_{I have no idea if this was spoken about before. Sorry if it was.}
Bare with me for this idea please.

A lot of older players haven't been on this site in awhile. Some haven't came back since over 1000 days. They have many pets that need to be revived and most of all they're just sitting there. I think it would be good to start deactivating accounts.
I doubt most of them are going to come back soon and if they do I doubt they'd remember the account they had set up.

I think we should start getting rid of these accounts.
Deactivating them or just purging them all together.
Force release the pets or just get rid of them. (Force release would probably be easier.)

I know this community values older players and what they've done but they clearly don't use their accounts anymore.

I think if they've been inactive for a year without a warning of hiatus the account should be deactivated. Not purged, just deactivated.
Another year or two after that if they haven't been on and status hasn't changed I think it's safe to say they probably aren't coming back.

This idea has a pretty good chance of being hated on but it's just an idea.
No sure possibility it'll take place.

I'd just like to hear what people think about this in general.

No.
You say that, but in the time I've been playing several people HAVE returned after extended hiatuses (some lasting multiple years- at least one who was perhaps last active before I even joined Sylestia, over five years ago)

Sometimes they just forgot Sylestia for a while, sometimes it's just life getting in the way as it often does.

(can you imagine what it would be like, if you were one of those people who for whatever reason couldn't play Sylestia for a very long time, but had loved it, you got the chance to come back, and everything you'd worked for those years ago was gone? Beloved pets, banished to the Shadow Realm? Your account deleted? It would be crushing and disheartening. As it is, those people can come back, look at all they had and still have, and dive back in and start enjoying themselves and learning how everything has changed since they were last on right off the bat)

Adding to that, many people who haven't been on for ages might yet have rare, long-retired Themes still set up to allow for breeding, too, and regardless of the fact of how long they've been away, other players can still feed those pets and breed with them.


(also purging/releasing/removing the accounts just wouldn't really work with the numbering system the site uses)

Oh heck no!!

I was vary sick for two years and is I came back and my account was gone I would be CRUSHED. It happened on other games (wolf den for example, Howrse too) and I felt so betrayed after putting in so much time to my virtual animals. I could never return to my game and I would not make another account.

With my condition I have now controls over when I flair up. I can be perfectly fine one day and on the brink of death the next and too busy with hospital visits and rehab to log in and put up a notice that I'm going into Hiatus.

I would be devastated by losing my pets and it would definitely make me resent the game if I lost them.

@Scathreoite
1.) Well I'm sorry. I don't get around this game a lot to know about these things. I get they do sometimes just have life problems, but this could also be avoided in game if they do come back. That's why I suggested the idea of deactivating the accounts. Deactivating the accounts, or having a button somebody could deactivate the account with so it doesn't get purged, would probably be better. Maybe just deactivate accounts until they log back in, the account could be visible it might not. Up to the person who hits the button and if they don't just make it visible.

2.) If I came back after 2 years and couldn't log into my accounts I'd be amazed I even remembered my username and password. Yeah, it would generally suck. Yet I wouldn't hate the game coders for doing that. I might make a new account, I might not. Maybe I wouldn't even come back after 2 years.

3.) This can be tied in with deactivating too. Just get rid of purging and deactivate the account. Except this means just deactivating the account would do nothing. The idea of this was to clear people who seem to have gone off of the virtual world and into the real world.

4.) I guess that's fair, just wanted to throw out an idea. \_()_/

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@Draumrkopa
1.) I generally do not know how you could be crushed by not having your account but then again I'm not that connected with my online life. I'd like for you to read 1.) and 3.) for what I put for Scathreoite.

2.) I'm sorry to hear that, I send you my best regards.

3.) Again, I'm not that connected with my online life. I don't understand how you could resent a game for losing fake pets. Or be devastated for that matter but I'll take your word for it.

The reason I cherish my virtual pets is because for the longest time I wasn't allowed actual pets. Now that I'm 20 and living on my own I can have pets but untill two years ago I could not have anything. I also grew up in a rather bad house. My biological father was the type of person that if I breathed in the wrong direction he would take and destroy something of mine. Sence these are virtual pets he could not physically take them and burn/crush/throw out them. I grew up knowing that things I loved were temporary and I was not worthy of even the air I breathed. My "Fake" pets were safe from his hatred and have been with me for a long time! ArgentAdurna and BjjarterSolus have been with me for 1,847 days! That's a little over five years!! These two Draeyl have always been with me and are definitely the longest surviving personal item I have ever had. Because of that I have grown greatly attached to them and consider them apart of my life. That is why I am so attached to them.

This suggestion pops up every now and then. I'm just going to quote Krin's answer to the first thread I could find with a somewhat similar suggestion (although this player also mentioned automatically selling everyone's pets for 1g) and move on.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=19929&page=2#16 Author: Krinadon Time Posted: 12/10/2014 at 5:31 PM We would never do something like this. Personally, I haven't played Everquest in probably 4 years. But I would cry a river if I logged in and a message popped up saying, "Sorry, your account has been deleted due to inactivity." I have so much invested into my character and the account as a whole. So I'm sure many others would feel the same way about their Sylestia account. Additionally, it's not that taxing to keep records - especially of players. We have well over a million pets now and conversely, under 30,000 players. If we were to remove everyone's account who hasn't logged in in the past 6 months, the server wouldn't even be able to notice. So there's really no positive to doing something like this, but lots of negatives. Sylestia will always be here for those who want to come back. This includes their account and their companions. =)

The only time I support deactivating accounts or deleting them, is if they are an actual harm to the servers. However, from what I have heard, inactive accounts tend to NOT be that harmful to the servers (if the game was coded correctly) and it is actually active players who are the most stressful to servers (which makes sense, since they are the ones actively using resources).

1. People spend money on this game. They have used that money to buy things for their pets, or to get the pets in the first place.

2. Players have pets that can be memorial pets, or to commemorate special dates etc..

3. Players can't always know when they are going to be inactive for years. There are jobs out there that can make a person not be able to log onto a game site for quite a while, because it isn't considered important enough to utilize the resources (and for those jobs, it isn't).

4. Players can come back for all sorts of reasons. I have been talking about sylestia on other sites Iam on, that has caused a couple of players to come back and check it out again.

I am not trying to be rude, but just because you don't get attached to pixels, doesn't mean everyone is the same way. If Sylestia were to disappear overnight, I would be upset and sad, but get over it. However, if I were to have something happen in my life that meant I couldn't get back to sylestia for a period of time, and came back and all my hard work, the money I may or may not have put into it, and time has been erased, I would be very upset and mad, and I definitely would not want to rejoin the site, because it might happen again.

That isn't good for sylestia in the long run either. I have seen many players, on multiple sites, talk about sites that deactivate accounts, and in general the consensus is, they aren't going to rejoin those sites because their accounts were deactivated and they don't want to go through that again. They are by far the majority of players I have seen. The minority are the players who would be perfectly okay with a site deactivating their accounts (and in rare cases giving the stuff they have on the account to other players).

@Draumrkopa
I'm not really sure what to say to you. So I guess I'm sorry for making you talk about this stuff. Sorry for how bad your childhood was.

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@Imperium
Ack, yeah. Sorry for making this idea pop up again. I just didn't know if it was suggested before or spoken on.

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@Jemadar
1.) I understand people have spent money on this game, but that was there choice. Though yeah, money is money. They spent money on a game. Everybody would be pissed with this idea if that happened because of all the money they spent.

2.) Not sure what to say about this to be honest. I guess that's just something some people do.

3.) I understand this, everybody has to grow up and things get thrown in the way.

4.) I get this was a stupid idea to bring up. I personally do not see how people could get attached to pixels or anything online like this for that matter, but everybody is different. I really don't have much else to say on this, mainly because I just wanted to throw out my idea instead of starting debates.

I generally don't think we should be giving away pets to other players. Releasing would just be better for everybody instead of letting people grab them up and waste them away.

Yeah, Though I haven't seen this come up on this site before (I am relatively new) this suggestion is a lot better than most. Unfortunately most of the 'delete inactive account' suggestions I have seen else where are actually 'these accounts have items/pets I want, so redistribute those items so I can get my hands on them' suggestions. So, this actually isn't a bad idea, if it were for the servers' sake, but I simply don't support deleting or punishing inactive players simply for being inactive.

I think people get too attached to pixels, definitely, but it a natural instinct for people to get attached to things they put emotional investment in. Do you ever get attached to a character in a book or a movie? This is no different.

The thing with the spending money is that yeah, it was a choice, but so is deleting accounts. If the site were to suddenly start deactivating accounts, that could hurt them in the long run, because it very well could make players much more hesitant to spend money. I know that I personally would not want to spend money on a site where if something were to happen and I couldn't log in for a while, then my money would be down the drain so to speak, especially if I had spent money before that policy had been put into place.

Sites that have this from the beginning are slightly different, because players know (or should if they read the rules etc..) that this could happen. Instituting such a policy midstream, so to speak, isn't a good move, unless it is necessary for the health of the site in the long run.

to be honest, I have never understood players' problems with inactive accounts. I can somewhat understand the sadness of seeing pretty things not being used, but they aren't mine, so they aren't my problem.

There is one other issue I thought of: pets that are for sale. While most of those pets will never be sold at the price they are listed, there are some that might.

I was looking at a pet the other day for 10K, because it was the right sex and had a trait I wanted as well as 5 other visible traits. The owner hadn't been active in over 900 days. I might buy that pet, eventually. Were this to be implemented, I would never have the choice to buy that pet, even if it were perfect for what I have in mind, because that pet would be autoreleased along with all the other long term pets on the AS.

I generally agree with what's been said by others. Sometimes players do come back, and even if they don't, their pets for sale or breeding can still be utilized by others.

I used to play Howrse. I didn't spend a penny of real money, but I put a lot of time into events so I could get items you usually had to pay for. I went inactive for a while. Eventually remembered the site, still knew my user name and password, but discovered that literally all of what I had was wiped away. I have no interest in making a new account and starting from scratch.

I don't think it's even necessarily getting attached to the pixels, though I am more likely to feel that way than some people. There's also a time investment, and that's not something you can get back.

One thing I might support would be removing players who literally never got past generating their starter and haven't been active since the day they signed up. Those people are extremely unlikely to return, but even if they did, nothing is really lost. And that would free up those user names too.

But otherwise, yeah. On a game like this where we can still make use of inactive accounts' pets and there are many people who return from long hiatuses, I don't support removing accounts. I've been through that on Howrse and I know how it feels. I'd hate for one of my inactive friends to feel ready to return only to find everything gone and give up on the whole site as a result.