Just got this from the official forums:
Quote:
Okay folks, your characters are not gone. I'm a former beta tester so I wanted to share with you two things so you can rest assured that your characters are not gone.
When the server goes down (locked), temporarily the server can't view any characters so that's why you can't see them. Once the server is in the process of coming back up (also locked), the characters are then viewable but you can't enter the server. So, do not fret when this happens.
http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=tech_support&message.id=705