OMG, what are some of you smoking? The absolute last thing SE should be doing is anything that might deter somebody from resubscribing. Delete old character data, well, you just pretty much guarantee that those people won't be coming back.. ever.

Instead what they should do is start sending emails to these people telling them to check out all the new features, jobs, dungeons, gobbou mount, etc. etc.. Anything they might have missed since they quit playing. All on "new, more populated servers".

Heck, do what games like EVE and Aion do. Re-activate them for a free weekend, send em an email and tell em to come check it out.