I was only able to get in about six or seven hours of gameplay in the open beta. That is not a complaint. With my schedule, it’s actually average to what I play in a month for all my Blizzard games.
My question here is I created a character, got him to (I think) level 12 or 13. When the game goes live, will I still have my character, or do I start over?
I have no complaints with the game as I am familiar with Beta versions, but I would really like to keep my character.
Everything gets wiped. Sorry friendo
Beta characters are wiped. Sorry.
Whelp, goodbye and RIP, Wulfgarr.
Pretty sure you keep it into next weekend and still have a change to unlock the level 20 reward but after that it gets wiped before the “real” launch.
Progress from this weekend carries over to the comming weekend. But thats it, everything gets purged. Only the lvl 20 achievement sticks for the titles and mog.
I drive a truck and have been home on staycation for a couple weeks to help my daughter and grandson move to a new home. I probably won’t get in any computer gaming time again after tomorrow until 06 May.
In fact, that reminds me, I need to install on the laptop I use in the truck, so thanks for that.
Honestly, since there will be more than two months of not playing between the beta and live, I think I will want to start over with a new character and go through the early game again - I’d probably start over even if keeping my character was an option. 
If you want the reward only, just focus the campaign (yellow star) and killing groups of monsters, you should be able to hit 20 in an hour or two (dont go exploring or adventuring or you can easily burn a few hours with low xp).
They will persist through the open beta next weekend, but not for the full release in June
Quite probably loot drops are tuned up right now as well with the reduced level cap (though maybe we will have this many legendaries at 25 in the full release, since there’s item types ABOVE that)
This is how they said it would work. Progress carries over to open beta, wiped after open beta is done before launch where we all start fresh in a game that they’ve finished, and hopefully made improvements to.
I ran through the campaign 4x (once with each character on SC, once with the Sorc on HC). It was about 90m-2h, and only hit Level 12-14 each time, on WT2.
I believe it will carry over to the next beta, but nothing is carrying over to the full game except the achievement for hitting 20 which gets you the wolf backpack in the full game.
Actually just found another post about it
No. You keep the early access beta toon until the next beta. You can keep playing. However after the OPEN beta is over, all toons are wiped and you start over at launch.