op

On that front, what I think I've heard most often is that it's about more about hunger tickdowns than sheer dragon data volume. (As the other poster mentioned, nearly all data is kept on exalted dragons too, only the bios get scrubbed, and more space doesn't directly translate to more dragons being created on a regular basis (that would be extra nests).)

So I don't know if already-starving dragons specifically and/or inactive accounts (which can be assumed to always have starving dragons unless there's recently been a sitewide feed) put any additional load on the server at those times.

But yes, that's another point; it's much more common and lower stakes for a new person to arrive and fill up as many spaces as they cheaply can with pretty dragons, whether they subsequently stick around or get bored never log in again, than for a user who's already sunk tens of millions in treasure for full expansion to get an additional five spaces. And since there's no mechanism to control the former, it seems a bit odd to get hung up on the latter.