Missing characters/returning account

My sister has returned to WoW after 7 years, I have been helping her get back into the game, and now she says she has some missing characters.

Does anyone know what would have happened to these characters? She has three accounts, she has returned with all three of them and none of those three accounts have those characters on either.

Check these steps:

Especially the last one, creating a new toon on the realm where the characters were supposed to be will often refresh the realmlist succesfully.

She’s currently updating the game right now we’ll try this afterwards. Thank you.

UPDATE: Okay so we tried the above tips and they didn’t work

But I found out she is playing on a starter edition, could this be the reason?

Are you sure she is looking at the right realm?

Normally this is due to being logged in to the wrong realm or account - we can look to help her out if she contacts us - as we may be able to search for her other account if she can provide us with as much information as she can remember!