Heres my two cents:

There are good things and bad things that come with a DB flush.

One of the good things is that players are \'forced\' into trying new characters (Unless of course, they choose the same exact settings), which would in turn help identify bugs and holes.

On the other hand, how many players would actually stick around for a year, creating a new character every two weeks. The lack of character bonding that the player should have, will result in a loss of  players. People dont play a game to debug. They play a game for enjoyment. Creating a new player only to have him deleted the next week, is almost an irritating thought.

Over all, I think players should keep what they have worked for. I wonder; What if we were to enable a idle time for user accts. The players who obviously are spending time with their characters, will not connect to find them missing. Those however, who did not connect to the server for x amount of time in y amount of time [ie. Player had to connect for aprox. ten minutes in the period of three months time], would find their players missing upon connection.

This would server two strong points, first the DB would likely shed a lot of its \'one timer\' players. The players who give up on the game, in its infancy. Meanwhile, keeping the players who put time and effort into the game.

Perhaps I was not clear on some things, so please let me know your thoughts and opinions on this.