All my stuff gone to server "Maintenance"

[Lightning2]

you didn't work for it you were playing a game

Stop trying to do that, He worked for it, on a game.

[Potjeh]

I know they can do it, and I know it's not hard.

It is fucking hard. Sure, restoring just your stuff would be easy. But if they did that, they'd have to do it for every single active character. End result, the devs would spend all their time restoring stuff and no time actually developing. Frankly, I'd rather have new features than my stuff back (and I've lost a metric shitload of stuff since I started playing).

[loftar]

That said, I am curious as to what happened to everything saving on a controlled shutdown. Those seemed to be safer, for a short time at least, than crashes.

Yes, it is generally safe to shut down the server these days. Something weird has happened with the communication with the account database twice recently now, though. The first time I took it as a weird fluke, but it seems to be needing closer investigation now that it has happened twice.

As for refunding, we really just can't do that. Remember that Haven still is alpha, and, as such, is still going to crash every once in a while. If we were to refund everyone's losses each time that happened, we wouldn't have any time over for anything else soon. Luckily, I have at least gotten a bit better at emergency saving when crashes occur -- ask the people who've been around longer, and I think they'll agree that with just two rollbacks on your account, you should consider yourself lucky.

[Darth_GW7]

If only a couple of people are taking the time to ask you for their stuff back, you only have to take as much time as it takes to refund that couple of people.
I'm spending MY time playing YOUR game, I want to be sure that my stuff isn't just going to randomly disappear and not come back as long as I'm playing.

[creatore]

Whenever maintenance is declared, immediately save your character. I did this by habit, even though I thought they'd fixed the no-save-on-controlled-shutdown problem. Net result - I came back to a half hour earlier location, with things in my inventory which I'd harvested in that half hour - and those things still growing and ready to harvest. I also have the LP from the work I did, even though most of the work is lost.

To save your character, click "buy" on the skill buying screen, even without spending any LP.

If I'd known anything about that I would have done it, however I only joined yesterday, and played briefly, I have only been properly playing today. If it had been mentioned anywhere easily found I could understand, however it wasn't on the PAQ or anywhere else I could find it.

you didn't work for it you were playing a game

No, he did work for it, but he did it in a game, although he still spent spend hours of his time doing it.

[Potjeh]

If they were doing refunds, EVERYONE would ask for one. That, and people would start asking to be "refunded" for stuff they didn't actually have. Since the stuff is deleted from the server, the only proof devs have that you really did have what you claim is your word.

[Shogun15]

If only a couple of people are taking the time to ask you for their stuff back, you only have to take as much time as it takes to refund that couple of people.
I'm spending MY time playing YOUR game, I want to be sure that my stuff isn't just going to randomly disappear and not come back as long as I'm playing.

Remember that Haven still is alpha

[KoE]

Yeah, but if they refund your stuff, then other people will expect their stuff to be refunded, and it will snowball.

Feel free to make demands, but really, the table's been laid out nice and plain for you. You can take it or leave it. I do believe this sandbox belongs to jorb and loftar, not you.

As for funny stories with regard to crashes: I recall the first major one that happened to me, my neighbor lost his ranger gear. (When all this stuff took steel, back when steel was fairly rare.) Now, being a dunce, he didn't realize that it had, in fact, been lost to a server crash. He assumed it was a thief on his kin list (thus not leaving any clues), and I figured it as well (ironically despite the fact I'd asked him about a server crash because I thought he'd eaten my sausages.) Add to this that I had just made my ranger gear, and it looks like his disappeared and was on me.

Cue a long run around and him cornering be because I trusted him (which, strangely, he bragged about betraying my trust as a sign of his sterling intellect later), and I was quite literally afraid he was gonna kill me 'cause this guy was batshit insane. Cue me realizing this was all the fault of Ye Great Server, and we all laughed and laughed and laughed.

Then I stored some of my ranger gear and the server crashed again. Less laughter at the time, but I find it hilarious now.

Long story short, it sucks to lose your stuff, but if you're going to stick it out for the long run, it's not going to amount to much unless you've got especially bad luck.

[creatore]

At any rate, even if I do not get my items back, which I don't expect to happen now, a more advanced warning should be given, as barely one minute is not enough time to save the character and log out. Even if it extends downtime by a few minutes it would save the work of many more hours.

[kobnach]

Yes, it is generally safe to shut down the server these days. Something weird has happened with the communication with the account database twice recently now, though. The first time I took it as a weird fluke, but it seems to be needing closer investigation now that it has happened twice.

Thanks for the explanation, loftar, and sorry about the somewhat grouchy post on the topic. The truth is, I was a bit panicced at the thought of another instance of a gate being left open because of a shutdown or crash, and me possibly not being able to get back immediately when the server recovered.