Characters vanished

SlyVortex

tl;dr:
- Couldn't log in due to a 'maintenance' error at a time there should've been no maintenance.
- Waited a few hours.
- Then I couldn't log in due to an 'outdated client' error.
- Tried patching, but the launcher didn't do anything.
- Therefore tried the 'repair' option in the launcher.
- This fixed the client, but after login all my characters had vanished.
- What now?

As for the the full story, it is as the title implies, I just lost all my characters. I have no idea what could possibly cause this, but here's what's happened over the past few days:

First of all I just started playing over about a week ago so I don't really know how the maintenance sequences work. I was simply playing the game until sunday, and logged off normally. Then when I tried to log back in on Monday afternoon, I got the message that the server was down for maintenance. So I searched around and found this forum which stated 3 dates for 3 separate maintenance's. It struck me as odd as I was playing (or so it says in the launcher) on the EU server, yet the scheduled date for the EU maintenance was for Tuesday, not Monday. The NA server on the other should've been updated on Monday.

So after several hours, as the evening started to drop in, I tried again. The launcher opened, didn't patch anything (as I would've guessed seen the maintenance dates), the game started as usual. However this time when I tried to log in, it stated my client was outdated and needed patching. This again I thought was odd. Nonetheless I restarted the launcher, but it wouldn't patch anything, even when manually prompted to 'search for updates'. So I tried logging in and rebooting several times but it still kept saying my client was out of date.

At this moment I thought I'd just reinstall the game, when I noticed the 'repair' option in the launcher. So I thought I'd give that a try before completely reinstalling the game, as a repair would likely take a significant smaller amount of time. This worked well, as in, the game would launch, and it would even let me log in, without errors.

However when I finally managed to log in that evening, more strange stuff happened. Instead of going to the character selection screen it would show the intro movie and it would end up in the character creation screen instead. Thinking of it as some kind of bug, maybe because of the repair, I thought, I tried relogging a few times, but every single time it would show me the intro and bring me to the creation screen. So I quickly made a new character at that moment, as to get rid of the forced character creation. Relogged a last time and finally managed to get to the character selection screen, only to find my character selection screen to be void of any of my pre-existing characters (except for the new one I was just forced to make of course).

So far I haven't received any response from anyone who could help with this problem, I've already sent a ticket to the Support page.
I've also posted this problem to the facebook page and found two others who just recently lost their characters, one of them also confirmed they lost their characters after trying to 'repair' their client.

So, has anyone else here experienced this (or similar) problem(s)? If so, what exactly happened to you?

More importantly, does anyone have a solution for this bug?
Or is there maybe someone from Zenimax on the forum here who could help me and the others with this bug out?

EDIT: As asked/mentioned in the comments:
- I'm playing on the PC.
- I'm 100% sure I'm currently selecting, and have been playing on the EU megaserver.
- I'm logging from The Netherlands, Timezone: GMT +1.

MissBizz

I'm going to guess you are on PC because of the maintenance days you mentioned.

Are you ABSOLUTELY positive you didn't just update/login to the PTS server? I've seen quite a few people do that.

Sorry for the mention if you have already double checked that.

[EDIT] As well.. depending on YOUR time zone, EU maintenance actually is Monday. NA maintenance is Monday's at 8AM EST, and EU maintence is Monday at 10pm EST. It says Tuesday because players actually in EU it is Tuesday by then.

Reverb

As @MissBizz said, be certain you are logging onto the correct server. During your troubleshooting and repair, you may have accidentally selected PTS or the "wrong" realm megaserver (NA or EU).

SlyVortex

MissBizz wrote: »

I'm going to guess you are on PC because of the maintenance days you mentioned.

Are you ABSOLUTELY positive you didn't just update/login to the PTS server? I've seen quite a few people do that.

Reverb wrote: »

As @MissBizz said, be certain you are logging onto the correct server. During your troubleshooting and repair, you may have accidentally selected PTS or the "wrong" realm megaserver (NA or EU).

I'm sorry, I should've put that in the full story part :P
Yes, I'm 100% sure I'm on currently selection EU, and also was playing on EU before, as I was trying to meet up with a friend who was also playing on EU. We couldn't see eachother nor could we find/chat with eachother though, but we both doublechecked being on the EU server.

And yes, just checked to be sure again, I don't have Public Test server selected in the launcher options.

Also, having seen some other posts where people indeed accidentally switched servers, I tried switching to NA this morning to see if I somehow wasn't magically playing on NA all along. But the launcher wouldn't let me start the client for the NA server as it had to download a humongous amount of data first, so much that it said that my Hard Disk didn't have enough free space.

MissBizz wrote: »

Sorry for the mention if you have already double checked that.

Don't be, I'm happy with every soul that tries to help ^^

MissBizz wrote: »

[EDIT] As well.. depending on YOUR time zone, EU maintenance actually is Monday. NA maintenance is Monday's at 8AM EST, and EU maintence is Monday at 10pm EST. It says Tuesday because players actually in EU it is Tuesday by then.

I'm playing from The Netherlands, so that could very well be. I always re-google those timezone abbreviations, but always get confused about them (probably because of a lack of interest in that field xD)

Fact is though that the Monday afternoon that it wouldn't let me log in due to maintenance, the yellow boxed information at the top of the forum said the first (NA) maintenance was "In Progress".

MissBizz

SlyVortex wrote: »

MissBizz wrote: »

I'm going to guess you are on PC because of the maintenance days you mentioned.

Are you ABSOLUTELY positive you didn't just update/login to the PTS server? I've seen quite a few people do that.

Reverb wrote: »

As @MissBizz said, be certain you are logging onto the correct server. During your troubleshooting and repair, you may have accidentally selected PTS or the "wrong" realm megaserver (NA or EU).

I'm sorry, I should've put that in the full story part :P
Yes, I'm 100% sure I'm on currently selection EU, and also was playing on EU before, as I was trying to meet up with a friend who was also playing on EU. We couldn't see eachother nor could we find/chat with eachother though, but we both doublechecked being on the EU server.

And yes, just checked to be sure again, I don't have Public Test server selected in the launcher options.

Also, having seen some other posts where people indeed accidentally switched servers, I tried switching to NA this morning to see if I somehow wasn't magically playing on NA all along. But the launcher wouldn't let me start the client for the NA server as it had to download a humongous amount of data first, so much that it said that my Hard Disk didn't have enough free space.

MissBizz wrote: »

Sorry for the mention if you have already double checked that.

Don't be, I'm happy with every soul that tries to help ^^

MissBizz wrote: »

[EDIT] As well.. depending on YOUR time zone, EU maintenance actually is Monday. NA maintenance is Monday's at 8AM EST, and EU maintence is Monday at 10pm EST. It says Tuesday because players actually in EU it is Tuesday by then.

I'm playing from The Netherlands, so that could very well be. I always re-google those timezone abbreviations, but always get confused about them (probably because of a lack of interest in that field xD)

Fact is though that the Monday afternoon that it wouldn't let me log in due to maintenance, the yellow boxed information at the top of the forum said the first (NA) maintenance was "In Progress".

That's so weird. I REALLY want to suggest that if you couldn't log in due to maintenance, and NA maintenance was in progress.. it would make sense you were actually on NA all along... and not on EU. Although as you mentioned, if you had it wouldn't have attempted to redownload the game Sorry, I don't have a clue.

SlyVortex

MissBizz wrote: »

SlyVortex wrote: »

MissBizz wrote: »

I'm going to guess you are on PC because of the maintenance days you mentioned.

Are you ABSOLUTELY positive you didn't just update/login to the PTS server? I've seen quite a few people do that.

Reverb wrote: »

As @MissBizz said, be certain you are logging onto the correct server. During your troubleshooting and repair, you may have accidentally selected PTS or the "wrong" realm megaserver (NA or EU).

I'm sorry, I should've put that in the full story part :P
Yes, I'm 100% sure I'm on currently selection EU, and also was playing on EU before, as I was trying to meet up with a friend who was also playing on EU. We couldn't see eachother nor could we find/chat with eachother though, but we both doublechecked being on the EU server.

And yes, just checked to be sure again, I don't have Public Test server selected in the launcher options.

Also, having seen some other posts where people indeed accidentally switched servers, I tried switching to NA this morning to see if I somehow wasn't magically playing on NA all along. But the launcher wouldn't let me start the client for the NA server as it had to download a humongous amount of data first, so much that it said that my Hard Disk didn't have enough free space.

MissBizz wrote: »

Sorry for the mention if you have already double checked that.

Don't be, I'm happy with every soul that tries to help ^^

MissBizz wrote: »

[EDIT] As well.. depending on YOUR time zone, EU maintenance actually is Monday. NA maintenance is Monday's at 8AM EST, and EU maintence is Monday at 10pm EST. It says Tuesday because players actually in EU it is Tuesday by then.

I'm playing from The Netherlands, so that could very well be. I always re-google those timezone abbreviations, but always get confused about them (probably because of a lack of interest in that field xD)

Fact is though that the Monday afternoon that it wouldn't let me log in due to maintenance, the yellow boxed information at the top of the forum said the first (NA) maintenance was "In Progress".

That's so weird. I REALLY want to suggest that if you couldn't log in due to maintenance, and NA maintenance was in progress.. it would make sense you were actually on NA all along... and not on EU. Although as you mentioned, if you had it wouldn't have attempted to redownload the game Sorry, I don't have a clue.

I just heard from someone I met on the TESO facebook page that they had a response from Zenimax on their ticket. She said that Zenimax found her characters on the NA server, even though she played on the EU server just like me.
As a doublecheck, she had to download a buttload of stuff as well in order to be able to play on NA, kind of indicating she really wasn't playing on NA before, again, just like me. :P

MissBizz

SlyVortex wrote: »

MissBizz wrote: »

SlyVortex wrote: »

MissBizz wrote: »

I'm going to guess you are on PC because of the maintenance days you mentioned.

Are you ABSOLUTELY positive you didn't just update/login to the PTS server? I've seen quite a few people do that.

Reverb wrote: »

As @MissBizz said, be certain you are logging onto the correct server. During your troubleshooting and repair, you may have accidentally selected PTS or the "wrong" realm megaserver (NA or EU).

I'm sorry, I should've put that in the full story part :P
Yes, I'm 100% sure I'm on currently selection EU, and also was playing on EU before, as I was trying to meet up with a friend who was also playing on EU. We couldn't see eachother nor could we find/chat with eachother though, but we both doublechecked being on the EU server.

And yes, just checked to be sure again, I don't have Public Test server selected in the launcher options.

Also, having seen some other posts where people indeed accidentally switched servers, I tried switching to NA this morning to see if I somehow wasn't magically playing on NA all along. But the launcher wouldn't let me start the client for the NA server as it had to download a humongous amount of data first, so much that it said that my Hard Disk didn't have enough free space.

MissBizz wrote: »

Sorry for the mention if you have already double checked that.

Don't be, I'm happy with every soul that tries to help ^^

MissBizz wrote: »

[EDIT] As well.. depending on YOUR time zone, EU maintenance actually is Monday. NA maintenance is Monday's at 8AM EST, and EU maintence is Monday at 10pm EST. It says Tuesday because players actually in EU it is Tuesday by then.

I'm playing from The Netherlands, so that could very well be. I always re-google those timezone abbreviations, but always get confused about them (probably because of a lack of interest in that field xD)

Fact is though that the Monday afternoon that it wouldn't let me log in due to maintenance, the yellow boxed information at the top of the forum said the first (NA) maintenance was "In Progress".

That's so weird. I REALLY want to suggest that if you couldn't log in due to maintenance, and NA maintenance was in progress.. it would make sense you were actually on NA all along... and not on EU. Although as you mentioned, if you had it wouldn't have attempted to redownload the game Sorry, I don't have a clue.

I just heard from someone I met on the TESO facebook page that they had a response from Zenimax on their ticket. She said that Zenimax found her characters on the NA server, even though she played on the EU server just like me.
As a doublecheck, she had to download a buttload of stuff as well in order to be able to play on NA, kind of indicating she really wasn't playing on NA before, again, just like me. :P

That's crazy. I've never heard of that before.

SlyVortex

MissBizz wrote: »

SlyVortex wrote: »

MissBizz wrote: »

SlyVortex wrote: »

MissBizz wrote: »

I'm going to guess you are on PC because of the maintenance days you mentioned.

Are you ABSOLUTELY positive you didn't just update/login to the PTS server? I've seen quite a few people do that.

Reverb wrote: »

As @MissBizz said, be certain you are logging onto the correct server. During your troubleshooting and repair, you may have accidentally selected PTS or the "wrong" realm megaserver (NA or EU).

I'm sorry, I should've put that in the full story part :P
Yes, I'm 100% sure I'm on currently selection EU, and also was playing on EU before, as I was trying to meet up with a friend who was also playing on EU. We couldn't see eachother nor could we find/chat with eachother though, but we both doublechecked being on the EU server.

And yes, just checked to be sure again, I don't have Public Test server selected in the launcher options.

Also, having seen some other posts where people indeed accidentally switched servers, I tried switching to NA this morning to see if I somehow wasn't magically playing on NA all along. But the launcher wouldn't let me start the client for the NA server as it had to download a humongous amount of data first, so much that it said that my Hard Disk didn't have enough free space.

MissBizz wrote: »

Sorry for the mention if you have already double checked that.

Don't be, I'm happy with every soul that tries to help ^^

MissBizz wrote: »

[EDIT] As well.. depending on YOUR time zone, EU maintenance actually is Monday. NA maintenance is Monday's at 8AM EST, and EU maintence is Monday at 10pm EST. It says Tuesday because players actually in EU it is Tuesday by then.

I'm playing from The Netherlands, so that could very well be. I always re-google those timezone abbreviations, but always get confused about them (probably because of a lack of interest in that field xD)

Fact is though that the Monday afternoon that it wouldn't let me log in due to maintenance, the yellow boxed information at the top of the forum said the first (NA) maintenance was "In Progress".

That's so weird. I REALLY want to suggest that if you couldn't log in due to maintenance, and NA maintenance was in progress.. it would make sense you were actually on NA all along... and not on EU. Although as you mentioned, if you had it wouldn't have attempted to redownload the game Sorry, I don't have a clue.

I just heard from someone I met on the TESO facebook page that they had a response from Zenimax on their ticket. She said that Zenimax found her characters on the NA server, even though she played on the EU server just like me.
As a doublecheck, she had to download a buttload of stuff as well in order to be able to play on NA, kind of indicating she really wasn't playing on NA before, again, just like me. :P

That's crazy. I've never heard of that before.

Tell me about it...

Here's to hoping something similar happened to my characters, and that it is reversable.

SlyVortex

Welp, I just got contacted by support on my ticket. They stated that indeed something similar happened to what happened to one of the other persons I met that had this problem. My characters were just found loafing around on the NA server... As they made no further comment on whether they would or even could fix this, I've replied to them asking whether some kind of transfer back to EU would be possible.

As for what exactly caused this, what happened and what not, I can only guess, as this was also left unanswered. So far I can only blame Molag Bal and his wretched abilities for all this.

EDIT: Got an insanely fast reply to this, only took them 17 minutes!
They just told me they do not have the means to transfer characters from one megaserver to the other, of which I was already afraid...
They also told me they are not aware of any bug that would transfer characters from one server to the other, so this would mean that the bug was client based. Maybe just in the EU client, maybe in both, but it would seem that the EU client has the possibility of logging you into the NA server.