Wow, a third thread about the same thing in just over one week!
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No worries, just razzing you. Wish people would take the time to read before asking, though.

As for the whole deletion and loss of CD key and whatnot it's hard to say. Like it's been said, they clearly state that your CD key would become invalid and that your characters would be lost, however if you take a look at this you can see that one of my toons on AO, abandoned almost one year ago, is still there even though they claim to purge every 3 months as well (do a search there for Ichnameist). I've heard of people going back to AC more than a year after quitting to find their characters intact, too. As for the CD key, I highly doubt they'd do that. I mean, you spend so much money already, why on earth would you let anyone screw you like that when there are so many other games to play? I figure that was put in there to A) Scare people into not cancelling for fear of losing the ability to play ever again; and B) Cover their arses in case something horribly wrong happens to their archived data during one of their trademark 8 hour maintenance schedules.

Either way, here's a simple solution: If you're going to take a break, don't go for more than 2 months at a time. Either that or just pay the fee while you take your break, I know it sounds silly to say that, seems like a waste of money, but seriously most people make that money in an hour, 2 tops, at work.