Def'n of an inactive player

W86 wasn't one of the first worlds, it has been around for a long time but 89 worlds preceded it! (worlds 1-87 and CB1 & CB2).
If a player does return outside the 'policy' because of a fault in the coding, is it such a big deal? Their bases will be dead and they may well be surrounded by forgotten bases that have regenerated. They may well also have been kicked from any alliance so will struggle to do much gameplay for a while.

6 months is the theory, although it isn't uniform on all worlds. 2yrs is also the theory, not always what happens.

An inactive player that is zeroed can't pop back up as they can't log into the world.

I can't explain it - other than a glitch.
One explanation, probably not the reason, is that a long standing sub has been used. I don't know what happens when a sub is left a long time then is used in this way, so it's probably not possible.

I've managed to log into a very old world of mine (last log in early 2019), but of course I don't know if I was zeroed or not. I can't log into W86 as I have no account there.

There is a system - it just doesn't always work and public knowledge of it is via the statement by the developers that 'after 2 years inactivity you are permanently removed from a world.' Observations suggest that this isn't the case on every world but it is the 'policy'.

one might just visit an old world every few months/year to avoid the "policy".
i doubt you are checking the rankings monthly and you can't say it's a broken system ... yet.

I don't know the answer here but I think we are talking about a couple of different things, not inclusive of some sort of coding issue so that the intended functionality isn't there. After 6 months of not logging in you get zeroed out. You can then log in and restore your account to 100% of where it was when you quit just by relocating or respawning all your bases.

I think, and I repeat I think, after two years you are supposed to be permanently scrubbed from a server and at that point, if the server is still open to new players, you can start over or move on. Perhaps that doesn't work, if I get a minute I'll check and come back and share my findings. I'm a 10 year player of TA, give or take a few days, I have to have a 2+ year old no log in server.

its 2 years to the day it happened to all of mine cant access them if you didnt log in for 730 days you self destruct after 180 days