I must cry on your shoulders...
I played all Friday April 29th with my old character but when I tried to join servers today I was unable. It kept saying "connection with server was lost" or just unable to connect.
I went to website character page and nothing was visible so I made a new character (Kabookieson), as the prompt stated to do when you can't see your character, so I could access my old name. I log in with new character and the old character name is selectable but it has no stats and gear I did not buy and is a starter character.
Friday I had been playing with a 17th generation character at lvl 30 which had several multi-heirloomed items and several other items.
I see most people have their old characters and sure wonder what happened