The Loss of a Customer.

[toughguyjoe]

First off, i'd like to point out that i know Turbine has policies stating that they cannont replace lost items or platinum pieces due to a sever crash. This fact was known to me when my friend put in his ticket, but he had to try.

I play DDO with my friend, Gamblerjoe. Our computers sit right next to eachother. I was not there, and he had my account logged on. He was using the conveinece of being right next to his computer to transfer his money onto one toon, by giving it to one of mine and then logging to the toon he wanted the cash on and trading it to that toon.

The servers crashed when one of his toons transfered 400k plat to one of mine. I know this isn't the biggest amount of money players have seen. This was roughly one third of his liquid assets.

An in-game customer service person told him there was nothing they could do and they could not replace the platinum pieces lost in the transaction.

He canceled his account less than five minutes later.

Turbine.

For the love of all that is holy. Keep your servers up. These crashes are doing more and more damage. Not to hardware, but to your players.

I know if turbine replaced platinum or items they would be spammed with juvenile falsehoods of i lost my kardins eye, i lost my +2 tome. However, when its a real loss, and its not the players fault it hurts the player base. in this case alot.

[Uska]

Its not like they wanted a crash stuff like that happens I am sorry your friend quit but really that didnt sound very mature.(him not you) I use to work for a computer company long ago and we never wanted crashes but they happened anyways.

[toughguyjoe]

i completely understand that crashes happen.

However, do we not pay 15 dollars a month for this game? if we do, then could it not be speculated that Turbine could see that there was 438K plat on the toon named Miiko prior to the crash, and after the crash that toons money only held 38k?


Is that too much to ask?

if it is i might cancel my account too.

[Uska]

Be hard for them to look at every character after every crash to see what was lost and if people thought they would give items back they would claim that they lost something just to see if turbine would just give to them to save the time of looking at each loss in the data base. and if it was a crash they might have lost the data during the time period you were talking about. Its a very complicated issue I know and its a pain. I would be very upset if I lost that much cash as I cant play much so it takes me a while to build up any amount of pp and thats even with a bard with a decent haggle.

[DaveyCrockett]

What I don't understand is, if the servers rolled back (which Tolero confirmed), why wasn't the platinum found on the original character (ie, the one that handed it to Miiko)?

I mean they rolled the servers back to a save point in the database about 3-5 minutes before the crash, so it makes absolutely no sense that this roll back time occured at a point when the platinum was in mid-transfer, and thus belonged to noone.

Maybe it's late, but that doesn't figure with me.

That does suck, btw. However, if that part of the database was indeed corrupted by the crash, then they have nothing to look at to verify something went missing.

I'd hate to imagine what GJ would have done had he been one of the many people that mailed Medium Ingredient Bags to a character that already had one in their backpack, only to lose ALL of their ingredients. Now THAT is something that Turbine COULD/SHOULD have remedied for people.

Tell GJ I can help him out, and to chalk it up to a rare phenomenon. No real blame to place on anything other than fate for this one.

[toughguyjoe]

What I don't understand is, if the servers rolled back (which Tolero confirmed), why wasn't the platinum found on the original character (ie, the one that handed it to Miiko)?

I mean they rolled the servers back to a save point in the database about 3-5 minutes before the crash, so it makes absolutely no sense that this roll back time occured at a point when the platinum was in mid-transfer, and thus belonged to noone.

Maybe it's late, but that doesn't figure with me.

That does suck, btw. However, if that part of the database was indeed corrupted by the crash, then they have nothing to look at to verify something went missing.

I'd hate to imagine what GJ would have done had he been one of the many people that mailed Medium Ingredient Bags to a character that already had one in their backpack, only to lose ALL of their ingredients. Now THAT is something that Turbine COULD/SHOULD have remedied for people.

Tell GJ I can help him out, and to chalk it up to a rare phenomenon. No real blame to place on anything other than fate for this one.

I now firmly believe that i would vote for Davey if he ran for president.

I'll let him know, and know he wont take anything but am sure he will be appreciative of the gesture.

[Uska]

What I don't understand is, if the servers rolled back (which Tolero confirmed), why wasn't the platinum found on the original character (ie, the one that handed it to Miiko)?

I mean they rolled the servers back to a save point in the database about 3-5 minutes before the crash, so it makes absolutely no sense that this roll back time occured at a point when the platinum was in mid-transfer, and thus belonged to noone.

Maybe it's late, but that doesn't figure with me.

That does suck, btw. However, if that part of the database was indeed corrupted by the crash, then they have nothing to look at to verify something went missing.

I'd hate to imagine what GJ would have done had he been one of the many people that mailed Medium Ingredient Bags to a character that already had one in their backpack, only to lose ALL of their ingredients. Now THAT is something that Turbine COULD/SHOULD have remedied for people.

Tell GJ I can help him out, and to chalk it up to a rare phenomenon. No real blame to place on anything other than fate for this one.


Now thats mighty nice of you there.:)

[Uska]

I now firmly believe that i would vote for Davey if he ran for president.

I'll let him know, and know he wont take anything but am sure he will be appreciative of the gesture.

Yeah but maybe hearing about people like davey might make him change his mind about leaving.

[Aspenor]

I will assume your character doesn't have the plat? lol it's worth asking

[Varr]

I was not on when this happened, but this is the frist "roll back" Ive ever heard of. How many times has this ever really happened? 1, 2-5, dozens? My guildie had some looted items she was excited about get yanked also, but I must have missed this being an epidemic. I am innately lucky, so certainly possible Ive been logged off when they happen, but Ive not even read about a roll back before. Truely sorry to hear about everyones lost hour and lost lootings during that time, and this crazy situation of lost plat.........and I thought the same thing, if a roll back happened why didnt it revert to its pre issue status...........being in his possession. That stinks.

[Aspenor]

I was not on when this happened, but this is the frist "roll back" Ive ever heard of. How many times has this ever really happened? 1, 2-5, dozens? My guildie had some looted items she was excited about get yanked also, but I must have missed this being an epidemic. I am innately lucky, so certainly possible Ive been logged off when they happen, but Ive not even read about a roll back before. Truely sorry to hear about everyones lost hour and lost lootings during that time, and this crazy situation of lost plat.........and I thought the same thing, if a roll back happened why didnt it revert to its pre issue status...........being in his possession. That stinks.

two words: database corruption

[toughguyjoe]

I've been up all night and i checked every toon on each of our accounts. His main still has the amount of plat it had before the freeze and rollback. Problem is i wasn't here when he transfered the plat. it could have been in the window of 3-5 minutes before the problem occured. horrible luck if it happens that he transfered it at the exact time that it would end up in limbo. :(

[Hokiewa]

if he still has the same amount of plat before the freeze, then what is the issue?

[gamblerjoe]

i dont understand the nature of the rollback either, as i am a total novice when it comes to programming and networking type stuff. here is an explanation of how it happened for those of you who are wondering where the money went.

i log on to Cannacon and hand 130kp to Miiko.
i toon over to Drrokso and hand 300+kp to Miiko.
i toon over to Slashdance and hand 30kp to Miiko.
i log to the character selection screen get the message "Character could not be Saved" (or something to that effect.)
i attempt to log onto Calistica, but get the same message again, so i log both accounts off.
i log back on later, once the servers are back up.
i attempt to resume my actions but find that Miiko is back to her starting ammount of 38kp.
i immediately check Cannacon and Drrokso only to find them with the pocket change i left them with.
i turn into a statue for a couple of minutes.
i form a hypothesis and check Slashdance's inventory. He had his 30kp back (whoopee.)

here is my hypothesis. when i logged off Cannacon and Drrokso, it saved their states. When i logged off of Slashdance and Miiko, it did not save their states because they were logged on durring the server crash.

[alchilito]

To the Joe's:

Guys the whole situation was screwed up but hey, sh1t happens.

Now lets go raid some and move on, turn the page.

Peace,

Alex.

[BlackSteel]

what server?

[Joemama]

wait, your freind with a character that has 400k plat (or more) and he sent it to you then he quit because he lost that much? I havent even had nearly that much on all of my char combined at one time. quitting and losing all of his good characters that could make that much is a choice he will be regreting.

[HumanJHawkins]

<cut>here is my hypothesis. when i logged off Cannacon and Drrokso, it saved their states. When i logged off of Slashdance and Miiko, it did not save their states because they were logged on durring the server crash.

That's unlikely, because the transfer actually happens at the server. The money was already saved before you saw it go into their inventory form the trade window.

It would have to have been that the money was sent right during the DB backup procedure that happened 5 minutes before the crash. Maybe Miiko got backet up. Then the money went. Then Cannacon got backed up. 5 minutes later the servers crashed. They rolled to the backups, neither of which had the money.

In any event, it's a bummer. But frankly, I wish that was 1/3rd of my liquid assets! And Turbine did as well as anyone could. It is lame to quit the game over this. (Seriously, there are a lot of better reasons to quit than that!)

[Kistilan]

I'll donate 50k plat to the toughguyjoe relief foundation. Send a message to Thet, joe, and I'll send some cash in the mail system since that should be trackable unlike player-to-player exchanges at this time.

Turbine, figure it out. This is kinda lame that the rollback actually is ****ing over a few guys instead of fixing lost items that were owned HOURS if not MONTHS ahead of the crash. It's like a cat playing with a rubix cube. It just doesn't make any sense.

http://www.relicsofthelastwar.net/images/rubixcat.jpg

[Missing_Minds]

I was not on when this happened, but this is the frist "roll back" Ive ever heard of. How many times has this ever really happened? 1, 2-5, dozens? My guildie had some looted items she was excited about get yanked also, but I must have missed this being an epidemic. I am innately lucky, so certainly possible Ive been logged off when they happen, but Ive not even read about a roll back before. Truely sorry to hear about everyones lost hour and lost lootings during that time, and this crazy situation of lost plat.........and I thought the same thing, if a roll back happened why didnt it revert to its pre issue status...........being in his possession. That stinks.

This would only be the 2nd one I am aware of. I lived through the first. Had to reflag for something again. I forget what, but oh well.

[gamblerjoe]

That's unlikely, because the transfer actually happens at the server. The money was already saved before you saw it go into their inventory form the trade window.

It would have to have been that the money was sent right during the DB backup procedure that happened 5 minutes before the crash. Maybe Miiko got backet up. Then the money went. Then Cannacon got backed up. 5 minutes later the servers crashed. They rolled to the backups, neither of which had the money.

In any event, it's a bummer. But frankly, I wish that was 1/3rd of my liquid assets! And Turbine did as well as anyone could. It is lame to quit the game over this. (Seriously, there are a lot of better reasons to quit than that!)

if i am wrong, then why would slashdance have back the money he gave miiko? why would 4 characters be backed up minutes apart from one another?

turbine is a low rent, POS company. since day 1 i have felt that i am being very charitable by giving them my business. they have proven to us again and again that they dont care about us. they want to maintain this game with the lowest amount of overhead possible, and this means blatantly refusing customer service. If the server crashes, it should be their responsibility to investigate each and every loss claim, and use their judgement to determine if there should be compensation. It sounds like a pain in the ***, but its what they get for screwing up.

Heres a story about an incident that occurred while playing EVE Online. I warped to a mission and began fighting NPC ships. When my shields were heavily damaged i warped to a space station to repair them, as is standard procedure in that game. When i warped back to the encounter, i was warped inside of a collidable structure due to a bug. defenseless, i lost my ship, but not my pod, since NPCs do not attack pods. My pod spawned outside the structure, so i warped to a station. I was devastated, as that ship and its fittings constituted about 90% of what i was worth, and the insurance money was little help. Since the loss of my ship was 100% due to the bug, and therefore obviously the games fault, i decided to put in a ticket. It took a while, but someone responded. The message was something to the effect of: "we have investigated the incident and feel that the appropriate corse of action is to return your ship." They did not just create a ship of the same type, they found the data that represented my actual ship. they placed the ship, with the same name, same fittings, and all the cargo in tact to the last station it was docked to, er, the last station to which it was docked.

the point? it can be done. even if they rolled back the servers and dont have my toons in an appropriate state to make the money exist again, they can still do something. cant they look at Rockso and Cann as they were upon logging on? they would see how much money they had, and that they had almost no money after the crash. they could also track my mailings and transfers to see if i 'laundered' it somehow. also, they could just see that 2 people handed money to miiko that is no longer in existence. at very least, they could investigate it, and then tell me that the information they came up with in inconclusive, and despite trying, they can not ascertain beyond a resonable doubt that my claim is legitamate. At least they would be doing something, and speaking to me like a human being. As it was, the GM i spoke to just kept repeating himself, and was completely ignoring everything i typed. then in the middle of our conversation, without saying goodbye or asking if there was anything he could do, he terminated the ticket. i did not say or do anything vulgar, or otherwise uncalled for which would warrant ending the conversation.

like many unsatisfied customers before me, it is not the loss of plat that makes me so disgusted. it is the fact that malfunctions and errors happen way to often with Turbine. It is the fact that the customer service is as poor as it is. Call it immature if you want, but when customers arent satisfied, they do not return business. they seek a company that will satisfy them. Its not stubbornness or immaturity, its capitolism.

[gamblerjoe]

please dont send me anything. i just need to take some time and think about what im going to do. the kindness iv seen in this thread certainly gives me another factor to think about.

also, theres something i forgot to add earlier. i made no errors of any kind, nor was i using any exploit while moving money around. anyone could make a mistake like pulling a second exclusive item out of a mailbox, that just isnt the case here. the blame is 100% Turbines, and they refuse to aknowlege that in any way. that is the problem.

heh, i remember when Macedturkey made a GS Greatsword for Cleavon, and decided to give it a couple of test swings before mailing it...

[toughguyjoe]

you HAD to dig on me, didn't you.

When you get up i'm gonna make you keep playing for that remark.

mark my words.

[Steiner-Davion]

i completely understand that crashes happen.

However, do we not pay 15 dollars a month for this game? if we do, then could it not be speculated that Turbine could see that there was 438K plat on the toon named Miiko prior to the crash, and after the crash that toons money only held 38k?


Is that too much to ask?

if it is i might cancel my account too.


My understanding is that a server roll-back occured as a result of the server crash and the corrupted file. Since this happened, wouldn't your friend have gotten his plat back or did he make his 400k Plat in less than an hour? Possibly through a service? But I guesswe won't know, becasue he cancelled his account so hastily.

[Steiner-Davion]

I was not on when this happened, but this is the frist "roll back" Ive ever heard of. How many times has this ever really happened? 1, 2-5, dozens? My guildie had some looted items she was excited about get yanked also, but I must have missed this being an epidemic. I am innately lucky, so certainly possible Ive been logged off when they happen, but Ive not even read about a roll back before. Truely sorry to hear about everyones lost hour and lost lootings during that time, and this crazy situation of lost plat.........and I thought the same thing, if a roll back happened why didnt it revert to its pre issue status...........being in his possession. That stinks.


I'd say from my memory that a rollback has happened no more than a handful (may 6 times) since launch, and that is being generous, ie not conservative with my figure.

[Zenako]

The problem seems to stem from the observation that while the servers were rolled back for characters to their last save point, (which apparently differs from character to character based on some accounts), but that fixed things in the game like AH, Bank and Mail went back to a different time point, often much more recent than the characters save point.

So my guild friend who taken items out of the bank to use lost stuff.

Timeline. Take items out of bank at T=1

A few minutes pass and the servers go down.

Characters rolled back to T=0 (before accessing the bank)

Bank rolled back to T=2 (after things removed from the bank)

Fire up the game.

Character who restarts at T=0 settings does not have items.
Bank which restarts at T=2 settings also does not have items since they were removed at T=1.

This sort of thing should not be happening.

[Gunga]

I call ********. Never happened.

[rimble]

What I don't understand is, if the servers rolled back (which Tolero confirmed), why wasn't the platinum found on the original character (ie, the one that handed it to Miiko)?

All I can figure (aside from plain old database corruption) is characters save at different times. Main character handed over the cash and ended up hitting a save point (maybe automatically happens every few minutes). Secondary character didn't hit a save point before things went down. Poof.

I think I remember playing an MMORPG long ago, maybe EQ, that I typed /save alot--which would actually commit your character changes to the database rather than holding them in memory--because of things like this.

[toughguyjoe]

My understanding is that a server roll-back occured as a result of the server crash and the corrupted file. Since this happened, wouldn't your friend have gotten his plat back or did he make his 400k Plat in less than an hour? Possibly through a service? But I guesswe won't know, becasue he cancelled his account so hastily.


Neither Myself or my friend has ever bought anything from a plat farmer. Nice conclusion to jump to though.

[toughguyjoe]

I call ********. Never happened.

Ladies and gentlemen, Gunga.

Resident dewsh.

He'll probably report me for that comment too.

[k1dwizard]

hey, you know what i publicly announced my idiocy when i got caught in a bug while sending my stock of ingredients in a stupid movie by sending myself ingredients bag. I was trying to hurry up the process because the shroud run leader i think was in a hurry. so in my stupidity, and yes i admit my stupidity, i think my guild will start calling this a triscuts considering i lost all of my larges, including 3 scales, but i also didn't understand how they could just lose something like that, and not have a record of it, or at least tried to look at my character and figure it out. I am a loyal player, and the reason i didnt cancel is because of my guildmates, friends, and its the only mmo I liked. but really for you i cant see how finding out how much money was lost as an issue, even me if they just bothered to look it would have been fine. just my opinion, I still play, and just started regrinding the shroud, not quite sure of the easy way to recoup 400kplay though.

[Kistilan]

Ladies and gentlemen, Gunga.

Resident dwarf.

He'll probably report me for that comment too.

Corrected that for you. The terms are generally homogenously exchangeable, but I know you meant to type that.

If you use a word that isn't used in normal manchild speak it tends to be reported as well. It's a queer thing, as I was very perplexed as to why I had been cited for the conundrum whereas a mutually beneficial homogenous relationship was clearly not established between said and another oppositionally-polarized individual.

Dare I say intelligence is to be weighted, measured and satisfied now in the eye of the lesser? Yes, yes I do. :(

But I'm ok with that because I like you Cleavon. I like you a lot. It's a very... hold on, don't want to get in trouble here... non-standardized relationship we have, but when I need a dragon slain or Demon tanked, I'll call you first.

Much untouchable love from a similar player ie homogenously-allignment.

[toughguyjoe]

When DfC runs for president, we can have Kistilan write his speeches.

[Gunga]

Ladies and gentlemen, Gunga.

Resident dewsh.

He'll probably report me for that comment too.

Nah. You make a good point. Someone could though, so either just call me something worthy of your incoming infractions or find a better way.

I still don't believe you.