The last time I checked (about 3 yrs ago) the official line was that no characters were deleted, and if you re-upped you could get those chars back.

I have 3 accounts. The game is bad and my kids don't play any more.

If I nuke these accounts, how long will my toons stay around?

I think the minimum amount of time that they _guarantee_ it for is 3 months, but they'd be foolish not to keep all character data indefinitely (or at the very least, archive it after a certain amount of time has passed).

My friend's account has been inactive for about 3 years, and the characters on that account still exist.

< 10 characters were deleted though at some point to save space. So be careful of leaving anything valuable on a < 10ish character (say... a bazaar mule).

Oh, good point, I had forgotten about that. I think it was only level 1 characters though?

I think they said it was for less then level 10 at the time. A friend told me about it and I was tempted to renew for a month just to save my bazaar mule but didn't in the end. When I came back for the free progression month, however, my level 1 mule was still there with all my plat :)