If subscription expires, will my characters be lost?

Reco

Hi, if I take a break from ESO and let my subscription expire, will my characters be deleted? Or will I be able to pay again (when I am not so busy anymore) and find my account in good standing?

driosketch

According to a post elsewhere by one of the mods, your characters will remain saved for you for whenever you resub.

I also had one of the people on my friend's list come back after a few months away and still had his character.

KhajitFurTrader

To my knowledge, no "modern" MMO operator has ever deleted inactive characters. A returning, and thus, spending customer is always a more valuable asset than a few Megabytes of freed storage space.

Panda244

KhajitFurTrader wrote: »

To my knowledge, no "modern" MMO operator has ever deleted inactive characters. A returning, and thus, spending customer is always a more valuable asset than a few Megabytes of freed storage space.

Bioware. Deletes your characters if you don't play for a long enough time and you're no longer subbed, for SWTOR. I resubbed to check out the new things, saw they had deleted my two level 55s, annnd canceled my sub 5min later

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO

Judging from the hundreds of inactive accounts who are still in a dead guild which I keep only for the guild bank, no characters have been deleted so far. Many of the members didn't stay beyond the first month.

ZOS_GaryA

Hey there @Reco,

We definitely understand that for various reasons, people will take a break from ESO. We're happy to let you know that though they will be lonely in your absence, your characters will be waiting for you when you decide to return.

We wish you the best of luck with your busy schedule!

KhajitFurTrader

Panda244 wrote: »

Bioware. Deletes your characters if you don't play for a long enough time and you're no longer subbed, for SWTOR. I resubbed to check out the new things, saw they had deleted my two level 55s, annnd canceled my sub 5min later

I stand corrected. But your totally adequate reaction only goes to show why most other studios don't do it, for exactly this reason. Seems that Bioware values disk space over revenue.

driosketch

KhajitFurTrader wrote: »

Panda244 wrote: »

Bioware. Deletes your characters if you don't play for a long enough time and you're no longer subbed, for SWTOR. I resubbed to check out the new things, saw they had deleted my two level 55s, annnd canceled my sub 5min later

I stand corrected. But your totally adequate reaction only goes to show why most other studios don't do it, for exactly this reason. Seems that Bioware values disk space over revenue.

It might be because it's fee to play now. Another F2P MMO deleted my friends characters when she was gone for a long while. Makes a little more sense there, otherwise they would be storing tons of characters of people who came to try it out and never came back. But at least we have confirmation now that ESO doesn't do this, and they have less reason to do so as well.

BigM

No Bioware does not delete characters, they will rename them and when you log in you will need to pick a new name. Back when SWTOR first came out they did not have the ability to restore characters. That has been fixed. Also the only way people lost characters are from hackers or the wife someone pissed off.

They needed to clear up names because it is a F2P game.

fromtesonlineb16_ESO

KhajitFurTrader wrote: »

A returning, and thus, spending customer is always a more valuable asset than a few Megabytes of freed storage space.

Of course, when a game goes F2P the spending aspect is no longer a concern.

KhajitFurTrader

fromtesonlineb16_ESO wrote: »

KhajitFurTrader wrote: »

A returning, and thus, spending customer is always a more valuable asset than a few Megabytes of freed storage space.

Of course, when a game goes F2P the spending aspect is no longer a concern.

I think you got it backwards. A "Free" to play game goes out of its way, by pulling every trick out of the psychology book, to get their customers to spend even more than before. There will always be those who try to game the F2P system by not paying anything, but they are compensated by those who spend even more than a regular monthly sub's worth. A F2P game gambles on this.