What if, instead of having a wipe at all, we just have a MASSIVE black fog come over PS, and everyone falls unconcious. Then when everyone wakes up, all the pockets, and stats are empty. By that I mean, why delete the characters at all? just empty their pockets, and reset their stats to what ever they were after creation... if that info was saved... it propably wasn't was it.

...Well you could just have a "blank" character or... no that wouldn't work. Perhaps we could sort of make the character attched to the account come up with a "you need to build this character", and be redirected to the character creation wizard, but with the name, events, etc, or what ever info is actually saved in the profile their by default, so the player can change anything if they want. There... That
might work... mabye?

Wait I've got an even better idea! lets just wipe all the dam characters, and let the players sort it out after! There, genious!

Of course news of an impending wipe would be useful to give those less active users a chance to repent, and make sure their known before the wipe, so their names are not stolen.