Last month we reported on potential next steps for Chinese World of Warcraft players who were being left in the lurch as a result of Blizzard and NetEase’s partnership ending, including the potential for those players to save their account data. It would appear that those plans are moving forward, as a set of data strings unearthed from the PTR build of Dragonflight’s patch 10.0.5 illustrate.
It appears that this account save feature will effectively create an archive file and let players download the archive for later use. The code otherwise doesn’t hold many new details beyond reconfirming the January 23rd sunset date and some expected success and error messages. Of course, the timing for this patch’s arrival is up in the air; ideally this update will be available before the blade falls on the Chinese version of WoW, although it’s unclear how Blizzard intends to safeguard future servers against potential alterations in reuploaded files.
In other WoW news, the Classic servers’ Arena Season 5 shutdown date was miscommunicated: The current season will end on January 9th instead. The season’s end will also see arena point costs for Deadly Gladiator gear halved, while Savage and Hateful Gladiator gear will only be purchased with honor, though that gear’s costs will also be reduced. The start of Season 6 is yet to be tied down.
