Character from 2017/2018 gone.

Hey, is there any chance whatsoever to recover a character from around 17/18?

Log in game and rename them, they are still there.

If not, they were too low level and were deleted in cleanup.
Also, someone might have logged your account and cleaned it out, check your account history for unusual activity.

Will try to check! When I log in and get to the server select, Icecrown shows (1) but when I join the server there's nothing.

Then you were hacked, your characters were too low level and were cleaned up, or you are signing in to the wrong account.

The log says nothing (I had authenticator on back in 2017) - The character was an 80 DK, odd!