@ Hardy

True, but WoW never eliminated your characters if you decided to take the summer off, for example. That, and deleting a character in WoW (where you have 10 slots per server), is usually a less common occurance than in FFXI, where you get 1 (plus additional slots at the cost of $1/mo per slot).

My question though, was why in the world, if they retained the data, would they have not allowed you to bring back your character WHENEVER up until this point in FFXI? I mean, WoW doesn't have "bring your old characters back!" weekends, because they probably write over deleted characters after X amount of time.

FFXI has had these time limited ressurection periods sporadically for years. It doesn't sound like good business to me.