Character Slots Problem

Hello,

The merge seems to be a success.
All my characters are in place and have everything - at least what i saw - with them.
Positions, mail, items and equipment, on a first look, its all there, just pretty cluttered in place.

A good chance, to get rid of the olf Prefs and recreate the things, but now with a lot more experience then before.

The new mousecursors look pretty cool, really ^^

Sadly, there is a downside that i saw nobody talking about and i think it deserves more attention.
I have 16 characters on my paid account, 8 from Atlantean and 8 from Rimor.

http://i47.tinypic.com/33ys0u8.jpg
"There is no available character slot to activate this character"

Please, dear AO god, that you've been so strickt with me with the loot (remember the JEPP after 3 years farming) or the unforgiving Perkerrors i made what you could not forgive a whole 2 years before you granted a reset. You have let me rot on newbie island for weeks but now, now i demand your attention more then ever before.

Dear AO god, i please you, dont reduce half of my characters.

this has been answered multiple times but your characters wont be reduced in half.
its unclear how many characters you can activate, but its been told to be greater than 8, and most popular guesses are between 10 and 12. your extra toons wont get deleted.

You can most likely later purchase more character slots but thats also unclear if its hard cash, fc points, some pvp/pvm achievement or something else.