I wonder about this, if I decide to take, for example, a 3 years break from the Combine, and I won't be logging in for 3 years, what will happen to my character? Assuming I will keep it in a safe place where (presuming Combat will be out by then) no one can reach him.
Will the server delete it because of inactivity? Or after 3 years I will be able to log in again just like I did 3 years ago? And if not 3 years, then what is the time after inactivity which the server deletes a character? I know characters are automatically deleted after 9 months being Level 1, but what about veterans?
If you think about this there must be a clean up of people in the server, if this game goes forever, in Year 20 it may be safe to delete 'Character X' whose last login time was Year 1.