Unscheduled Server Maintenance - 11.03.2011

I think the reason they seem to have restored all the "link data" is that it was never deleted.
I recall at the beginning of the "char missing" thread, people were talking about how the missing chars still appear in guilds.

So the reason the restoration is so perfect is that the deletion was messed up.

Yeah, they've restored whatever it was they deleted... who knows exactly what that was, other than the link from the account to the character, and the IGN reservation.