Account The term account usually refers to the " World of Warcraft " subscription account of a player on Battle . net . Battle . net . Prior to 2009 , the World of Warcraft account was separate from a player ' s Battle . net account , but since then they are merged , so the Battle . net account is the now the central account for all Blizz ard games . Although logging to the account can happen from the specific game program , all Blizzard games can be launched and logged in from the Battle . net desktop app . A Battle . net account can have up to 8 World of Warcraft licenses at a time . World of Warcraft . Generally , an account can have up to 10 character s on each realm , with a maximum of 50 characters per account . Special features based on registering with a Collector ' s Edition or Digital Deluxe Edition version , expansion upgrades ( like upgrading an account for Burning Crusade ) and promotional codes ( like for a BlizzCon ) , are associated with your account , and make those features available to all the characters under that account . If one person logs into an account while someone else is playing a character on it , the one who was already playing will automatically get logged off from the game . Inactive World of Warcraft account . An account can go inactive as soon as game time runs out , but a player can also request their account be made inactive by contacting Battle . net support which will also suspend expectation of a subscription payment . Using support to make an account inactive will flag its account data be preserved with priority over involuntary inactivation account . Character names of an account that has been inactive since December 7 , 2010 will be released for re - use . An inactive account may have trouble posting on the official forum s . Re - activating an account . The normal method of re - activating an account would be to purchase more game time via a standard subscription or with a Battle . net Gift Card ( or Battle . net Balance Card ) . Returning players can use a to re - activate an account with in - game gold ( somewhere around needed depending on Auction House price on realm ) . Until early 2014 , active players could use a Scroll of Resurrection invitation to help a returning player re - activate their account for 7 days plus other benefits to both players . In Legion . In Legion , Transmogrification looks are accessed via an Account - wide UI and the need for keeping items around purely for transmog purposes should no longer be needed . In Warlords of Draenor . The Collection window for holding more Account - wide items was introduced with Warlords of Draenor initially only with a Toy Box tab for toy s , but an Heirlooms tab was added in Patch 6 . 1 . In Mists of Pandaria . Starting with the Mists of Pandaria expansion , items tagged with the Bind to Account attribute can be mail ed among characters on different realms ( even across faction s ! ) using the the naming scheme " charactername " - " realmname " . Also such things as battle pet s , , mount s and toy s since then have been integrated into the UI so once they are use , they can be summoned Account - wide via UI elements such as the Mounts and Pets window ( specifically the Pet Journal for battle pets ) . In WoWWiki . However in WoWWiki , an account can mean your Wikia ( WoWWiki ) account or the identity you use to store your Wikia ( WoWWiki ) preferences and log into in order to make edits .