My old account was deleted for inactivity, but my characters still exist

Okay so as the title says... i had a (really old) account with a few characters.. I geared them and everything, spent many hours on the server.. but due to recent inactivity clean ups i think my account was deleted. Last time i logged on was maybe a year ago. So I tried recovering the account at first, but I was receiving no email from warmane. I made this (new) account with the same email (that's when i realised that the account is deleted, it wouldn't otherwise let me create an account with the same email).
Out of curiosity i went to the armory to see if my characters are still there. And it turns out they are.
So I was wondering if there is a way i can get my old account back, or get the characters transfered to my new account?
I can verify that the characters are mine.. i have screenshots on the computer and everything. Even the character files are still on the computer.