Question regarding putting a cdkey on trial account

[nefar1973]

Hello,
I had a trial account maybe 2 or 3 months ago and was curious if I put a CDKEY on that account would the character I leveled up on it still be there?

[blakbyrd]

Yes it should be. My second account started as a trial an my characters remained when I used the CD key, but I did not have a time lapse between the trial and entering of the key.

Generally, you would be safe in having your characters remain, as they do not intentionally erase characters (even on expired accounts), or so they originally said. In almost every MMO you are safe for 6 months at minimum, some 1 year before you risk having a character deleted.

However, with the recent server merge, and the new statement from Turbine, that characters might no longer exist on an expired account, this is unsure. One unofficial way to find out would be to open a second trial account and see if those names are still available, but with the merge it may be difficult to really tell (also try the same name with the dash and server name following it, ie "-mabar" and see if it is available).

You may also wish to try contacting Turbine to see if that character still exists. To my knowledge no notice has been posted by Turbine about any intentional character deletions, so chances are they are still there, but the server merge may have cause your names to alter with the server name attached.

If you decision to return to DDO is determined by whether or not you can play those characters still, well I don;t know what else to tell you. If you want to come back with a cd key regardless, then try it...they will probably still be there, but if not, play and enjoy anyways. Keep in mind if they are still there that you may need to change their names anyways.