Quote Originally Posted by Neira View Post
You say used to. As in they stopped doing it? I'm pretty sure they did, since I spent years away without losing my character before. So, a MMO released in 2003(13 years ago), stopped deleting characters who were inactive... when? A decade ago? Longer? Why is that used as an argument as if it's still a valid practice for modern day MMOs? It's about the same as people saying how great our housing is compared to Ultima Online; the extra irony about that one is in my signature.
I think SE stopped regularly deleting inactive FFXI accounts roughly 8 years ago (although past that date they still made no guarantees your data would be kept intact beyond 90 days).

Even to this day many MMOs will delete data (namely names - consider how crazy players can be about retaining those) of inactive users to free them up for active players. Blizzard just finished a purge in WoW towards the end of 2015. So, yes, it's still a very valid practice.

Quote Originally Posted by Solarra View Post
I get what you are saying, it could certainly be a lot worse. However, that doesn't make this right or fair.
I don't think "right" or "fair" are the proper terms to use here. That would be like me saying that I don't think it's right or fair that (insert undesirable FFXIV mechanic here) exists. If they didn't call it housing reclamation, they could have simply had a very reasonable system where characters were required to pay property taxes on their land every 45 RL days (that's about every 2 1/2 years in Eorzea time) - that would still require you to log in every 45 days to keep your house. We could call it it "inconvenient" or "annoying", but it's no less "right" or "fair" than anything from DPS-checks to dungeon penalty lock-out timers.

There are plenty of things in FFXIV that are not "right" or "fair" - like not being able to send mail or share a house with your alternate characters, or the fact that a major feature like housing is not available to every subscriber that wants one. I don't count the 45 day activity requirements as part of that, though. Just my opinion.