Character Permanence

[The Camel]

I hope this hasn't been asked before - I've searched the guides and forums and so on, so here we go:

How permanent are characters? Do they exist until you delete them? From what I can tell, there's no "permadeath", but are character files "purged" every so often, e.g. if the game updates or so on. If I create a character, will I be able to play it until I no longer want to?

[Karyuu]

Talad really doesn't like character wipes, so unless we specifically clean out the DB for some extremely rare reason, your character is kept "forever." However, we can guarantee that there will be at least one wipe before we hit 1.0, and chances are there will be several along the way - to rebalance the game as features develop, eliminate bugged accounts created after a certain date, etc.

But again, these are very rare and I wouldn't worry about them as you play. Other than that, characters are never removed, no matter how old your account is.

[The Camel]

Thanks Karyuu - I understand that of course it's sometimes necessary to do a wipe. Secondary question then - would these wipes solely be a "technical" wipe? I've seen some games where they build the wipes into the storyline, like changing the world to a different world, armageddon etc, and as a result everything from before - character names and personas, kingdoms and clans, friends and so on are lost and forced to be discarded for roleplay reasons.

I guess my question is - if a wipe does happen, would players be able to just re-make their old characters and continue as before? It's much less of a hassle to just recover the technical aspects, training, gear and so on than it is to be forced to write off a character/concept totally and start afresh. I get attached to my characters. 

[Karyuu]

The wipes are purely technical, so we never force you to roleplay them as some calamity and therefore start with different characters/memories/guilds. Usually the only aspects wiped are items or stats/skills, and your actual character is left just as it was right after creation. In the case of a wipe where the characters have to be removed too (and I'm thinking this may occur when all the races are implemented, so you can change to another if you like the model), we'll probably have a way for you to register your current email and character name, so you can recreate it just as before if you wish.

[The Camel]

Thank you Karyuu, that's very reassuring.