Unable to Restore Accidentally Deleted Character

Last night I accidentally deleted a character in the classic realm Faerlina, I immediately tried to restore the wrongfully deleted character after finding out the mistake, but I keep getting the error message “There was a problem restoring your deleted character. Please try again later.” I read on the forums saying it’s likely caused by the server being locked, but I still have doubts since it should be fixed more than 2 years ago according to this update https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-gb/news/23277654/hotfixes-october-16-2020

Please implement a fix to the issue, it was an honest mistake and the character deleted was my main on that battlenet account.

In regards to how I “accidentally” deleted the character by mistake, basically I have two battlenet accounts in WOTLK classic (due to server queues) because I play in two US servers. Last night I was trying to create a new character in the server Whitemane in one battlenet account, however due to the server consolidation couple months ago, many of my “level 1s” were moved to Sulfuras server automatically, and I have hit the 50 character limit, at that time, I got distracted by some real life matters and moved away from computer for couple minutes. Then after I come back, I didn’t pay close attention and resumed on deleting what I thought was the “level 1s”, I opened two instances of WOW clients and didn’t notice I was alt tabbed to the main character page on Faerlina on the other battlenet account, then tragedy happened, I deleted the wrong character, and not able to restore it using the in game restore feature. Please implement a fix to this issue if possible. Also I’m not able to post on the battlenet account I have accidentally deleted the character because I don’t have a higher than level 10 character aside from the one I deleted. But here is the ticket number I submitted from the battlenet, US87538496, hopefully customer support can help me on this issue, thanks a lot!

Sorry if I created multiple posts regarding the same issue, you can delete my other posts if necessary.

Faerlina is currently locked, Makhakhan.

What that means is that since this was your only character on the realm, until the realm is unlocked, undeleting him won’t be possible…not even for us.

Once it is unlocked, the character restore should work, and a level 80 isn’t going to be purged.

We don’t have any info on when that may happen. Historically - it’s not been too terribly long, but population queues have to sort out before the devs will remove the lock.

You can keep an eye on the status there.

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The server is locked to new player creation per that support article. Unfortunately if you don’t have another character on the server, you also can’t restore a deleted character as it’s effectively locked. It’s also locked to GM staff, no one can bypass it.

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Are there any possible work around or rare exceptions? Looking at some of the blue posts, I feel like unlocking a realm like Faerlina is at least going to take another 2-3 months.

People who are in the same situation as I am will lose all character progression during this time, also game time, I have about 45 days more of game time, but by the look of it, I can’t do anything except watching the game time to slip away while waiting for the realm to be unlocked (I really don’t have the energy and time to level another fresh toon to level 80, the new characters I originally wanted to create were auction house/bank alts on Whitemane). I’m wondering if a character transfer is possible for the deleted character (free or paid), then restore it on the destination realm, that way at least I get to participate in this phase of the game, and when Faerlina finally becomes unlocked, I might be able to transfer the character back via paid option.

None. It’s an intended restriction, there are several others who came before you who “asked” similarly for “exceptions” and none were granted.

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Exceptions are only possible when the ability to make it happen exists. In this case, as Orlyia stated, not even Game Masters can bypass the restriction.

A solution would need to come from the developers, where they add in an ability to bypass the lockout under very specific circumstances. To advocate for that, you will want to post on the General Discussion forum, or hit up Blizzard’s various social media accounts (that are not customer support ones) to give the Developers an understanding of a situation like yours.

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I found a post of possible restored character by GM on a locked server.

If the warlock (Jynx) was speaking the truth, then I guess it’s a game of luck, and GMs indeed have the abilities to restore characters deleted on locked realms. I will try my luck and wait for the ticket response, if I get lucky and encounter a GM who would read my issue carefully and try to help me, I might get it restored. If that post was just trolling, well then bummer.

There have been dozens upon dozens of people who have come here in similar straits and I’ve yet to see a case of someone being able to get a GM to bypass the locked realms. Devs make those calls, GMs cannot override them. Unfortunately when a realm is locked, it is locked, Period. You are welcome to try, if you do not mind braving the 10ish day turnaround for ticket responses. But I wouldn’t get your hopes too high unless they do finally start unlocking realms, It’s why it is on us to pay attention to what we’re doing, and why they make us actually type out DELETE when we’re deleting characters. Mistakes do happen, but sometimes we have to bear the cost of those mistakes.

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A 3rd possibility, it may be possible that the realm became unlocked when his ticket was answered, and a normal restoration was done.

The issue is when a realm is locked, the ability to restore a deleted character is not possible, not even for a Game Master, as has been stated many times by Support Forum Agents.

If the realm becomes unlocked, you should be able to restore it yourself. While it is locked, you will have to wait. It will not be up to GM discretion. They cannot bypass a locked realm’s restrictions.

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Eranikus character creation was closed September 8th and reopened September 22, that player would have ticketed late September (probably 19-21) before the unlock happened the GM who grabbed the ticket would have seen restore is possible and actioned it for him (because they really do want to help when they can).

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