Nexon deleted my characters after 3 months

MapleStory is part of my daily routine. I was playing every day this summer for the events, but some things came up offline and I had to start a break in August 2025.

This happened when I was on my break: https://www.nexon.com/maplestory/news/general/30350/inactive-character-clean-up-notice

I have (had) 40-50 characters. My playstyle may be different than most: I love cosmetics. When there's a cosmetic giveaway or event I'll create a new mule because I hate playing the default avatar for most classes. Some of my mules are (were) old, but I have (had) every intention to level them for legion eventually. I create them early and during events so that when I eventually have time to level that class, I'll have a character with a hair/face/outfit I enjoy.

Today I came back to the game, and approximately ten (10) of my characters have been deleted. I'm missing a handful of my backlogged legion mules.

The link above tells me that they would have deleted my characters on November 12th. I was only gone since August, so Nexon deleted my characters after THREE (3) months of inactivity. I started a break due to some offline conflicts, and not even 3 months later a handful of my mules (that had cosmetics and even NX in some cases) got purged.

My account is not inactive. I play every day besides the break I took this fall. The character cleanup seems to have flagged INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERS, and not accounts. So for the mules I hadn't specifically accessed since 2022, those got flagged as "inactive" and later deleted.

From what I can tell in the link above, if I had logged in to any character between Sep 24 and Nov 12, my mules would have been safe. But because I happened to be on break during that 49-day window, ~10 of my mules got deleted.

Why did Nexon flag individual characters as "inactive" and not accounts themselves? As a Daily Story player I don't have time to log into all 50 characters regularly. Some mules you don't touch for a few years. And because I happened to be on a break during that 49-day window between September 24 and November 12, I have now lost ~10 characters even though my account is not inactive and never has been.