Character limit across all servers

it really depends on how the data is organized; if, for example, quests are stored as many:many instead of in a flat table with a 1:1 relationship between characters, then an empty quest log doesn't add any overhead. Storage may work similarly for the additional rows in your inventory and tabs in your cargo bag; doing it that way allows them to easily expand later empty inventory slots are likely null foreign keys as well.

all in all, I'd expect a newly created character to take up a fairly minimal amount of space.

Note the part I said *use* or profit. It is also not unheard of for people to *sell* character names for in-game currencies. Heck, in several other MMOs I've played, I have seen people voluntarily posting on server forums offering to buy a specific name from the current holder. You may say that isn't your motivation but who can really verify that? I know better then to take the words of an anonymous person on the internet at face value.

Invalid comparison because Nike would be registering variant of their own brand name. They wouldn't go around registering other domain names such as Adidas, Reebok or Puma. Are all of your placeholder characters just variations of one name?

Let me expand on my original comparison. Let's say that I am thinking about starting my own business. I haven't decided on what type of business but I have a bunch of plausible ideas. Being that ecommerce can be important to any startup business in today's digitally connected world, I decided to register a bunch of domain names in conjunction with all of those ideas. Six months later, I decide not to start my business for whatever reason (lack of funding, found a better job, etc) or just basically tanked. Now, whoever with a legitimate business need that came after me would have to either; a. buy the name from me or b. forced to use another name.

Business don't succeed by allowing their database stores to consume disk space with reckless abandon though. You have to set limits for your users. Even if the cost is relatively low, you can't expect to be a profitable business when you treat finite resources as if they were infinite.

Agree to disagree and move on?

the company cares, every char you make takes up data and space on tehier servers, it might seem a tiny amount fo data, but if every one made 100+ toons it adds up and overload the poor thing. and then since wow as a armory optoins that more data to populate said listing of 1000's of none used toons and totaly mess the thing up as you look thought tons of lvl 1 chars.

As I mentioned earlier, I actually still have a current subscription with CoH.

As for your character deletion idea, if this were only characters for which no progression had been made, sure. Otherwise, no. Players want the freedom to be able to come back to the game and still have their characters intact. Developers know this.

CoH has a similar limitation whereas characters on inactive accounts below level 6 are deleted from time to time. If TOR adopted a similar policy then I would not have a problem with it, though I would go to the trouble of playing every single one of my saved name characters to the minimum level in order to assure the name continued to be saved.

Note: My name save is not just to keep a popular name that many people want. My name save is to keep my name. It's not popular by any account and most likely no one else would ever want it.

Really? You claim to have imagination when you can't be bothered to think of a different name to use? Now yes I saw your thoughts about someone using the same name as you on a different person and being a jerk and thus giving you a bad name. But just because you took the name Blackavaar on every server doesn't mean that the harassing player couldn't take BIackavaar, B1ackavaar, 8lackavaar, etc etc, and still besmirch your name. Small differences, yes, but that doesn't mean it won't still affect you.

I have imagination because I come up with different characters with different names.

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

jackhole behavior like this is why I suggested that we impose a level limit on saved characters way back in beta.

If that character isn't at least level 2 it deleted at the end of the week.

People that do this only skew population stats and screw other people out of possible names.

Exactly when did he say he was quitting?

The OP implied it.

Emphasis mine.