The lack of atrophy is a virtue of online gaming’s illusion of permanence. While enemies may respawn in a few seconds, the ratchet only goes one way on character and story advancement. You need not hit the gym to keep your points in strength from fading. Your house never gets dirty, and maintenance of everything you own is streamlined to a few clicks. You can wear the same clothes continuously for months, and you never need to iron the cloth armor in your vault. Your armor is always shiny and your sword is always on fire. Cooking and eating are optional, and the thousand stuffed cabbages in your backpack never rot.
Monsters and dungeons more closely resemble your floors and bathrooms. You can clean them out entirely, but you’ll need to do it again the next time you look.
: Zubon
Exceptions exist of course. Houses in UO can decay. POS and jump bridges in EVE can run out of fuel. House ownership in DF can be lost if the taxes are not paid.
Overall, I think this area is an untapped source of retention; if you ‘have to’ login to upkeep your progress, you will login to do it (unless you 100% don’t care anymore). In some way this already happens in EVE; EVE-offline is after all just updating your training while on a break. Extend this to cleaning your armor, polishing your sword, or whatever, and off you go.