Locking Individual Accounts vs An Entire Rollback

soulreaper1213 · April 16

@ZOS_Kevin , @ZOS_GinaBruno

Can we get an explanation as to why the decision was to lock people's accounts individually based on whether they logged into PTS instead of just a rollback of both PTS and Live servers? This issue is very severe for the PC/NA server but this fix is not encompassing enough. Gold sellers have already made sure the gold from their PTS characters that was suddenly transferred to live is no longer on their accounts. We are talking potentially 10s to 100s of billions of gold immediately injected into an already horrible economy.

Me and my raid team were super excited to jump into the new raid and made to sure log into PTS early to set up our characters. And now, more than half of our members are temporarily banned simply for participating in your PTS cycle.

I sincerely hope that this issue isn't just brushed off and we can actually have some communication because most players, myself included, would love to support this game more. It just seems like at every step of the way you are making it as difficult as possible to do so, all the while not really providing communication that will leave players with a relative understanding of your reasoning. I have played this game since its first beta back in 2013(?) and I think this is one of the few times your decisions and lack of communication has genuinely shocked me.

CameraBeardThePirate · April 16

Not even just the gold - if they haven't properly tracked where items were distributed and haven't rolled back the accounts they were distrubuted to, there will now be people with PTS sets on live.

Sets that haven't even properly been balanced yet could potentially be circulating on live. That's insane from a balance standpoint

IncultaWolf · April 16

I'm very surprised they didn't just do a server rollback. I know people who still have billions of gold that was traded from pts template accounts onto the live server from this situation. The issue was only up for around half an hour, but I feel like even that could damage the economy on PC-NA more.

virtus753 · April 16

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Not even just the gold - if they haven't properly tracked where items were distributed and haven't rolled back the accounts they were distrubuted to, there will now be people with PTS sets on live.

Sets that haven't even properly been balanced yet could potentially be circulating on live. That's insane from a balance standpoint

I have to imagine that a search for those new sets would find them quickly so they can be removed. Since any copy of those sets that exists on live shouldn’t be there, any copy that’s found on the live server should just be deleted.

Finding the newly introduced copies of sets extant on live and tracking the newly introduced gold would seem much more time and labor intensive, since it would not be so easy to distinguish them from what belongs on the live server.

onyxorb · April 16

I got locked because I logged on to PTS to look at new homes and purchased them so I could build in them on PTS.

I suppose they are trying to minimize all the fallout by doing this on a per account basis.
However, I have zero faith that they will be able to remove all the gold/crown that got injected into the system by people that abused it.

It just seems like it would have been a better call to roll back everyone, and give out something as a consolidation, like 1,000 endeavors or something more appropriate for an ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION.

Seriously, this anniversary has caused me more pain than joy.

HatchetHaro · April 16

I predicted multiple times that they would do a full server rollback because the damage had already been done with the template characters' gold and items already in full circulation; a full server rollback would have been much less of a headache for everybody to deal with, and would have been the smarter choice. It would have resulted in something far more fair for everyone involved, with the extension of the event being basically the only thing they need to do to achieve that.

I was so confident that they would do it, because it would be insane to instead try to isolate individual incidents.

Turns out, I misjudged their ability to make smart choices.

Now assuming that they fix everything and I can log in on April 19th 9:30am, they will have to compensate me 12 Event Tickets, ~ 800 Seals of Endeavor, 476 Anniversary Jubilee Boxes, 476 Writ rewards, and 4 days worth of daily rewards for this to be fair in any way, shape, or form, and how do you think they will handle handing those Jubilee boxes out?

Gorø · April 16

People on NA still have the extra currencies and items that came from PTS. ZOS could have been clever by closing both PTS and NA. [snip]
I'm a PC EU player and when my server shuts down, I either go play on NA or another game. [snip]
Now we have part of the loyal players that can't play the game at all. Most interesting content creators can't stream due to them also being locked as well [snip]

[edited for baiting]

HatchetHaro · April 16

Gorø wrote: »

People on NA still have the extra currencies and items that came from PTS. ZOS could have been clever by closing both PTS and NA. [snip]
I'm a PC EU player and when my server shuts down, I either go play on NA or another game. [snip]
Now we have part of the loyal players that can't play the game at all. Most interesting content creators can't stream due to them also being locked as well [snip]

Rolling back to minutes before PTS launch might not have been possible; given that our accounts are to be rolled back to a 9:30am snapshot, it's likely that's the closest backup they have in the given timeframe.

I also would not blame the players being worried about losing their event style pages to a rollback; those style pages are a massive pain to grind (Anniversary Celebration, after all!) and I would not enjoy even entertaining the thought of having to farm geysers for another 22 hours. Overall, this event has been an absolute train wreck, and I hope that the developers are happy about it.

[edited to remove quote]

code65536 · April 16

HatchetHaro wrote: »

I predicted multiple times that they would do a full server rollback because the damage had already been done with the template characters' gold and items already in full circulation; a full server rollback would have been much less of a headache for everybody to deal with, and would have been the smarter choice. It would have resulted in something far more fair for everyone involved, with the extension of the event being basically the only thing they need to do to achieve that.

I was so confident that they would do it, because it would be insane to instead try to isolate individual incidents.

Turns out, I misjudged their ability to make smart choices.

Now assuming that they fix everything and I can log in on April 19th 9:30am, they will have to compensate me 12 Event Tickets, ~ 800 Seals of Endeavor, 476 Anniversary Jubilee Boxes, 476 Writ rewards, and 4 days worth of daily rewards for this to be fair in any way, shape, or form, and how do you think they will handle handing those Jubilee boxes out?

PTS went up at 1730 EDT. So the sensible thing would be to roll back to 1730 EDT. But they're rolling back to 0930 EDT. Why? Most likely because that's the most recent backup that they have available, and they're not able to roll back to an arbitrary point in time.

If it was just an hour, going back to just 1730 EDT, I think a server-wide rollback would be a viable option. Would probably be easier and faster than restoring accounts individually from backup. But if you're looking at going back 9 hours, then it's very hard to justify that for the entire server.

DarknessShallFall · April 16

I also think a rollback was needed, but guess we didn't get that which is highly strange. I hope all the people complaining about their stuff is worth the crash coming. Dont get me wrong I don't blame them but they could have contacted ZOS...

That said I suppose its also possible that ZOS will try to track any in-game transactions that was made by these people on PTS with other players and might try to lock their accounts too and/or delete the items they were given, we won't know for sure though until we get any information by the team, but its for sure a disaster.

ZOS_Kevin · April 16

soulreaper1213 wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin , @ZOS_GinaBruno

Can we get an explanation as to why the decision was to lock people's accounts individually based on whether they logged into PTS instead of just a rollback of both PTS and Live servers? This issue is very severe for the PC/NA server but this fix is not encompassing enough. Gold sellers have already made sure the gold from their PTS characters that was suddenly transferred to live is no longer on their accounts. We are talking potentially 10s to 100s of billions of gold immediately injected into an already horrible economy.

Me and my raid team were super excited to jump into the new raid and made to sure log into PTS early to set up our characters. And now, more than half of our members are temporarily banned simply for participating in your PTS cycle.

I sincerely hope that this issue isn't just brushed off and we can actually have some communication because most players, myself included, would love to support this game more. It just seems like at every step of the way you are making it as difficult as possible to do so, all the while not really providing communication that will leave players with a relative understanding of your reasoning. I have played this game since its first beta back in 2013(?) and I think this is one of the few times your decisions and lack of communication has genuinely shocked me.

We noted in our last update, throughout our communications last night, that we would provide a summary in the coming days regarding what happened.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We will follow up in the coming days with more details summarizing what happened and will share any additional information at that time. We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and thank you again for your patience during this matter.

No one on the team is trying to brush anything off. We cannot provide a full detailed update yet without finishing our investigations and work on this. The last thing we want to do right now is give a half-realized answer. We still have team members working and looking to resolve issues. So when they resolve items on their end, we'll be able to get answers out to everyone.

We have provided updates here thus far. Again, we know this is frustrating. The team has been working around the clock to get this resolved so that we can provide answers.

HatchetHaro · April 16

code65536 wrote: »

HatchetHaro wrote: »

I predicted multiple times that they would do a full server rollback because the damage had already been done with the template characters' gold and items already in full circulation; a full server rollback would have been much less of a headache for everybody to deal with, and would have been the smarter choice. It would have resulted in something far more fair for everyone involved, with the extension of the event being basically the only thing they need to do to achieve that.

I was so confident that they would do it, because it would be insane to instead try to isolate individual incidents.

Turns out, I misjudged their ability to make smart choices.

Now assuming that they fix everything and I can log in on April 19th 9:30am, they will have to compensate me 12 Event Tickets, ~ 800 Seals of Endeavor, 476 Anniversary Jubilee Boxes, 476 Writ rewards, and 4 days worth of daily rewards for this to be fair in any way, shape, or form, and how do you think they will handle handing those Jubilee boxes out?

PTS went up at 1730 EDT. So the sensible thing would be to roll back to 1730 EDT. But they're rolling back to 0930 EDT. Why? Most likely because that's the most recent backup that they have available, and they're not able to roll back to an arbitrary point in time.

If it was just an hour, going back to just 1730 EDT, I think a server-wide rollback would be a viable option. Would probably be easier and faster than restoring accounts individually from backup. But if you're looking at going back 9 hours, then it's very hard to justify that for the entire server.

To me, it's more a question of "how is ZOS going to fairly compensate players for the downtime" after the rollback. If they've done the full server rollback (which would probably have been quicker, too), they could have simply extended the event by one day and retroactively granted everyone who has style pages collected during the rollback phase their style pages back through an audit, and at most people would be out one day of rewards.

Now, they have to 1. copy each affected account in manually, 2. all affected accounts get an unfair 4-day (yes, "2-3 days", but it's rolled back to a point 17 hours before the email) suspension, 3. track down the gold and items that have been traded and mailed to non-affected accounts, and 4. deal with having to fairly compensate players for 4 full days worth of play time during two events with buttloads of rewards on the line, and I want my 476 Anniversary Jubilee boxes.

I don't have the luxury of oodles of alt accounts. I'm stuck out here, unable to play the game and earn the rewards that I should have been able to earn, while the rest of the people who are fortunate enough to not have logged on to the PTS are still benefiting from the event. This sucks big time compared to the small suck that is a one day event extension and style page grant would have been.

ImmortalElf13 · April 16

They are also probably trying to sort out the people who logged into live after being on pts between those that said "hey, wait, theres a problem here" and those that said "awesome, how fast can I exploit this before its shut down".

Many reported but some chose to be ********. Hopefully, Zos will weed them out.

xclassgaming · April 16

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

soulreaper1213 wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin , @ZOS_GinaBruno

Can we get an explanation as to why the decision was to lock people's accounts individually based on whether they logged into PTS instead of just a rollback of both PTS and Live servers? This issue is very severe for the PC/NA server but this fix is not encompassing enough. Gold sellers have already made sure the gold from their PTS characters that was suddenly transferred to live is no longer on their accounts. We are talking potentially 10s to 100s of billions of gold immediately injected into an already horrible economy.

Me and my raid team were super excited to jump into the new raid and made to sure log into PTS early to set up our characters. And now, more than half of our members are temporarily banned simply for participating in your PTS cycle.

I sincerely hope that this issue isn't just brushed off and we can actually have some communication because most players, myself included, would love to support this game more. It just seems like at every step of the way you are making it as difficult as possible to do so, all the while not really providing communication that will leave players with a relative understanding of your reasoning. I have played this game since its first beta back in 2013(?) and I think this is one of the few times your decisions and lack of communication has genuinely shocked me.

We noted in our last update, throughout our communications last night, that we would provide a summary in the coming days regarding what happened.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We will follow up in the coming days with more details summarizing what happened and will share any additional information at that time. We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and thank you again for your patience during this matter.

No one on the team is trying to brush anything off. We cannot provide a full detailed update yet without finishing our investigations and work on this. The last thing we want to do right now is give a half-realized answer. We still have team members working and looking to resolve issues. So when they resolve items on their end, we'll be able to get answers out to everyone.

We have provided updates here thus far. Again, we know this is frustrating. The team has been working around the clock to get this resolved so that we can provide answers.

we are hoping y'all can also address the endevours, daily rewards and tickets we are missing, this isnt fair on us, at all.

code65536 · April 16

HatchetHaro wrote: »

This sucks big time compared to the small suck that is a one day event extension and style page grant.

For the people affected, this is definitely worse than a server-wide rollback, which would be much faster and cleaner.

But the problem is a server-wide rollback is server-wide.

And if there were, say, 100K people who logged onto NA last night and only 1K who logged onto PTS (pulling numbers out of my derriere), then maybe screwing over all 100K (many of whom probably don't even know what the PTS even is; try explaining to them why they were forced to lose 9 hours of progress) to make things not quite as bad for the 1K isn't a great solution.

DigiAngel · April 16

soulreaper1213 wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin , @ZOS_GinaBruno

Can we get an explanation as to why the decision was to lock people's accounts individually based on whether they logged into PTS instead of just a rollback of both PTS and Live servers?

Less people impacted would be my guess.

imaslowlearner · April 16

code65536 wrote: »

HatchetHaro wrote: »

This sucks big time compared to the small suck that is a one day event extension and style page grant.

For the people affected, this is definitely worse than a server-wide rollback, which would be much faster and cleaner.

But the problem is a server-wide rollback is server-wide.

And if there were, say, 100K people who logged onto NA last night and only 1K who logged onto PTS (pulling numbers out of my derriere), then maybe screwing over all 100K (many of whom probably don't even know what the PTS even is; try explaining to them why they were forced to lose 9 hours of progress) to make things not quite as bad for the 1K isn't a great solution.

You can't say the 100k people won't be affected of the PTS bug, people have already said that the gold that was traded and items that were gifted have remained on the NA server. You are basically saying you trust zos to track down the illegitimate items that I'm sure are being laundered through guild traders while the servers are still up. The people complaining about progress on the forums have mostly mentioned tickets, endeavors, and style pages. All of which can be handed out like candy if zos chose to.

HatchetHaro · April 16

code65536 wrote: »

HatchetHaro wrote: »

This sucks big time compared to the small suck that is a one day event extension and style page grant.

And if there were, say, 100K people who logged onto NA last night and only 1K who logged onto PTS (pulling numbers out of my derriere), then maybe screwing over all 100K (many of whom probably don't even know what the PTS even is; try explaining to them why they were forced to lose 9 hours of progress) to make things not quite as bad for the 1K was the better balance.

My opinion is that those 9 hours of progress lost would have been mitigated with a 1-day event extension so everyone could still have gotten their tickets and rewards.

Keep in mind that 9:30am ET is only 3.5 hours after the daily reset, so not many people would have gotten their tickets already before the rollback target.

Much of those 9 hours also lie in the no-man's land of non-prime-time for most players that connect to NA servers; NA peeps would still mostly be at work, players in Asian and OCE regions would have been in bed, and players in the EU region would be, well, on EU servers. Little progress would actually have been lost.

soulreaper1213 · April 16

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

No one on the team is trying to brush anything off. We cannot provide a full detailed update yet without finishing our investigations and work on this. The last thing we want to do right now is give a half-realized answer. We still have team members working and looking to resolve issues. So when they resolve items on their end, we'll be able to get answers out to everyone.

We have provided updates here thus far. Again, we know this is frustrating. The team has been working around the clock to get this resolved so that we can provide answers.

I understand that nobody is actively trying to brush off players concerns, as that would just be a weird thing to do. I understand that most, if not all ZOS employees who are working tirelessly on resolving this situation are also gamers themselves and can absolutely understand the frustration people have.

Unfortunately however, throughout the years, feedback and players concerns have not been addressed in an adequate way. My intention isn't to bash but to bring light to the fact that it has been and continues to be a very large concern. I made this post in an attempt to avoid history repeating itself where many players can be left in the dark regarding a live-service product they pay to enjoy. We all await the fully detailed update after investigations are finished, thank you!

dk_dunkirk · April 16

imaslowlearner wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

HatchetHaro wrote: »

This sucks big time compared to the small suck that is a one day event extension and style page grant.

For the people affected, this is definitely worse than a server-wide rollback, which would be much faster and cleaner.

But the problem is a server-wide rollback is server-wide.

And if there were, say, 100K people who logged onto NA last night and only 1K who logged onto PTS (pulling numbers out of my derriere), then maybe screwing over all 100K (many of whom probably don't even know what the PTS even is; try explaining to them why they were forced to lose 9 hours of progress) to make things not quite as bad for the 1K isn't a great solution.

You can't say the 100k people won't be affected of the PTS bug, people have already said that the gold that was traded and items that were gifted have remained on the NA server. You are basically saying you trust zos to track down the illegitimate items that I'm sure are being laundered through guild traders while the servers are still up. The people complaining about progress on the forums have mostly mentioned tickets, endeavors, and style pages. All of which can be handed out like candy if zos chose to.

Absolutely I am. Everything that happens is logged. Every item has a unique identifier we can't see. They absolutely know where every single item came from, and can track it all the way through to its consumption or decon.

soulreaper1213 · April 16

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

imaslowlearner wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

HatchetHaro wrote: »

This sucks big time compared to the small suck that is a one day event extension and style page grant.

For the people affected, this is definitely worse than a server-wide rollback, which would be much faster and cleaner.

But the problem is a server-wide rollback is server-wide.

And if there were, say, 100K people who logged onto NA last night and only 1K who logged onto PTS (pulling numbers out of my derriere), then maybe screwing over all 100K (many of whom probably don't even know what the PTS even is; try explaining to them why they were forced to lose 9 hours of progress) to make things not quite as bad for the 1K isn't a great solution.

You can't say the 100k people won't be affected of the PTS bug, people have already said that the gold that was traded and items that were gifted have remained on the NA server. You are basically saying you trust zos to track down the illegitimate items that I'm sure are being laundered through guild traders while the servers are still up. The people complaining about progress on the forums have mostly mentioned tickets, endeavors, and style pages. All of which can be handed out like candy if zos chose to.

Absolutely I am. Everything that happens is logged. Every item has a unique identifier we can't see. They absolutely know where every single item came from, and can track it all the way through to its consumption or decon.

That is just incorrect, otherwise gold sellers would not be as prevalent as they are.

sarahthes · April 16

imaslowlearner wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

HatchetHaro wrote: »

This sucks big time compared to the small suck that is a one day event extension and style page grant.

For the people affected, this is definitely worse than a server-wide rollback, which would be much faster and cleaner.

But the problem is a server-wide rollback is server-wide.

And if there were, say, 100K people who logged onto NA last night and only 1K who logged onto PTS (pulling numbers out of my derriere), then maybe screwing over all 100K (many of whom probably don't even know what the PTS even is; try explaining to them why they were forced to lose 9 hours of progress) to make things not quite as bad for the 1K isn't a great solution.

You can't say the 100k people won't be affected of the PTS bug, people have already said that the gold that was traded and items that were gifted have remained on the NA server. You are basically saying you trust zos to track down the illegitimate items that I'm sure are being laundered through guild traders while the servers are still up. The people complaining about progress on the forums have mostly mentioned tickets, endeavors, and style pages. All of which can be handed out like candy if zos chose to.

With respect, that gold is barely a drop in the bucket of the current economy. I doubt it will have any lasting impacts beyond the next week or two, because I think the bulk of it was not distributed.

Sprigg · April 16

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

Absolutely I am. Everything that happens is logged. Every item has a unique identifier we can't see. They absolutely know where every single item came from, and can track it all the way through to its consumption or decon.

Exactly. It will take time, and it'll be a tremendous pain in the butt for those working on it, but this is the kind of thing they absolutely can do. I'd personally much rather they inconvenience the relative minority who logged into PTS than inconvenience everyone with a full rollback. Hopefully they'll also compensate affected players for lost time, lost legitimate progress, etc. We'll see.

chessalavakia_ESO · April 16

I'm one of the ones that tried the PTS and thus I'm banned for a bit.

I think the call of locking individual accounts vs a rolllback comes down to how many accounts exploited.

If a ton of players did it, the economy will likely be damaged for years if you don't rollback as SWTOR's past issues demonstrate.

If it's only a few dozen, it's probably not going to do much because you've likely already got a bunch of dirty gold and will likely be able to track where much of the new stuff went.

Many of the people on the PTS likely either never got on live after or didn't actually do anything and thus will be quick to be eliminated as issues.

dk_dunkirk · April 16

soulreaper1213 wrote: »

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

imaslowlearner wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

HatchetHaro wrote: »

This sucks big time compared to the small suck that is a one day event extension and style page grant.

For the people affected, this is definitely worse than a server-wide rollback, which would be much faster and cleaner.

But the problem is a server-wide rollback is server-wide.

And if there were, say, 100K people who logged onto NA last night and only 1K who logged onto PTS (pulling numbers out of my derriere), then maybe screwing over all 100K (many of whom probably don't even know what the PTS even is; try explaining to them why they were forced to lose 9 hours of progress) to make things not quite as bad for the 1K isn't a great solution.

You can't say the 100k people won't be affected of the PTS bug, people have already said that the gold that was traded and items that were gifted have remained on the NA server. You are basically saying you trust zos to track down the illegitimate items that I'm sure are being laundered through guild traders while the servers are still up. The people complaining about progress on the forums have mostly mentioned tickets, endeavors, and style pages. All of which can be handed out like candy if zos chose to.

Absolutely I am. Everything that happens is logged. Every item has a unique identifier we can't see. They absolutely know where every single item came from, and can track it all the way through to its consumption or decon.

That is just incorrect, otherwise gold sellers would not be as prevalent as they are.

I have literally no idea how your response relates to mine. My concept of "gold sellers" would involve Crowns, and I can't see what your point is. Scratching my head, but I'd like to understand.

EDIT: Wait, you're just saying that each gold piece is "anonymous," right? I would stipulate that. But I don't think that matters at all in this discussion.

Desiato · April 16

Whatever should or should not have happened doesn't matter anymore. A course of action was selected and obviously they aren't going to decide to roll back the entire server 25 hours at this point.

Poop happens. People make mistakes. At least it's just an entertainment product and no one was physically injured or lost their life savings.

Setbacks happen and usually you just gotta get on with it.

MaraxusTheOrc · April 16

There should have been a complete rollback. They did not do it.
It’s too late to do it now.

My heart goes out to the small population affected by the account locks, and I hope they do right by you because you are the minority who are so invested in the game that you participate in the PTR.

Sakiri · April 16

HatchetHaro wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

HatchetHaro wrote: »

This sucks big time compared to the small suck that is a one day event extension and style page grant.

And if there were, say, 100K people who logged onto NA last night and only 1K who logged onto PTS (pulling numbers out of my derriere), then maybe screwing over all 100K (many of whom probably don't even know what the PTS even is; try explaining to them why they were forced to lose 9 hours of progress) to make things not quite as bad for the 1K was the better balance.

My opinion is that those 9 hours of progress lost would have been mitigated with a 1-day event extension so everyone could still have gotten their tickets and rewards.

Keep in mind that 9:30am ET is only 3.5 hours after the daily reset, so not many people would have gotten their tickets already before the rollback target.

Much of those 9 hours also lie in the no-man's land of non-prime-time for most players that connect to NA servers; NA peeps would still mostly be at work, players in Asian and OCE regions would have been in bed, and players in the EU region would be, well, on EU servers. Little progress would actually have been lost.

Excuse me, I'm in EU and was on NA.

soulreaper1213 · April 16

ghastley wrote: »

[snip]

Can't wait for you to find out that a random injection of thousands of high cost mats and billions of gold can and will affect your ability to buy anything.

[edited to remove quote]

chessalavakia_ESO · April 16

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

soulreaper1213 wrote: »

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

imaslowlearner wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

HatchetHaro wrote: »

This sucks big time compared to the small suck that is a one day event extension and style page grant.

For the people affected, this is definitely worse than a server-wide rollback, which would be much faster and cleaner.

But the problem is a server-wide rollback is server-wide.

And if there were, say, 100K people who logged onto NA last night and only 1K who logged onto PTS (pulling numbers out of my derriere), then maybe screwing over all 100K (many of whom probably don't even know what the PTS even is; try explaining to them why they were forced to lose 9 hours of progress) to make things not quite as bad for the 1K isn't a great solution.

You can't say the 100k people won't be affected of the PTS bug, people have already said that the gold that was traded and items that were gifted have remained on the NA server. You are basically saying you trust zos to track down the illegitimate items that I'm sure are being laundered through guild traders while the servers are still up. The people complaining about progress on the forums have mostly mentioned tickets, endeavors, and style pages. All of which can be handed out like candy if zos chose to.

Absolutely I am. Everything that happens is logged. Every item has a unique identifier we can't see. They absolutely know where every single item came from, and can track it all the way through to its consumption or decon.

That is just incorrect, otherwise gold sellers would not be as prevalent as they are.

I have literally no idea how your response relates to mine. My concept of "gold sellers" would involve Crowns, and I can't see what your point is. Scratching my head, but I'd like to understand.

EDIT: Wait, you're just saying that each gold piece is "anonymous," right? I would stipulate that. But I don't think that matters at all in this discussion.

You have illegal websites that sell gold to players for IRL $ for many games.

PC NA ESO has billions in gold that are listed as being for sale from multiple sellers.

This would suggest that either the gold selling sites are scams, ZOS cannot contain them very well, or ZOS chooses not to expend the effort to contain them.

Drinks_from_Ponds · April 16

We have all been through this before, just remain calm and wait for communication. We are one of the greatest communities in MMORPGS and we need to come together and show that to the people trying to get things fixed.

I will leave you with a quote about being waiting:

Patience is the best remedy for every trouble.