Auto Account Deletion (or: demise of the 53489 in-actives)

Kind of what it says on the tin, and probably an old suggestion.
Quite a few games maintain an automatic account deletion system, mostly to free up account names for people who will actually use it.
Say someone would like to use his standard username "Dopey". He won't be able to use it, because an in-active already exists by that name, thus forcing the new player to pick a new name he doesn't have an connection with.
On a more realistic (and more current) note, there are a metric ton of in-actives that can be freely farmed.
While this is a boon for individual account growth, it also hinders the contest usually found in and associated with a strategy game, i.e. the race for resources.
Why build an economy when you can more-or-less reliably farm in-actives for 7-8 bill per pop?
It has already been seen that this course of events leaves the game a tad stale, if not dead in the water.

How this would play out:
An account has not been used for X months.
An automatic e-mail would be sent to the e-mail address with coupled with this account to inform the player he has an account in disuse, and he has Y amount of time to either return or have their account automatically destroyed (caught in the crossfire or something, I don't know).

Should the player return, okay. if not, at least he won't hinder competition or clog up the ranking pages.

(And this coming from someone with a six page farm list... sheesh)

This will probably never reach Admin (not before he decides to pull the plug, at any rate) but it might be something for him to consider in future endeavors.

ah.
the idea seems fair enough

however, what happens when every inactive gets deleted?

Gamniac wrote:[...]
This will probably never reach Admin (not before he decides to pull the plug, at any rate) but it might be something for him to consider in future endeavors.

i blame the gravity
kthxbye

I'm almost certain Admin or Keinutnai don't even log in anymore.

What happens when every inactive gets deleted?

1. Accounts are more reliant on their own economy (or have to take more risks when farming);
2. Actual players have a bigger influence on Administrative Efficiency (on account of no longer having 51987 really tiny accounts dragging the average down);
3. We get a clear Line of Sight on the actual player-base.

...Actually, number three might also be a reason why this hasn't been implemented yet.

Gamniac wrote:What happens when every inactive gets deleted?

1. Accounts are more reliant on their own economy (or have to take more risks when farming);
2. Actual players have a bigger influence on Administrative Efficiency (on account of no longer having 51987 really tiny accounts dragging the average down);
3. We get a clear Line of Sight on the actual player-base.

...Actually, number three might also be a reason why this hasn't been implemented yet.

or because we will have less than a page to look on the battlefield

Basically the same thing, as far as I can tell.
Number 3 is more collateral, of anything, I just thought it might need mentioning.

If AW had more going for it, we could have been looking at 2 pages or more!
As it stands (and has stood for three years) it just lacks a soul and heart (and I'm not talking about community or player base).

Or the fact people have paid money and that might not look good or things.

There were even people who complained that their account is gone even though they themselves deleted their account (they didn't get hacked or anything). They just wanted to play again, and wanted to get back what they had before, admitting they deleted their account because they didn't plan on playing again.

A lot of people who left the game without deleting their accounts returned one day, sometimes even after 1 or 2 years, and continued playing. Now imagine what would happen if we deleted accounts automatically. Many of those who would returned, after finding out that their account was deleted might not want to start fresh, and on top of that be pissed that we deleted it. On the other hand, people who return, even though they might have small population compared to top players, they would have 6000 turns and what not. And that would be very helpful for them.

This is why accounts will not be deleted.

Maybe set it up so that after a point it goves inactive and no longer shows in ranks but becomes active the moment they login.