If a player has been inactive for 30 days, their account will ghost out. But it's not truly deleted. If they log in, the account will come back.

The only time there's an issue is if the account ghosted on a server than was merged. I don't know if you can bring those accounts back.

The dreaded red X is a little different. (Let me see if I can remember the specifics...)

If a player gets perma-banned, the town will show a red X for 30 days under vmode. Then, like any other player-run account, it'll auto-pop out of vmode after 30 days. Then on the 8th day, it'll go inactive. After 30 days of inactivity it'll ghost out. From what I've seen, the account will remain unplayable for a year (365 days.) That should give you plenty of time to claim its spot on the island. After that year, technically the owner of the account could log back in just like any other case of ghosting. There have been players who've come back after that amount of time.

If the account is already in the (i) phase, it's only a matter of time. it should ghost out after 30 days of inactivity. If he's in an alliance, you might be able to have someone look at his last login time to get a better idea of when he'll *poof*

As of patch 0.4.4, players who go inactive are no longer deleted. Rather, all new inactive accounts will be placed into a "ghost" mode, where they will seemingly disappear from the servers. This applies to Ambrosia accounts as well as non Ambrosia accounts.

Any account that was and still is inactive before the patch went live on August 18, 2011; will not be affected by ghosting rules.

The inactivity phases are now:

• Phase 0 (Hour 0 to Hour 24, sorting the fun registrations out, no long time inactivity): If you do not build anything in the 24 hours after registration, you get deleted.
  
• Phase 1 (1 week to 2 weeks after registration ): You become inactive after 2 days with no login, you get ghosted 2 days later.
  
• Phase 2 (Week 2 until 1 Month): You become inactive after 7 days with no login, you get ghosted 4 days later.
  
• Phase 3 (1 Month until 3 Months): You become inactive after 7 days with no login, you get ghosted 14 days later
  
• Phase 4 (3 Month until end of times): You become inactive after 7 days with no login, you get ghosted 30 days later.
  

Old inactives will remain for the present and are not affected by this change.

Banned users with no ambrosia will be deleted rather than ghosted (no matter if they bought some in the past).

Note: Accounts can be ghosted only if there are no running Premium features at the ghosting moment. If there are active premium features in effect theng hosting will be delayed until the active premium feature expires.

(Source)

Once a player is ghosted, any player can take that spot!


When the original player returns to that world and logs into their account, their towns will return to the same location as when they where ghosted, with a few minor exceptions:

1. If their previous town spots were taken, they will be planted on other town spots on the same island
   
2. If the original island is full then they will planted on the nearest island with the same resource type.
   

Free spots are searched in a circular, clockwise, manner starting with the island north-east of the original island, as you look at the map (right and a little up) until a free spot is found

(Source)

Glad to be of help.

And yes, I'm still on Alpha, still in Lost. I was thinking I recognized your name from Alpha. There's always room if you want to come back.

We had that happen on Ny recently. I can't remember the players name (convenient since I can't say who it was by board rules anyway lol) but he proceeded to get himself perma_banned again in the space of about 3 days. Most of the server laughed and are glad such a filthy cheater is banned again for another year!