‘World of Warcraft’ Deleted Characters Can Now Be Recovered After Patch

Blizzard announced today that before the Warlords of Draenor expansion releases, World of Warcraft deleted characters will be able to be recovered after a forthcoming patch. Before you go and try to resurrect your old level 60 paladin from the distant past, there are a few restrictions on the service.

• Characters under level 10 and Death Knights at level 55 are not eligible to be undeleted.
• Characters between level 10 and level 29 will no longer be recoverable after 90 days
• Characters between level 30 and 49 will no longer be recoverable after 120 days
• All other characters level 50 and above are eligible to be undeleted at any time
• Please keep in mind you will only be able to use the undelete option once every 30 days

World of Warcraft deleted characters that you simply deleted and recreated using the same name can also be recovered. Blizzard detailed the process on their Battle.net post. If you create a new character with the same name as one of your deleted characters, the new character must be renames, transferred, or deleted to complete the restoration of the original character.

Undeleting a character restores all of its enchantments, gems, and items fully intact. You’ll be able to get back into action right away, and your character won’t remember being deleted — we won’t tell, either.

Shhhh….

While the news is sure to excite players of Blizzard’s MMO, the recovery of deleted characters from far back into the game’s 10-year history was not made clear in the post. Many comments on the official post from Blizzard seemed to be confused about just how far back the deletion recovery would go. Are World of Warcraft characters that were created and deleted before the very first expansion, The Burning Crusade, able to be recovered? Or does the policy apply only to characters that are created after the patch is released? We have reached out to Blizzard for comment, and will update this story when we hear back.

Deleted character recovery is only one way Blizzard is hoping to bring more players back into the world of Azeroth. An instant boost of any character to level 90, the current level cap, is aimed at players who may find the drudgery of grinding from zero to the new level cap of 100 a bit too tedious for their schedules. Joystiq presented a list of changes to the World of Warcraft universe that are aimed at reaching out to the more casual player who may be done with the complicated stats and gear systems.

The resurrection of deleted characters to World of Warcraft is another great step by Blizzard to keep the game’s subscriber base invested in the property. With the cancelation of Titan that the Inquisitrreported on previously, Blizzard’s only horse in the MMO race is World of Warcraft and even with subscriptions in the single millions instead of the double digit millions, it still holds the crown as one of the longest running MMO’s and one of Blizzard’s most profitable properties.

Warlords of Draenor releases November 13.

Image Source | Blizzard