Suggestions

from what ive read, the reason you cant delete your account is because they would like you to be able to come back to it later if you please
so i was thinking
what if it wasnt an instant deletion? what if it was like some other sites i know where you can choose to deactivate your account and if you dont log back in in a certain amount of time (usually like 20 days at least) then itll be deleted
im not sure if this is a good idea or not but i was just brainstorming a bit
itd be nice to be able to delete accounts for old users who dont want to play anymore but dont want to keep taking up usernames for new players

I have always been for being able to 'remove' your presence on a site if you wish it, unless there was a very compelling reason why not.

However, I feel that, due to the nature of the site, account deletion shoudl be something like this:

Hit delete, then an email is sent to you. If you click the link, you have six months where you will be 'locked' out of your account, as it is in deletion mode. Potentially the only place that will be open for you to go is the news section, any other place will mark your account as 'active' and you have to start the deletion from the beginning.

If you don't click the email, after say a week (or perhaps less) the link in the email is invalid, and you have to send another deletion email.

Once your account is deleted, your UN is changed to your account ID, all dragons are auto exalted (after having all items/familiars removed) and all currency and items just poof into the aether.

HOwever, no emails are sent out to 'remind' players that they are inactive but can delete their accounts if they want (imagine how that would feel, thinking about getting back into a game, and suddenly get an email that says 'hi, I noticed your account was inactive, why don't you delete it if you aren't going to use it?).

After a certain period of time after your account is deleted, you are eligible for making a new account (but it would be like another month to six months after the actual deletion of the account potentially).

I think voluntary account deletion is a good thing! I'm someone who usually scrubs old accounts that remain abandoned for too long and that I have no intention of ever coming back to. Usually for privacy reasons since I'm a bit of a blabbermouth, but also because I think it's weird to have a continual presence in something I have abandoned for whatever reason.

It's not like a user's account is getting deleted for inactivity, they have the ability to *choose* this. And there will be security features like the aforementioned email verification. And if someone really wants to come back they can always make a new account.

I think it would be fine.

Though I agree with having an email verification and an inactive version for a month to six months before it is "purged" to prevent rash decisions and endless support tickets from regretful ragequitters.

And they should definitely be informed both at deletion and the final notification of impending purge that dragons exalted and items deleted cannot be retrieved.

Due to the EU Right To Be Forgotten, it's actually a GDPR violation to not offer the option to delete one's own account.

Account deletion hence needs to be available, because the game is accessible from Europe.

Dragons that were associated with that account could simply be exalted to a placeholder account (those already exalted would be reassociated with the placeholder account) of the same flight. This anonymizes former ownership and keeps lineage records intact.
Inventory, treasure and gems would of course be gone for good.

[quote name="Ettanin" date="2020-08-03 02:31:55" ] Due to the EU Right To Be Forgotten, it's actually a GDPR violation to not offer the option to delete one's own account. Account deletion hence needs to be available, because the game is accessible from Europe.[/quote] This. I thought it was already available due to the updates to EU digital rights when all that happened, up until a few days ago when I saw on the dev tracker that it wasn't. This isn't really optional anymore.

[quote name="Ettanin" date="2020-08-03 02:31:55" ] Due to the EU Right To Be Forgotten, it's actually a GDPR violation to not offer the option to delete one's own account. Account deletion hence needs to be available, because the game is accessible from Europe. [/quote] Huh, that's actually really interesting. I doubt they'd be targeted since they're a pretty small site, but it's still better safe than sorry. It takes one spited, petty user making 1 anonymous tip to get in hot water with the law, assuming it works like how other similar things in the US work. I'm not from the EU, so I'm not familiar with their laws haha. Also, it's just, imo, the right thing to do. It's silly to go "Well, you might come back later!". The only problem would be their dragons, however. If they're insta exalted, that may raise issues with owners of very large lairs having all their dragons suddenly count towards dom. If they were simply deleted, I'm not sure how that would effect lineages. Maybe when you delete an account, all dragon bios are wiped, your profile is wiped and locked and your un is changed to something generic like "deleted user"? Tbf, it's a lot harder to implement a system like this after you have a site running for almost a decade, but it should still be done.

If I remember right, progens don't actually count towards dom standings, so they could use the same/similar code to prevent dragons from closed accounts from counting. Probably, at least.