Wotlk Returning Player

So I've decided to come back to Wotlk and have had this account since 2011 and have not logged on in years. I wanted to see what characters I had but for some reason through the website page at least, there are no characters showing up. I am downloading the client now to try and load up the game to see if my characters are still there but the question I had is if older characters were at some point deleted?

Thanks for the help!

If you haven't logged in since 2011, then your charecters are gone. I suggest emailing [email protected]