Characters from older game version disappeared

[lukstra]

I played planeshift a while ago, and after returning recently, saw that all of my characters created in previous versions of the game had disappeared (except for the character I created last summer). Was there something that happened, an update or something else, that could have caused this? Is there any way I can recover my characters?

[LigH]

How long ago did you play these other characters the last time? Was that more than 3 years ago? ... If so, they might have been deleted due to inactivity.

Try to contact weltall in PlaneShift related IRC channels on FreeNode.

[lukstra]

I last played the characters at the beginning of last summer, though stopped because they caused the client to crash frequently. Also, I a am not really familiar with the jargon your using. What are the IRC channels on FreeNode?

[Minks]

IRC = internet relay chat
freenode = an irc server, the chat channel for planeshift is on there

How to get there?
Like this:
http://www.planeshift.it/irc.html