many accounts were deactivated by EA. you can not activate again these accounts, when you lost a way to reach new mails to your e-mail-account.
that is the problem. i created my account some years ago with an e-mail-adress only for to play this game. there was no need to do anything else with that account, the communication runs inside the game.
the 5000 limit tells us: long-time substitutes are ok. this limit is a rule from EA. every player can read it when he opens a sub!
these accounts are used by real players without any problems. why EA changes the rules for these accounts.
they want us to give up the game?
close the old server or give us back our stolen accounts !!