Meaning that as originally envisions auto-deleting was there to prevent gear locker characters from locking up limited gear indefinitely. The new and improved anti-hoarding code take care of that issue in a much nicer/faster way, so why not make the auto-delete timer a lot longer? Say 3 months or even 6 months. Now people who play infrequently can still come back to a character, but they'll have lose all their shinies, which is punishing enough, but aren't forced to rank up a character again just because they got busy and forgot to log in for an hour this month.

While you could selectively log in various character (like the other person mentions) the code doesn't really prevent that now and people do it already. Why not be a little less punishing to the super casual person who is willing to get steamrolled in outfit gear, but doesn't want to sink another 50 hours into it for the same result?