LOST ITEMS AND PETS
Posted: Fri Oct 07, 2011 8:32 pm
I'm posting this thread as a reminder that the server doesn't simply eat items or pets. If you loose an item, or pet, there is a valid reason behind it.
Below is a re-post of what I posted on excelsior daily on November 20th, 2010.
Click here to go to the original post.
Although I have stopped investigating every issue, i still take a look from time to time out of curiosity, and I would estimate that the number of investigations is now definitely over 250.
And even further below, I will be collecting posts from players who have reported an item gone missing.
With these replies, I am trying to raise awareness among all players that, if you loose something, it's an extremely unlikely chance that the item simply vanished. It often happens that I try to explain this to a player, and I know it's hard to understand if you have just lost a bunch of very good gear, but I'm hoping that if you can hear it from your fellow players, you will give it some more weight and understand.
Below is a re-post of what I posted on excelsior daily on November 20th, 2010.
Click here to go to the original post.
Although I have stopped investigating every issue, i still take a look from time to time out of curiosity, and I would estimate that the number of investigations is now definitely over 250.
And even further below, I will be collecting posts from players who have reported an item gone missing.
With these replies, I am trying to raise awareness among all players that, if you loose something, it's an extremely unlikely chance that the item simply vanished. It often happens that I try to explain this to a player, and I know it's hard to understand if you have just lost a bunch of very good gear, but I'm hoping that if you can hear it from your fellow players, you will give it some more weight and understand.
+Colibri wrote:Seems like almost every day now, there has been a help request regarding an item disappearing (sometimes none for weeks but sometimes more than one in a single day).
Until recently, I have investigated into every one of these issues, which could have been bugs. I haven't kept track, but the number is definitely over 100, possibly 200 or more. In none of the cases was I able to conclude that this was a server issue, usually it's one of the following:
- items not insured
- items insured, but not enough gold in the bank, or auto-renew insurance turned off
- got back to the corpse fast enough, but monsters have already looted from it
- item was not locked down
- item was misplaced (sometimes found before I started the investigation)
- item was added to the toolhouse, or trashed (EDIT: toolhouse and trashbag no longer accept blessed or insured items)
- pets were not fed
- AFK in a public house and monster(s) came by
- item was there but didn't display to the player (most likely a razor issue)
- summoning ball used right before logging out (most likely a razor issue)
Keep in mind it usually takes anywhere between 30-60 minutes, can be several hours, takes lots of concentration and so far, nothing has turned up. So these were countless hours spent to find something that's not likely to be there.
Keep in mind, all those floor and wall tiles at the town center are all regular items. And none of them has vanished since the town center has been put up i think 3 years ago. Also, there *is* the possibility of bit rot, but that would mean that items could change shape or color (very seldom) but still, in the past 4 years and 9 months since the shard was up, I haven't yet seen an item do that by itself.
Therefor, I have decided that I will no longer investigate these things.
RAZOR
This came up a few times, it seems that razor sometimes doesn't relay the data between the server and the client correctly. I've seen it myself, for example, when you drop an item somewhere, it no longer is there (usually solved by logging out and back in). Or once, the same "World save complete" message was displayed to me twice. Also, there has been a couple of times when a player claimed to have stabled their bio, but it wasn't there the next day. Looking in to the backups showed that the biopet was on the exact same location as the player, and eventually logged out. Usually it was not in range of any animal trainers, but the summoning ball was in their backpack. Most likely explanation is that there was still some data in the razor's buffer (request to summon the pet using the ball) which finally got to the server when logged out.
So, there probably is a chance that Razor will malfunction. Might be that it happens frequently but it's not at all noticeable, but I can happen when it matters. I'm not saying it's dangerous to use Razor, but that with the good it brings, it may also have a certain risk.
LOST CONNECTION
You can never know when your internet or power might go out, or the server might go down, therefor it is wise to insure your valuable items, or to leave them in your bank when you venture out into a dangerous area. You might be able to solo a particular monster, but when connection is lost, before the server realizes that and puts you to safety, it can be 30 seconds or a minute, and in that time, standing there defenseless, you surely can die.
So such a thing as "i didn't expect the server to go down" isn't going to help. Also "it wasn't my fault"... hey, it isn't my fault either. The internet is unpredictable. And if i were obligated to recover lost items every time a shard goes down, then every disconnect would mean probably a day of work or more, and there's already plenty of work to be done here.
. After regearing and casting my buffs, I continued the night with 2 hours of weapon leveling. So I was everywhere Doom, Tokuno, Trammel Dungeons, etc. 
. ekkkk. Since I had to wait for +C and I saw there was nothing left to do, I went to sleep and waited.
