Stopped playing for 3-4 months and went back, as far as I know, they haven't deleted any old chars for now.
I was pretty burned, but now i'm having fun with my Mordred shammie. I can't bring myself to log back into the regular RvR servers. Too boring. They even made a PvE only server, no war and no Realms, you can go everywhere and not kill or be killed by any player. It makes me want to puke.

They seem to be going to give insta lvl 20 chars to ppl having 50s and theres new lowbie battlegrounds for lvl 15-20. I might try a few chars that way when I get my shaman to 50. I'm not doing the exp grind again.
Didn't bought the expansion, too expensive to import into Spain and I haven't yet seen everything in the "old lands".