Star Wars Galaxies Character Deletion Article
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Now every MMOG company has the usual written disclaimers that say after (x) amount of time, your character stands a good chance at getting permanently, irrevocably, deep-sixed. I don't think any one of them has actually done it, because, after all, that person might just come back especially when little things like expansions get released. Besides in most cases, the actual characters don't take up much space anyway.
Star Wars Galaxies is different, though, and has long been plagued by weird database issues. While it'd be a stretch to say it is FUBAR'd, during the beta and the initial disastrous launch, numerous issues were blamed on the database. This is because each and every item created in the game has it's own database entry and serial number. In other words, if you are grinding your way to Master Artisan and create 200 widgets in an evening session, or your factory is merrily churning them out, you've created 200 database entries or more if the pieces also required subcomponents. That's a lot of overhead. They've done a decent job at reducing the needless database entries, most notably introducing the (practice mode), where as you create widgets you tell the system, (Hey, I'm just grinding out these here parts, no need to actually make the item - and database entry. (Aside: if your skill advancement for crafting is so reliant on the concept of grinding that you need to have an option to not create an item a crafter is forging, the assorted database issues aren't the primary concern the fact that's a good sign the crafting system sucks as a whole might warrant a look-see.) The database issues also accounted for a decent amount of overhead in the Beta, most notably the infamous Bazaar terminals that would bog down like they hit the trash compactor and R2 wasn't around to fix it.
