Why the large number of inactive players and fellowships?

[DeletedUser7309]

Of the cities within my 149 provinces, one has a message up saying “quit game” and there are another 45 spaces. Is that a record??
Not a big concern for me but trades are slow to be picked up even at 1:1 across tiers

 

[BuilderViktor]

I have only been a member since the beginning of May (2019) and it appears to me that the reason for so many inactive players may be because although the game is "free" to play it can become rather tiresome waiting for many things to occur or expensive to get going. I should have made notes when I began about the seemingly (to me) delays between things I could do but unfortunately failed to do so. For me, the answer seemed to me to buy more and more diamonds. This enabled me to get to a point now where I have a lot of things going on. Because I am retired and can spend time on this game I have managed to become a little more self-sufficient within the game but still find that I must act more hesitantly when upgrading or find myself wanting to buy diamonds. I have spent a lot of cash, approaching three figures (I am unaware if this is excessive), on this game and do not intend to stop playing before getting my monies-worth. To get to this point I have spent a lot of time getting things at the shortest times. I have noticed that the shorter the time period for buying goods the quicker the return. For example, buying one thing every five minutes is better than buying something else every 15. The shorter item @ 45 items every 5 mins is better than 111 items at 15 (3x45=???) but you must be available to restart the purchase every 5 mins. for it to work. Anyhow, this is my pennyworth of comment.

 

[Pauly7]

If accounts cannot be deleted @Muf-Muf, the question that keeps surfacing that I've never really seen an answer on is why are these inactive cities not being moved onto the outside of the map? Like others have said there are lots of people on my visible map that are typically somewhere between chapter 3 and 5 and the cities have been dead since the middle of 2017 when I was first moved to this spot.

 

[BuilderViktor]

Most abandoned cities are from people that sign up and then find they don't like the game so just never log in again, those cities should get removed after 30 days of inactivity. It's great when that happens but the problem is with the cities where the player has paid real money into the game for whatever reason or reached chapter 3 in the research tree, if a city meets one of those criteria it never gets removed. As @LazyTony said there have been many complaints about dead cities but nothing ever gets done.

Perhaps, after a pre-determined period of inactivity, an email could be sent requesting the player to answer within a certain time. Needless to say, should it not be answered someone will say they did not receive the message, however, I believe there are ways to prove that it has been received. So, after sending the message and there has been no reply the city could be, 1) removed if no hard cash has been spent; 2) if cash has been spent, move the city to a "wastelands" where it can sit out of the way, a) forever, or b) deleted after a further predetermined time, when obviously, some records must be retained concerning the city and player but not on the world map. I realize there may be legalities which must or should be observed at this time, but the organisers of the game should not stick their proverbial "head in the sand", a limit will eventually occur if nothing is done about inactive players and obviously stagnant cities. Should there be a reply then obviously the situation would depend on the contents of the message.

 

[DeletedUser1874]

I realize there may be legalities which must or should be observed at this time

Nothing that'd prevent them from eliminating accounts that have been inactive for years, at least in the US, and good luck getting a EU court to care about such a case anyway, with every member country being in the grey or having no legislation at all to cover such cases.