World Of Warcraft's Undelete Character Feature Coming With Patch 6.0

Remember how you deleted your World of Warcraft characters when you quit so you wouldn't be tempted to resubscribe? Well, Blizzard is about to give you the ability to recover these deleted heroes.

In the past, you had to pester Blizzard to restore deleted characters. This new feature sounds like it's automated, though. Players can "undelete" a character once every 30 days. This undeleted toon will have all of the items, gems and enchantments he or she possessed before you tossed it in the virtual trash bin.

The level of your deleted character determines how long Blizzard will hold onto it. The more advanced they are, the better:

• 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.

It's unclear how these rules will apply to characters that have been deleted years ago. Blizzard was a little cagey when asked about this point.

"I don't want to over promise, but it it may be likely depending on how high the character was before deletion," said community manager Nethaera in the comment thread of the announcement when asked whether characters deleted years ago are eligible.

One other thing to note about this process is that your restored character may not have his old name.

"We’ll be holding deleted character names for a limited time, and the original creator can reclaim it for use on a new character during that time. If you create a new character with the same name as one of your deleted characters (let’s say Flugur), the new character must be renamed, transferred, or deleted to complete the restoration of the original Flugur."

Blizzard previously introduced an Item Restoration feature to let players easily recover in-game possessions that they accidentally sold, destroyed, or disenchanted items. The Undelete Character feature has many of the same advantages. It allows players to have their requests more quickly handled. Furthermore, it frees up Blizzard's customer service staff to deal with other player concerns.

Keeping deleted characters on file seems like a pragmatic move on Blizzard's part, too. WoW is almost a decade old at this point so most of the people who wanted to play have already done so. Convincing old players to rejoin is arguably more important and more effective than persuading newbies to sign up.

The Undelete Character feature will be included in Patch 6.0.2 for WoW. This major patch will set the stage for the next expansion pack, Warlords of Draenor. Players can begin preloading the patch now.