You guyz are citing cost saving as the mitigating factor for the server reset and deleting all the characters. I say, you will lose more money by deleting the characters because people that have been paying for this game and spent countless hours building their characters are gonna stop paying and playing. I know if I had been paying you for any length of time and you deleted my character after I'd spent hundreds if not thousands of hour building it, I'd never give you another cent of my hard earned money. You are either too lazy to back up the databases and merge them after the server reset, or you are doing this as a way to force the closure of the game without having to pay people refunds, which you would have to do if you just shut the game down, to ease your financial burden. It's time to think about the people that are giving you the finances you are in such a tizzy bout and make it work for them without them suffering the penalty.
