Ellisaria
Well-known member
On Saturday, February 3, 2024, my partner logged onto his account to find his main, which is the only character he plays and thus has nearly ALL of his gear/items/etc. on, was gone. Vanished. I started detailing it in my forum profile but I wanted to bring this occurrence to the attention of as many players, forum users, and to the team at SSG as possible.
It was as if the character had been deleted overnight. There was no trace of him in the guild (no guild XP lost) and his name was gone from our kid's and my friends list. The last time we had played was the night before (Friday, February 2, 2024) and if he had had some kind of leave of sanity and gotten up in the middle of the night and deleted his character, it would have definitely woken me up as I am a light sleeper. Since this did not happen, the logical assumption would be that an error occurred on SSG's end. We started looking to see if there was any way to restore a deleted character and the best we could find was this.
To be honest that really didn't seem fair. He did not willingly delete his character. He did not mistakenly delete his character. He had absolutely no say in losing his character. That he should lose all "Outstanding auction items and bids" is unfortunate as he was using his hard-earned shards (all he's ever had was AS from monster manuals). He was using those shards to sell items I gave him to post to fund buying our family guild's new airship amenities that could only be bought with AS. Do I care about losing these items? No, I care more about the 10 shards he lost posting them for on my behalf. While I enjoy playing the merchant in video games and enjoy watching a small investment (such as the small amount of shards you get from MMs) grow into a pile large enough to buy and outfit an airship through commerce and providing rare/highly desirable goods to other players (at fair prices), it doesn't excuse the fact that his resources were lost due to an error on SSG's end. If he had intended to delete that character, he would have waited for those items to come off auction to recover his shards. What is completely unacceptable is that he also lost all "Items or equipment in the Reincarnation Cache". He had over 200 items crammed in there that he lost through no choice of his own including ALL of his endgame gear (he was working on epic leveling at character loss, 6 sentient weapons at various levels of completion (his most precious was an 8 slot Wave - We have only seen 2 drop in the year and a half we've played deliberately grinding that specific gem - with full Otto's/Eye rares), and who knows what else (sorry, it's not specific, I realize this) that we failed to think of and recall when hit with the shock of sudden, unexpected loss.
After submitting a ticket to customer support, we started making a list of every specific thing we remembered about his character as we though of them in case such things were needed. He was a heroic completionist, epic completionist (the feat, not all epic past lives), 2 racial lives done, handful (4) iconics. We lamented the reaper points we fed him to augment his favorite gear, supreme ability tome, minimum +3 to all skill tomes, the largest red, green, and blue bags available in the cash shop, fully expanded character bank space, Greater Learning/Epic Learning tomes, cosmetics (the purple banded armor was his favorite, but he wasn't wearing that this life), the once/account item claims like the Sharn Dimensional Augment Bag, Saltmarsh Hireling Folder, and Lizardfolk Gem, the random mythic bonuses, what little raid gear he had been excited to pull (we just started entering the raid scene), the THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS of named items that had been fed to his sentient gems and the sparks from White Plume from countless grind runs to unlock that extra slot on each of them. After that we tried to distract ourselves and wait patiently to hear back, knowing CS doesn't work on the weekend. It was an uneasy couple of days full of worry and uncertainty.
Yesterday (February 5, 2024) he heard back from CS support while he was at work, came home, and announced that they had been able to restore his character! He logged on, but it was worse than the expected, but undeserved, TR cache loss and Auction House loss. His entire character bank had not been restored either. Fired off another email asking about that. We were told today (February 6, 2024) that that could not be restored and were even provided a link to the same page we already referenced that said NOTHING about personal character banks not being restored. Great. Follow your own policy that you directly link to us and restore his personal bank that (again) your own page, that you link us in email, says nothing about character bank not being restorable. If that policy is incorrect, then it behooves SSG to keep their policy page up to date instead of linking outdated information. When an error occurs on the service provider's end, it is on the service provider to restore or correct the situation. Again, he had no choice in this situation, why should he suffer any losses at all?
The next avenue we pursued was character rollback. We rationalized that it would be better to lose a few days of progress (operating under the assumption that the rollback point would be the most recent server maintenance (Wednesday, January 31). It would mean the loss of all his epic exp and rxp he'd gotten this life, several items named items we'd managed to pull, and some notable filigrees, but if if it meant the bank and TR cache could be restored, those losses would have been acceptable. We were told that rollbacks are not an offered service, nor a courtesy they could offer and an apology for the inconvenience. Is that what the loss of nearly an entire player's inventory of over a year and a half of play is to SSG? An INCONVENIENCE? Well to that player that was hours of game time (over 3000 hours according to Steam), real money spent on points, character upgrades, rerolls, etc. If he had known it was all going to be deleted due to an error on SSG'S END, he would have would have never spend those nonrefundable resources in the first place.
That this could happen at all is a serious issue and the fact that players have no ability to back up their own character data client side means that it is the responsibility of SSG, the service provider, to store ALL our character data (not just some of it) in case of an error on their (the service provider's) end. This is a completely unacceptable way to conduct business, especially a purely virtual business in 2024 or at all!
To that end, I ask those who read this to contemplate the question: where does the responsibility to correct this situation lie? To players, I ask, how would you feel if this happened to you? And before you minimize his losses by saying "just regrind it", how about you move all your precious everything on your most developed character and then delete it. You can put some cash shop potions on a mule because that's the reality of his situation. He kept all his gear in one place (the character he played most) because inventory in this game is a nightmare if you play more than one build. He hated mules and the time wasted logging between different ones to have more space so he only had what he could carry and access easily. While you're at it, during your regrind, limit yourself to no more than two hours a night on weekdays, no rerolls, and only 1-2 other people to provide you with hands. Private party, no pugs, because he hated zergers and would rather play at his/our own place than die and be left in the dust surrounded by a wall of mobs the zerger left behind. He wanted to play the game and not just walk through an empty dungeon to loot an end chest in a zerger's wake. (This is not an attack on zergers, you play your way.) Recreate his situation as realistically as possible and then ask "what would I do now?" Would you rebuy everything (hundreds to thousands of dollars of investments, potentially astral shards for chest rerolls to get everything back as soon as possible)? Even if you had every charitable person on the server come forth offering to give you high end filigrees and run you through dungeons, maybe even buy you rerolls themselves to try to help you? (To that end, should SSG get that revenue from those shard sales and rebuying items when it was their fault it was lost in the first place?) Or would you cut your losses and leave this game and it's community because your time, your LIFE, and your stress levels is not worth the devastation and loss of everything being taken away unexpectedly. As the saying goes: once bitten, twice shy. Any time you TR, you could be risking everything because the next time you log in, your whole character might have been deleted. In that situation, your character bank space is automatically put in TR cache before you even land in Korthos in front of Jeets. Is that a risk you think is acceptable? SSG will tell you they're sorry for the inconvenience, but there's nothing they can do...for you playing the game and using the systems they designed that might randomly bug out and everything you spent time on is gone. Sorry for the inconvenience. Why put in all that effort knowing full-well from experience that at any moment, any logout, all that could be arbitrarily taken away again THROUGH NO FAULT OR ACTION OF YOUR OWN AS THE PLAYER/CUSTOMER.
To SSG, I ask: do you really think this is an acceptable way to conduct your business? You give us players no way to protect our character data and we RELY on you to keep it safe and saved. Unexpected errors happen. Accidents happen. We as humans and the technology we create is far from perfect, I get that, but technology has advanced to a point where we can save and back up that data. I implore you (as a customer, as a person, as someone who has loved this game since I started playing back in 2008/9 to look at your data saving policies and infrastructure and find some way to back up ALL of our data, not just some of it. Please look into your protocols for customer service because what a service provider can or will do should not be dependent on who is reviewing a ticket and what kind of mood they're in. There have been many complaints on the old and the new forums about non-uniform levels of service. And please, above all, make this situation right. Prevent these losses from ever happening again. You just closed a survey asking whether or not we would recommend this game to friends or colleagues. Would you recommend this situation as a fun and enjoyable experience? A game with a massive paywall, poor service, and a chance that at any moment, it would all be gone? Perhaps someone who loves fantasy games, massive grinds, and high stakes gambling would jump at the chance, but how many more customers will you lose because of the risk, how many more will cut their losses before they get in any deeper, how many potential customers might you lose when a story like this one is shared across the world wide web? Is that a responsible way to conduct business? For the 50th anniversary of this game system that we love, for this Year of the Dragon, give us, your customers, the peace of mind that through unexpected errors and accidents, we will be able to have ALL our data restored.
Sincerest Regards,
~Ellisaria
It was as if the character had been deleted overnight. There was no trace of him in the guild (no guild XP lost) and his name was gone from our kid's and my friends list. The last time we had played was the night before (Friday, February 2, 2024) and if he had had some kind of leave of sanity and gotten up in the middle of the night and deleted his character, it would have definitely woken me up as I am a light sleeper. Since this did not happen, the logical assumption would be that an error occurred on SSG's end. We started looking to see if there was any way to restore a deleted character and the best we could find was this.
To be honest that really didn't seem fair. He did not willingly delete his character. He did not mistakenly delete his character. He had absolutely no say in losing his character. That he should lose all "Outstanding auction items and bids" is unfortunate as he was using his hard-earned shards (all he's ever had was AS from monster manuals). He was using those shards to sell items I gave him to post to fund buying our family guild's new airship amenities that could only be bought with AS. Do I care about losing these items? No, I care more about the 10 shards he lost posting them for on my behalf. While I enjoy playing the merchant in video games and enjoy watching a small investment (such as the small amount of shards you get from MMs) grow into a pile large enough to buy and outfit an airship through commerce and providing rare/highly desirable goods to other players (at fair prices), it doesn't excuse the fact that his resources were lost due to an error on SSG's end. If he had intended to delete that character, he would have waited for those items to come off auction to recover his shards. What is completely unacceptable is that he also lost all "Items or equipment in the Reincarnation Cache". He had over 200 items crammed in there that he lost through no choice of his own including ALL of his endgame gear (he was working on epic leveling at character loss, 6 sentient weapons at various levels of completion (his most precious was an 8 slot Wave - We have only seen 2 drop in the year and a half we've played deliberately grinding that specific gem - with full Otto's/Eye rares), and who knows what else (sorry, it's not specific, I realize this) that we failed to think of and recall when hit with the shock of sudden, unexpected loss.
After submitting a ticket to customer support, we started making a list of every specific thing we remembered about his character as we though of them in case such things were needed. He was a heroic completionist, epic completionist (the feat, not all epic past lives), 2 racial lives done, handful (4) iconics. We lamented the reaper points we fed him to augment his favorite gear, supreme ability tome, minimum +3 to all skill tomes, the largest red, green, and blue bags available in the cash shop, fully expanded character bank space, Greater Learning/Epic Learning tomes, cosmetics (the purple banded armor was his favorite, but he wasn't wearing that this life), the once/account item claims like the Sharn Dimensional Augment Bag, Saltmarsh Hireling Folder, and Lizardfolk Gem, the random mythic bonuses, what little raid gear he had been excited to pull (we just started entering the raid scene), the THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS of named items that had been fed to his sentient gems and the sparks from White Plume from countless grind runs to unlock that extra slot on each of them. After that we tried to distract ourselves and wait patiently to hear back, knowing CS doesn't work on the weekend. It was an uneasy couple of days full of worry and uncertainty.
Yesterday (February 5, 2024) he heard back from CS support while he was at work, came home, and announced that they had been able to restore his character! He logged on, but it was worse than the expected, but undeserved, TR cache loss and Auction House loss. His entire character bank had not been restored either. Fired off another email asking about that. We were told today (February 6, 2024) that that could not be restored and were even provided a link to the same page we already referenced that said NOTHING about personal character banks not being restored. Great. Follow your own policy that you directly link to us and restore his personal bank that (again) your own page, that you link us in email, says nothing about character bank not being restorable. If that policy is incorrect, then it behooves SSG to keep their policy page up to date instead of linking outdated information. When an error occurs on the service provider's end, it is on the service provider to restore or correct the situation. Again, he had no choice in this situation, why should he suffer any losses at all?
The next avenue we pursued was character rollback. We rationalized that it would be better to lose a few days of progress (operating under the assumption that the rollback point would be the most recent server maintenance (Wednesday, January 31). It would mean the loss of all his epic exp and rxp he'd gotten this life, several items named items we'd managed to pull, and some notable filigrees, but if if it meant the bank and TR cache could be restored, those losses would have been acceptable. We were told that rollbacks are not an offered service, nor a courtesy they could offer and an apology for the inconvenience. Is that what the loss of nearly an entire player's inventory of over a year and a half of play is to SSG? An INCONVENIENCE? Well to that player that was hours of game time (over 3000 hours according to Steam), real money spent on points, character upgrades, rerolls, etc. If he had known it was all going to be deleted due to an error on SSG'S END, he would have would have never spend those nonrefundable resources in the first place.
That this could happen at all is a serious issue and the fact that players have no ability to back up their own character data client side means that it is the responsibility of SSG, the service provider, to store ALL our character data (not just some of it) in case of an error on their (the service provider's) end. This is a completely unacceptable way to conduct business, especially a purely virtual business in 2024 or at all!
To that end, I ask those who read this to contemplate the question: where does the responsibility to correct this situation lie? To players, I ask, how would you feel if this happened to you? And before you minimize his losses by saying "just regrind it", how about you move all your precious everything on your most developed character and then delete it. You can put some cash shop potions on a mule because that's the reality of his situation. He kept all his gear in one place (the character he played most) because inventory in this game is a nightmare if you play more than one build. He hated mules and the time wasted logging between different ones to have more space so he only had what he could carry and access easily. While you're at it, during your regrind, limit yourself to no more than two hours a night on weekdays, no rerolls, and only 1-2 other people to provide you with hands. Private party, no pugs, because he hated zergers and would rather play at his/our own place than die and be left in the dust surrounded by a wall of mobs the zerger left behind. He wanted to play the game and not just walk through an empty dungeon to loot an end chest in a zerger's wake. (This is not an attack on zergers, you play your way.) Recreate his situation as realistically as possible and then ask "what would I do now?" Would you rebuy everything (hundreds to thousands of dollars of investments, potentially astral shards for chest rerolls to get everything back as soon as possible)? Even if you had every charitable person on the server come forth offering to give you high end filigrees and run you through dungeons, maybe even buy you rerolls themselves to try to help you? (To that end, should SSG get that revenue from those shard sales and rebuying items when it was their fault it was lost in the first place?) Or would you cut your losses and leave this game and it's community because your time, your LIFE, and your stress levels is not worth the devastation and loss of everything being taken away unexpectedly. As the saying goes: once bitten, twice shy. Any time you TR, you could be risking everything because the next time you log in, your whole character might have been deleted. In that situation, your character bank space is automatically put in TR cache before you even land in Korthos in front of Jeets. Is that a risk you think is acceptable? SSG will tell you they're sorry for the inconvenience, but there's nothing they can do...for you playing the game and using the systems they designed that might randomly bug out and everything you spent time on is gone. Sorry for the inconvenience. Why put in all that effort knowing full-well from experience that at any moment, any logout, all that could be arbitrarily taken away again THROUGH NO FAULT OR ACTION OF YOUR OWN AS THE PLAYER/CUSTOMER.
To SSG, I ask: do you really think this is an acceptable way to conduct your business? You give us players no way to protect our character data and we RELY on you to keep it safe and saved. Unexpected errors happen. Accidents happen. We as humans and the technology we create is far from perfect, I get that, but technology has advanced to a point where we can save and back up that data. I implore you (as a customer, as a person, as someone who has loved this game since I started playing back in 2008/9 to look at your data saving policies and infrastructure and find some way to back up ALL of our data, not just some of it. Please look into your protocols for customer service because what a service provider can or will do should not be dependent on who is reviewing a ticket and what kind of mood they're in. There have been many complaints on the old and the new forums about non-uniform levels of service. And please, above all, make this situation right. Prevent these losses from ever happening again. You just closed a survey asking whether or not we would recommend this game to friends or colleagues. Would you recommend this situation as a fun and enjoyable experience? A game with a massive paywall, poor service, and a chance that at any moment, it would all be gone? Perhaps someone who loves fantasy games, massive grinds, and high stakes gambling would jump at the chance, but how many more customers will you lose because of the risk, how many more will cut their losses before they get in any deeper, how many potential customers might you lose when a story like this one is shared across the world wide web? Is that a responsible way to conduct business? For the 50th anniversary of this game system that we love, for this Year of the Dragon, give us, your customers, the peace of mind that through unexpected errors and accidents, we will be able to have ALL our data restored.
Sincerest Regards,
~Ellisaria
