Im sorry to hear about that Half-life,  and to everyone else who lost progress.  I seen ingame someone complaining on the chat last night.

Kinda makes me nervous.  I think I will play my lowbie alts until this is figured out.

I'm hopeful they can compensate you in some way.

Originally posted by Deivos

As I said before, it's seems one of the more likely cases that with the loss of data they don't currently have a catch for anything. The server doesn't doesn't dump it's data into a log when it crashes or anything from the sound f it so they don't ahve any snapshots of the game's state when it crashes.

As a result there's no presnt tmeans to account for lost information aside from what people claim they have lost and lets be hinest. People aren't always honest.

Oh I completely agree, but as I stated before my main worry why did this happen, could this happen again, and could it happen on a larger and much nastier scale? Becase before this I didn't think it could happen at all. Be nice to know.

Originally posted by Deivos

As I said before, it's seems one of the more likely cases that with the loss of data they don't currently have a catch for anything. The server doesn't doesn't dump it's data into a log when it crashes or anything from the sound of it so they don't ahve any snapshots of the game's state when it crashes.

As a result there's no presnt means to account for lost information aside from what people claim they have lost and lets be honest. People aren't always honest.

Like I said. People get what they pay for!

Having proper dissaster recovery plans and actual infrastructure in place costs a lot of money!

Hence, why you usually see these kind of services in place with P2P MMO's!

When they have a steady income via Monthly subs, they can invest in better infrastructure.

That's why you have poor support in so called F2P games!

Cash shops can be lucrative, but they are unpredictable and don't form a guaranteed income for developers.

So it wouldn't supprise me one single bit that Arenanet (NCSoft we are talking about here) have cheaped out on proper infrastructure or any dissaster recovery, except for the pure basics (like general backup/restore in case of total server outage/hardware failures).

So again.... Guild Wars 2 is a B2P game. You get what you pay for! Don't expect the same service you would normally get with subscription based MMO's!

Originally posted by Xzen

Originally posted by gordiflu

Originally posted by Kaelano1

Originally posted by gordiflu

Originally posted by Kaelano1

Originally posted by gordiflu

Originally posted by Kaelano1

Originally posted by gordiflu

All the guys saying "they can't do that, they are unable to do that, they lack the infrastructure", etc.

Please keep in mind that they hold the files and they have the tools. They can do anything to any char at any time, period. They just won't dedicate the resources, don't want to do it or don't have time, but they absolutely CAN do whatever to your char. They, and any company for that matter.

I ve been working for the gaming industry and I have seen it with my own eyes.

 

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/support/account/Tickets-for-Review-5-days-and-older-merged/page/28

I'm sorry... what?

What were you expecting them to say?

-Sorry, we messed it up but we think your case is not worth alocating any resource to it.

Can we just be a bit less naive?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOmp3HpAGgM

Really? Ok, then just list ONE inconsistency.

I honestly think you are just trolling now.

That's one souce reps admit they "can't". There are others. On twitter they specifically reply they can't for this particular instance of lost data.

 

I know they can "give a toon" anything. The "issue" is, "can they give back a toon specifically what they lost so there is no discrepancy". If you've paid attention, the answer is no.

 

I'm not naive.

 

I don't believe you've "worked in game development". "Working in the game industry" can mean as a janitor, or cafe food service, or a CEO's chauffer, and that wouldn't help your point.

 

They do not have a "lack of want or need" to assist those submitting tickets. They simply can't help.

Of course the company guys are going to say "we can't". What are they going to say, " we won't"? "We don't want to?". Please...

They can do anything to any toon period, and that's all. If so, they can give any toon specifically anything, period. You are contradicting yourself. What the hell, I can do that with less than 1% of their technology on my computer on Skyrim.

You may not be, but you do sound naive if you use the company's posts to justify the company's excuses.

I am not going to give you my professional CV details, but I ll just say I had access to the internal test servers and the QA guys sitting right next to me. And the company was very big, one of the biggest. You can believe it or not, I couldn't care less. 

And btw, you failed to list one single inconsistency.

 

Do you have the GM client? No? Then you do not know what they can and can not do with your characters. Anet devs might be able to but handling GM tickets and restoring lost items is not a Dev thing it's an in game support thing.

I never talked about devs or gms. I am talking about the company. This is why I said they just won't allocate the resources. I guess whoever who had his char borked won't care about who is fixing his stuff as long as it gets fixed.

What's more I am talking about any company, not this particular one. This is why I said we shouldn't buy their PR crap when they say "we can't" and we should read, instead, "we won't".

Originally posted by Tardcore

Oh I completely agree, but as I stated before my main worry why did this happen, could this happen again, and could it happen on a larger and much nastier scale? Becase before this I didn't think it could happen at all. Be nice to know.

Ah, well to that I would have to answer 'I don't know.'

And that bothers me. I don't like not knowing things. ._.

Best I could say on the matter is again speculate and say that since it has happened once, then it's fair to assume it can happen again and banks entirely on the stability of the server(s) in question. I would have to know the size of the servers that were subject to this crash/rollback before I could make any comment on scale, but assuming it's a populated, but not one of the perpetually full servers, then there could be issues with those ones.

Though on the flipside Anet my have priortized the maintenance of their servers to reduce the liability the overloaded ones have, which in turn may have caused some neglect on the slightly lower pop ones to enable this problem.

So yeah, just a bunch of random speculation, will be fun to see what the proper issue is. :p

EDIT: And Jero, I generally just expect the same service I received in Guild Wars, which I was pretty content with.

Much of what you said was misnomer. The implied differences between P2P and B2P or F2P doesn't really work when people have already pointed out that other P2P titles like WoW had experienced these same issues in the past. Just like the case for GW2 now, it's never been a universal problem as it's tied to the servers, and unless they all have the same problem at the same time, then only a subset of players get to experience this ckind of issue.

Originally posted by halflife25

Originally posted by Kyleran
B2P, no monthly sub. You can't expect the same level of customer support as in other titles. Remember in the end all you lost was a little bit of time and some pixels. GW2 is all about having fun and not acquiring items or progression, right?

I see what you did there ;)

What?  Just chanting back the party line. 

No, serously, losing progression sucks but I still think the lack of sub is a big contributor to the lack of customer support.  I've never gotten good support from a sub free game, be it F2P or even the origina GW1, I played it about 6 months after launch, it wasn't great.

One annoying thing is that I pay subs in EVE, and the lack of phone support I find annoying, even though they've been pretty good about dealing with issues through support tickets.

---

Originally posted by Deivos

---

Originally posted by Tardcore Oh I completely agree, but as I stated before my main worry why did this happen, could this happen again, and could it happen on a larger and much nastier scale? Becase before this I didn't think it could happen at all. Be nice to know.

---

Ah, well to that I would have to answer 'I don't know.'

 

And that bothers me. I don't like not knowing things. ._.

 

Best I could say on the matter is again speculate and say that since it has happened once, then it's fair to assume it can happen again and banks entirely on the stability of the server(s) in question. I would have to know the size of the servers that were subject to this crash/rollback before I could make any comment on scale, but assuming it's a populated, but not one of the perpetually full servers, then there could be issues with those ones.

 

Though on the flipside Anet my have priortized the maintenance of their servers to reduce the liability the overloaded ones have, which in turn may have caused some neglect on the slightly lower pop ones to enable this problem.

 

So yeah, just a bunch of random speculation, will be fun to see what the proper issue is. :p

 

EDIT: And Jero, I generally just expect the same service I received in Guild Wars, which I was pretty content with.

Much of what you said was misnomer. The implied differences between P2P and B2P or F2P doesn't really work when people have already pointed out that other P2P titles like WoW had experienced these same issues in the past. Just like the case for GW2 now, it's never been a universal problem as it's tied to the servers, and unless they all have the same problem at the same time, then only a subset of players get to experience this ckind of issue.

---

Yes they do happen in other games, but that's not the issue.
The issue is customer support. Each time someone says you get what you pay for, someone else brings up the other MMOs and their rollbacks and how the customers got screwed. But that's just not True.

Now, I've never had a rollback, but I've heard of a couple here and there, the WoW example was over a much broader scope and wasn't considered a customer support issue. I

Rift was another game that had rollbacks based on a game patch update. Players logged back in and lost up to 5 hrs.

Where the difference comes in is what happened next. Rift players submitted a ticket and got their stuff/XP back.

I got hit with a rollback too the other night.  I had a client crash and watched tv for a bit.  When I came back my character was not where I had left her and all the items I had bought off the trading post just before the crash were gone.  And the items I had broken down into mats where turned back into item form and the mats were gone.

So yeah, they can roll back.  Or there is a major bug with their programming that rolls you back if you suffer a crash in certain time/places in game

This sounds serious. Better post on the official forums imo. There is no one on these forums that can help the OP with this. Anet needs to know that this happens (if they don't already).

And for people who start about account being hacked. Lol. Why would a hacked account lead to lost (crafting) lvls ?

EDIT: Just read on official forums that this happened to more players. This was a rollback and they can't do anything about it because apparently the rollback system for characters isn't in place yet or something like that. This really sucks for the people it happened to.

Originally posted by GeezerGamer

 

---

Originally posted by Deivos

---

Originally posted by Tardcore Oh I completely agree, but as I stated before my main worry why did this happen, could this happen again, and could it happen on a larger and much nastier scale? Becase before this I didn't think it could happen at all. Be nice to know.

---

Ah, well to that I would have to answer 'I don't know.'

 

 

And that bothers me. I don't like not knowing things. ._.

 

Best I could say on the matter is again speculate and say that since it has happened once, then it's fair to assume it can happen again and banks entirely on the stability of the server(s) in question. I would have to know the size of the servers that were subject to this crash/rollback before I could make any comment on scale, but assuming it's a populated, but not one of the perpetually full servers, then there could be issues with those ones.

 

Though on the flipside Anet my have priortized the maintenance of their servers to reduce the liability the overloaded ones have, which in turn may have caused some neglect on the slightly lower pop ones to enable this problem.

 

So yeah, just a bunch of random speculation, will be fun to see what the proper issue is. :p

 

EDIT: And Jero, I generally just expect the same service I received in Guild Wars, which I was pretty content with.

Much of what you said was misnomer. The implied differences between P2P and B2P or F2P doesn't really work when people have already pointed out that other P2P titles like WoW had experienced these same issues in the past. Just like the case for GW2 now, it's never been a universal problem as it's tied to the servers, and unless they all have the same problem at the same time, then only a subset of players get to experience this ckind of issue.

---

 

Yes they do happen in other games, but that's not the issue.
The issue is customer support. Each time someone says you get what you pay for, someone else brings up the other MMOs and their rollbacks and how the customers got screwed. But that's just not True.

Now, I've never had a rollback, but I've heard of a couple here and there, the WoW example was over a much broader scope and wasn't considered a customer support issue. I

Rift was another game that had rollbacks based on a game patch update. Players logged back in and lost up to 5 hrs.

Where the difference comes in is what happened next. Rift players submitted a ticket and got their stuff/XP back.

In the early days of WoW we couldn't restore items or xp lost due to roll backs. All we could do was tell people we were sorry and then send them a snipit from the TOS that legally covered our behinds. I've been on the recieving end of rollbacks on newer morpgs like FFXIV where they could not restore lost xp and items due to rollbacks. I did not play Rift but if they were able to restore items and xp lost due to rollbacks from day one kudos to them and it does not suprise me. They have had the best launch to date. GW2 has not.

Originally posted by halflife25

Anyone else? i don't care for xp and levels i can make those quick in W v W but i got some nice loot from chests, completing 100% map etc. 5 to 6 hours of everything i did is gone? no items and all gold i made from TP is also gone.

All the mats i spent on leveling crafting, are also wasted because even crafting levels are rolled back , i never got my rare mats back.

I have contected Anet regarding this..not sure if i will get my stuff back. I had some pretty rare skins in my inventory.

Really frustrated right now. ;(

 

edit ; people are confusing this with account hacking. Players lost even levels and all other progression due to server out age. So please stop posting 'you got hacked'.

 

EDIT:   After reading the rest of your posts I don't find the story to be credible.

Originally posted by Nadia

Originally posted by neorandom

Originally posted by Nadia

        GaileGray.9587:
the account restoration system that would roll-back the entire account is not yet available. I’m very sorry for the loss, and I know we all look forward to being able to help with these issues in the future.

stop going on suspect webpages and downloading keyloggers because they promise to give god mode in pvp?

what I posted was ANETs explanation that they have zero support for character restores or rollbacks

 

if you read the Op, you would know that he lost levels - and was not hacked

 

how does a hacker make you lose levels ?

I don't even believe the story.    This is some weird, isolated charge of malfeasense and incompetecy that is, on the face of it, unbelievable.

---

Originally posted by Xzen

In the early days of WoW we couldn't restore items or xp lost due to roll backs. All we could do was tell people we were sorry and then send them a snipit from the TOS that legally covered our behinds. I've been on the recieving end of rollbacks on newer morpgs like FFXIV where they could not restore lost xp and items due to rollbacks. I did not play Rift but if they were able to restore items and xp lost due to rollbacks from day one kudos to them and it does not suprise me. They have had the best launch to date. GW2 has not.

---

Originally posted by MosesZD

Originally posted by halflife25

Anyone else? i don't care for xp and levels i can make those quick in W v W but i got some nice loot from chests, completing 100% map etc. 5 to 6 hours of everything i did is gone? no items and all gold i made from TP is also gone.

All the mats i spent on leveling crafting, are also wasted because even crafting levels are rolled back , i never got my rare mats back.

I have contected Anet regarding this..not sure if i will get my stuff back. I had some pretty rare skins in my inventory.

Really frustrated right now. ;(

 

edit ; people are confusing this with account hacking. Players lost even levels and all other progression due to server out age. So please stop posting 'you got hacked'.

 

 

EDIT:   After reading the rest of your posts I don't find the story to be credible.

 

Anet has already said there was an outage and they are unable to restore progression or items lost.

Yup, the OP is indeed correct. I just logged back in for the first time after tonight's issue where masses of people were booted with the firewall warning. Previously to logging out I'd finished mapping and exploring the southern half of Lornar's Pass, I just logged in and about an hour's worth of work has been erased so now I have to redo.

Not crying into my Cheerio's over this or anything but this is ridiculous ANet. I work 50+ a week and have a family, my free time for gaming is rather limited so having to redo any content just pisses me off a bit.

GG ArenaNet.

Originally posted by GeezerGamer

 

---

Originally posted by Xzen

 

In the early days of WoW we couldn't restore items or xp lost due to roll backs. All we could do was tell people we were sorry and then send them a snipit from the TOS that legally covered our behinds. I've been on the recieving end of rollbacks on newer morpgs like FFXIV where they could not restore lost xp and items due to rollbacks. I did not play Rift but if they were able to restore items and xp lost due to rollbacks from day one kudos to them and it does not suprise me. They have had the best launch to date. GW2 has not.

---

It's not so much Kudos to Trion, as much as it is that the times have changed. You cannot compare situations that happened in the early part of last decade. Technology has evolved tremendously now and what is considered to be industry standard now allows for instant retrieval of lost data. If Trion is using current hardware and operating systems, Virtual Machines, Load Balancing server clustering, SANS and raid 10 set ups, It's not surprising they could do this. So, now the question is, where is ArenaNet in all this. If they are using current industry standards, then for them to say they can't means they don't have the personnel or they are lying. Because the ability to restore is there. Otherwise, they cheaped out on the infrastructure in which case, you can compare incidents from last decade on AAA titles to what is happening with GW2 now.

 

If it is a current industry standard then why were they not able to restore my lost items and xp in FFXIV? How about when it happened to me in AoC? How about WAR? Do I think being as prepared as TRION should be the standard the industry strives to achieve? Hell yes I do. People need to raise hell and let Anet know how much this sucks (which they are). But to act like this is only happening because it's not P2P is going too far. It's a little too soon to be saying that yet.

---

Originally posted by Xzen

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Originally posted by GeezerGamer  

---

Originally posted by Xzen   In the early days of WoW we couldn't restore items or xp lost due to roll backs. All we could do was tell people we were sorry and then send them a snipit from the TOS that legally covered our behinds. I've been on the recieving end of rollbacks on newer morpgs like FFXIV where they could not restore lost xp and items due to rollbacks. I did not play Rift but if they were able to restore items and xp lost due to rollbacks from day one kudos to them and it does not suprise me. They have had the best launch to date. GW2 has not.

---

It's not so much Kudos to Trion, as much as it is that the times have changed. You cannot compare situations that happened in the early part of last decade. Technology has evolved tremendously now and what is considered to be industry standard now allows for instant retrieval of lost data. If Trion is using current hardware and operating systems, Virtual Machines, Load Balancing server clustering, SANS and raid 10 set ups, It's not surprising they could do this. So, now the question is, where is ArenaNet in all this. If they are using current industry standards, then for them to say they can't means they don't have the personnel or they are lying. Because the ability to restore is there. Otherwise, they cheaped out on the infrastructure in which case, you can compare incidents from last decade on AAA titles to what is happening with GW2 now.  

---

If it is a current industry standard then why were they not able to restore my lost items and xp in FFXIV? How about when it happened to me in AoC? How about WAR? Do I think being as prepared as TRION should be the standard the industry strives to achieve? Hell yes I do. People need to raise hell and let Anet know how much this sucks (which they are). But to act like this is only happening because it's not P2P is going too far. It's a little too soon to be saying that yet.

---

I can't speak to those other game's infrastructure. I don't know what to tell you. I can say the technology is currently available. And it's not as terribly expensive as it would have been 10 years ago.

Originally posted by GeezerGamer

 

It's not so much Kudos to Trion, as much as it is that the times have changed. You cannot compare situations that happened in the early part of last decade. Technology has evolved tremendously now and what is considered to be industry standard now allows for instant retrieval of lost data. If Trion is using current hardware and operating systems, Virtual Machines, Load Balancing server clustering, SANS and raid 10 set ups, It's not surprising they could do this. So, now the question is, where is ArenaNet in all this. If they are using current industry standards, then for them to say they can't means they don't have the personnel or they are lying. Because the ability to restore is there. Otherwise, they cheaped out on the infrastructure in which case, you can compare incidents from last decade on AAA titles to what is happening with GW2 now.

 

Virtual machines do nothing for a server. Tha's juse emulating a hradware digitally.

Load balancing on servers just means you are migrating things around the servers to keep performance spread out. An overloaded server is still overloaded.

RAID and SAN just gives you data storage.

None of the things you mention create failsafes for crashed servers. What would is, like I mentioned previously, a catch or datadump of the information on the server at the time of a crash.

Then you have the multiple methods of data backup to the servers. If everything goes at once, then it's usually a scheduled backup. In which case a crash happening between the saves can cause loss of data and can and does affect many games.

The other major means is to ping a backup to a character based on the client. Meaning it goes on intervals when they play or it is backed up at the point they logout. Either way the information then has to be shuffled through the rest of the things going on in the server and if it's a very populated one that slows things down.

Apparently people are saying it was a power outage to the server though. With a power outage unless you're packing a generator to save those servers long enough for a state save and shutdown, none of that matters.

Also, one company doing something doesn't make it an industry standard unless everyone else is on board doing the same thing.

---

Originally posted by Deivos

---

Originally posted by GeezerGamer   It's not so much Kudos to Trion, as much as it is that the times have changed. You cannot compare situations that happened in the early part of last decade. Technology has evolved tremendously now and what is considered to be industry standard now allows for instant retrieval of lost data. If Trion is using current hardware and operating systems, Virtual Machines, Load Balancing server clustering, SANS and raid 10 set ups, It's not surprising they could do this. So, now the question is, where is ArenaNet in all this. If they are using current industry standards, then for them to say they can't means they don't have the personnel or they are lying. Because the ability to restore is there. Otherwise, they cheaped out on the infrastructure in which case, you can compare incidents from last decade on AAA titles to what is happening with GW2 now.  

---

Virtual machines do nothing for a server. Tha's juse emulating a hradware digitally.

Load balancing on servers just means you are migrating things around the servers to keep performance spread out. An overloaded server is still overloaded.

RAID and SAN just gives you data storage.

 

None of the things you mention create failsafes for crashed servers. What would is, like I mentioned previously, a catch or datadump of the information on the server at the time of a crash.

 

Then you have the multiple methods of data backup to the servers. If everything goes at once, then it's usually a scheduled backup. In which case a crash happening between the saves can cause loss of data and can and does affect many games.

The other major means is to ping a backup to a character based on the client. Meaning it goes on intervals when they play or it is backed up at the point they logout. Either way the information then has to be shuffled through the rest of the things going on in the server and if it's a very populated one that slows things down.

 

Apparently people are saying it was a power outage to the server though. With a power outage unless you're packing a generator to save those servers long enough for a state save and shutdown, none of that matters.

 

Also, one company doing something doesn't make it an industry standard unless everyone else is on board doing the same thing.

---

They absolutely do. You put a server operating systems on a VM and keep the database files in a SAN with Raid 10, mirroring and parity, You split up your database files in a SAN with each portion on it's own dedicated spindles, You keep the SQL operating system in a VM or at least on their own drives, you keep the Databases on a 2nd spindle and the transaction log files on a third. In the event of a catastrophic failure, you can spin up a VM in minutes from a copy on file. While you have the mirrored parity system automatically restoring the lost database files. The mirror immediately cuts over while the parity rebuilds the missing data. and there is little to no interruption in service. Aside from some customers complaining about some lag anyway.

Originally posted by GeezerGamer

 

---

Originally posted by Xzen

 

In the early days of WoW we couldn't restore items or xp lost due to roll backs. All we could do was tell people we were sorry and then send them a snipit from the TOS that legally covered our behinds. I've been on the recieving end of rollbacks on newer morpgs like FFXIV where they could not restore lost xp and items due to rollbacks. I did not play Rift but if they were able to restore items and xp lost due to rollbacks from day one kudos to them and it does not suprise me. They have had the best launch to date. GW2 has not.

---

It's not so much Kudos to Trion, as much as it is that the times have changed. You cannot compare situations that happened in the early part of last decade. Technology has evolved tremendously now and what is considered to be industry standard now allows for instant retrieval of lost data. If Trion is using current hardware and operating systems, Virtual Machines, Load Balancing server clustering, SANS and raid 10 set ups, It's not surprising they could do this. So, now the question is, where is ArenaNet in all this. If they are using current industry standards, then for them to say they can't means they don't have the personnel or they are lying. Because the ability to restore is there. Otherwise, they cheaped out on the infrastructure in which case, you can compare incidents from last decade on AAA titles to what is happening with GW2 now.

 

well said :)