Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=85984&page=1#10 Author: Somneli Time Posted: 2/10/2020 at 12:09 PM 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.

i think deleting once active accts is a bad idea, but i allso could support removing some who were never active in the first place. if they are lv 0, have no pets, and havent been online for some# of days, nothing is lost if they are removed

I went on hiatus for over a year and just came back two or three months ago. I was surprised I remembered my password and username but I felt so happy to be back in the community. All my pets had been unconscious so I revived them and went from there. Since then I've hit so many goals I hadn't before and I feel more experienced as a player.
I left this site originally because I hadn't been doing well and needed time to myself. As life went on I forgot about this until I signed up for FR and saw an ad for Sylestia. Now whenever I feel bad I come here to distract myself and dont plan on leaving anytime soon.
If I had come back to see my account had been deactivated without any notice, even an email, I would have been so crushed and disheartened that I probably wouldnt even try to solve the problem and just quit playing all together.
All I'm saying really is that life gets in the way and you dont have time to mention a hiatus because you dont know you'll be going on hiatus ^-^