While I agree that it's fair, I am at a loss as to why it's necessary in the first place. Would it be a big problem to keep old accounts?
Storage and performance have increased over the years. 12 years ago, it was quite a problem. Today it is easier, but there needs to be a time after which we really wipe your data. One reason is performance - we would have almost 40,000 accounts in the database today, and probably half a million characters if we didn't clean things out occasionally, and all that data would make everything else slower.
The other reason is legal. In the European Union, where the BattleMaster service resides, personal information such as e-mail addresses and names, may only be kept if you have a reason to do so. We do have a reason to keep the data from people who are playing the game, but not for people who don't. So after a reasonable period during which they can still be assumed players, just not active right now, I am legally obliged to wipe the data.
The exact time has never been defined because it varies for every business or institution and depends on many factors, so it's a judgement call until someone sues you and a judge defines it, which is a good incentive to really make it reasonable.
So with all that said, we could easily double it with todays servers, but even if it's 6 months we will have people coming back to the game, disappointed that their family was deleted.
Yes, it was. Sorry for that. But for everyone one of you, there are a hundred or so other players who also went away and will never come back, and short of precognition we have no way of knowing to delete their data, but not yours.
