Uh yeah...chances are the server is just down. This happened to me on another server yesterday. Characters don't show up on server select screen when the server is down.
As hard as it may be right now, just calm down and wait a bit.
Things like this always happen after a game launches. It's hard sometimes, but you don't really have any other choice but to wait.
There's also a post on the official EQ2 forum that says the same thing (characters on servers that are down don't appear at character select), so that may ease you a bit as well. Maybe.