[KaVir]

I recall one mud I used to play where you had two types of rent - the standard one, where you'd pay X gold per day (run out of money and everything vanishes) and a sort of cryogenic sleep where you had to pay a few days worth of rent in advance, but it was a flat fee, and lasted until you next logged on (for people going on vacation and such).

The latter tended to discourage casual play though - if you were on vacation and happened to spend half an hour at an internet cafe, you couldn't log on to say "hi" without reactivating normal rent. Likewise, if your time was limited (exam, work deadline, etc) you had to completely block yourself from the mud until you had more time again.

Because, as others have observed, those players will often come back. Sometimes not for months, or even years, but they know they've got a character waiting for them if they ever feel like dropping by. Sometimes a new feature catches their attention and they start actively playing again - often bringing in new players from whatever other game/s they'd been playing.

If someone's only played for a few minutes or so, I'll eventually wipe them, but if they've invested time into building up their character I see no reason to ever delete them. It's not as if they're taking up much HD space.

We basically only have an autodelete on lower levels. Almost every pfile above level 100 has been there for years. And if you come back and you can't log onto your character. We have backups!

[Threshold]

With the exception of name availability (which can also be remedied in other ways), I simply can't see a GOOD reason for deleting old characters.

The low barrier to re-entry is one of the huge benefits of MUDs and free to play games in general.

All it takes is for a player to have some random memory about your game while they are going about their normal life, and next thing you know they are logging onto your game again. It may be many months or years later. But if their reason for checking back was nostalgia, and their character is gone, that really kills the nostalgia.

Furthermore, in RP/IC games, old character represent a very interesting historical opportunity for existing, newer players. It is like people who enjoy talking to WWII veterans to hear about their experiences.

[Newworlds]

We delete characters after one year of inactivity. The reason for this is story and game continuity. We are so dynamic and ongoing that players over a year old are so far out of the loop they might as well recreate.

Take that as a warning New Worlds Ateraan players. Log in or be deleted.