Expired?

[Dalixam]

I recently checked my D2 account and all my characters were expired (which I expected, I haven't played for months). However, I could still play them? I thought they would be deleted. What's the deal?

[GIR]

I guess if it's a problem you can always delete them yourself.

[Dalixam]

It's not a problem...I was just under the assumption that expired characters were deleted. What's the point in them expiring if you can still play them?

[Jyde]

Out of curiousity, after playing expired characters, do they still say "EXPIRED" or something?

[krischan]

Expiration and deletion are two different things. When a character has expired, it just means that a certain amount of time is over. Blizzard takes action from time to time to make a mass deletion of these characters which needs much less resources than an insta-delete system - which is neither needed by Blizzard nor wanted by the players.

And yes, discovering an expired character is much more thrilling that way - just like Russian roulette :lol:

[Jyde]

Does this mean that playing an "EXPIRED" character will 'un-expire' him/her?

[Fercil]

No, you can't play expired character. Wouldn't make any sense. They're displayed on your character screen but you can't play with them. It's just informing the player, much nicer than chars just disappearing.

[Jyde]

Ahh.. thanks for the explanation. I'll be careful :)

[krischan]

No, you can't play expired character. Wouldn't make any sense. They're displayed on your character screen but you can't play with them. It's just informing the player, much nicer than chars just disappearing.

That's not entirely true. A deleted character is still displayed as expired, but not any expired character has already been deleted, so if you are lucky, he still exists and you can un-expire him, i.e. the "expired" text disappears.

As I said before, if he is being shown as expired, it just means that a timer ran out and Blizzard's next deletion process will remove him - I don't know how often they do that. That happened once or twice when I was a little careless with my mules, but I was lucky and they had not been deleted yet, so they got unexpired.

[Drop]

Kirschan's right. I had a bunch of mules that I had not yet burned in before I went on vacation. When I logged on to play I saw that they had all "expired". I clicked on one and started a game.. and there he was, fully loaded as before.. and is now "un-expired" so to speak. But I'm not sure that will always happen because as has been stated there is a deletion process every now and then which dumps the expired chars.

[Fercil]

That's not entirely true. A deleted character is still displayed as expired, but not any expired character has already been deleted, so if you are lucky, he still exists and you can un-expire him, i.e. the "expired" text disappears.

As I said before, if he is being shown as expired, it just means that a timer ran out and Blizzard's next deletion process will remove him - I don't know how often they do that. That happened once or twice when I was a little careless with my mules, but I was lucky and they had not been deleted yet, so they got unexpired.
That's just a glitch in the system and no-one should rely at all that he can access an expired char later on. I've never been able to do so. As far as I see it's better to log into chars often enough to keep them active and not expect to be able to access them once they're expired. Naturally you can try once you see the expired text beneath them but don't be disappointed once you can't access the char.

[krischan]

That's just a glitch in the system and no-one should rely at all that he can access an expired char later on. I've never been able to do so. As far as I see it's better to log into chars often enough to keep them active and not expect to be able to access them once they're expired. Naturally you can try once you see the expired text beneath them but don't be disappointed once you can't access the char.

There will always be some time before an entry in a database will be discovered as having expired. Maybe it's a day, maybe an hour, maybe 0.001 seconds. In any case, the expiration date is most probably just a constant number in the DB record set which has to be checked to find that out. Checking and changing several millions of records in a system where with massively changing data might use a lot of resources. I'm sure it's supposed to be as it is.

Of course you better don't rely that some time passes between expiration and deletion, as both incidents are not related. A character can be deleted 1 second after expiring, but it might as well take a day or two. That's what I meant with "discovering an expired character is much more thrilling that way" :D

We are already running in circles, both of of telling the same, just from different views ;)