKs from when I was experimenting with allied races, as well as characters that have been deleted for years.
The DK might still be using criteria from before the squish. You needed to level them to 58 or 60 (don’t remember for sure) to have them stay. They start at level 8 now. if the old standards (2-4 levels) for permanently keeping them are still in play, once you level to 10 or 12, they might also be permanent.
The delete system isn’t really a countdown timer that will delete a character after X amount of time, but an approximate timeframe on how long you have until the character may be purged from the database.
Marvi is correct, the level you see displayed isn’t exactly the level the character is. You are seeing the post squish number, but until that character is restored it technically haven’t been squished, so the database sees it as the level is was. In the case of the level 24 character, pre-squish that would be level 57-59, which isn’t generally eligible to be purged.
You are able to restore a deleted character every 7 days. If you aren’t in the habit of using that feature and have it available, you could undelete those characters, which would allow the system to activate the “squish”, then delete them again. They “should” delete after the normal allotted time.
If you go this route, make sure to keep a list of which ones you have cycled so you don’t accidentally undelete/delete the same character multiple times.
