I know Blizzard will keep your characters indefinitely if you quit playing (I quit for a year (as in paying) and my characters were still there. I've quit for good 3 years ago so I don't know if they're still there or not). As for TOR I'm not a 100% sure but from what a friend of mine has told me his was still there after he quit playing for 5 months and recently started playing again (I've never actually quit paying even though I can rarely play it anymore due to my stupid internet (damn ISP)). I highly doubt they would toss them out though since it's now F2P and after the initial 700,000 subscribers quit playing the servers are finally starting to get full again (they went from like 20+ servers US side to 8 about 5-6 months ago due to the massive exodus and no characters were lost during the transition that I know of, I know my server is packed at peak times (thank god I'm a subscriber, I don't have to wait in queues like the masses of free players do)). Then again they might eventually to help clear out server clutter.