Happened to me yesterday. VERY ANNOYING. The whole concept of this game is that if you die you lose everything so the stakes are as high as they can be in a game like this. It is very annoying when you do everything to stay alive and have a good gear with enough food (is there enough food in this game), water and weapons playing long hours just to LOSE everything right when you could have fun roaming full geared up.
I do not wish to come down as rude but when I saw that this bug is acknowledged and "Priority: normal, Severity: none" and is known for more than 2 month now and still clears people characters it made me a little upset.
I hope this issue is getting the attention and time it needs because this is by far the most pressing and devastating problem among the ones in the from page.