But if ever they come back, it will be talk of the forum and these guys might attract merits for being a newbie with avatar.
This seems like a discrimination to me. Why would an account be exclude from the new rules guiding the forum? Their avatar should have been removed automatically by the system after implementing the new rules. I have never seen a rule guiding a community applicable to some while excluding some and they're living together. I know my opinion does not matter but let call a spade a spade. Being an old member should not exempt them from the general rules by the way. Assuming those accounts back to be active in the forum now that's how they'll be bragging with avatar leaving the new account who has not attain the full member rank without avatar? That's ridiculous
Thymos should remove their avatar. I can see how frustrating the OP is right now
If the users remove the avatar they can not update it to a new avatar, only the last active avatar before the update will remain. I can see your point but at the same time, I can't see anything wrong with it. Maybe that is just how theymos wanted it to be.
It happened to the gif animation avatars as well as far as I know gif or animation is already disabled on the avatars, so only a few users who have gif avatars before the update can still retain their gif animations.