Project Lore

WoW players now can change the race of their level 10 and higher characters - if they don't mind dishing out $25. Blizzard unveiled its new paid race change service today, about a month after adding the service as "coming soon" on the official website. All you have to do to start the process is logon to the Account Management page, click on the Race Change option (which is being promoted pretty heavily on the page at the moment), and follow the instructions. Here's a few items of note to take in mind when considering a race change. For full details, check out the FAQ on Blizzard Support.

• Just like other paid services such as faction change (which is handled separately), the $25 fee only covers the cost for one character's switch over. If you want to change the race of multiple characters, you will have to pay multiple times. Likewise, if you later decide to switch back to your original race, you'll have to pay for the service again.
• Your character has to be at least level 10 to become eligible. If you're lower level than that, just re-roll :). Also, Death Knights can't take up the service until they hit level 60.
• The purchase of a race change also includes character re-customization (that seems pretty obvious) and optionally, a name change. After purchasing the race change, the re-customization process will resemble the standard character creation process.
• Although there will be several new available race/class combinations in Cataclysm, those are not yet available. You can only change your race to one that supports your class. (Sorry druids, you're stuck for now).
• As for the availability of this service once those new combinations are available, Blizzard is being vague as to whether you'll be able to use this service to become, say, a troll druid. For now, the FAQ reads, "Details are not available at this time. As development continues, though, we hope to provide more information."
• You can change a toon's race once every three days, and if you change your toon's name, the old name will be locked for 90 days. Likewise, the cooldown for faction change service also has been reduced to three days.

And some vital info on your character's equipment / achievements / mounts /pets:

• Equipment and flight paths will be unaffected.
• Race-specific mounts will be exchanged for their cross-race equivalent. Non-race-specific mounts will be unchanged.
• Likewise, reputation associated with your character's previous race will switch to rep for the current race. Otherwise, reputation will not change.
• Honor points, marks of honor, etc for the most part are unaffected, but any that are pending may be lost.
• Non-combat pets also will be unchanged.
• Achievements and titles will not be affected.
• All active quests, however, will be cleared and their associated items destroyed upon completion of race change.
• Friends lists, ignore lists, guild status, arena teams, etc will be unaffected
• If you're not sure which races you can become, or want a detailed look at how your mounts and reputation will change, look at this nifty Blizzard tool to figure it out.

On my earlier post on that announcement, a lot of you commented that you were looking forward to getting a race change and/or sex change for your toons. How many of you still plan to use the service now that you know the details?