Brilliant, congratulations to Zenimax; you can't get rid of bots but you're surprisingly effective at getting rid of players.

Haven't they ever heard of restoring from a backup? They couldn't just roll the requested character back? Is there tech set up so horrible that they cannot just do that easily... choose a time and date on a character and rollback?

This didn't even happen to me, but almost makes me think of un-subbing...

I received another response a couple hours after I sent them an email saying I unsubbed and am still waiting for a fix. This is the email they sent me:

''Hi *****,

I understand entirely. I'll continue to investigate and update you, and once we have it resolved we can look at your lost game time.

Again, I apologize for the delay, and thank you for you patience.

Warm regards,
''

So, it still looks like they don't know when or even if I'll get all my stuff back.

*Sign*

Wow, I am very sorry to hear about this OP.

I have never had that happen to me, but I don't blame you for getting annoyed and unsubbing.

A couple weeks before Craglorn I logged in and I had several VR10 items missing from my bank. I submitted a ticket for it and I have yet to receive a response. I am said these types of issues happen and I will never see that gear or time I spent farming that gear back.

I have to say...this kind of bug scares the crap out of me. I invested so much time into my character. They need to help you with this, and design a way to be able to restore everything back to normal for people. It can be done, and is. There's that other company that does it quite well, starts with a "B".

I would probably quit playing ESO if this happened to me. I love this game, but I don't roll alts generally, and I don't want to spend the time doing it all over. Please ZeniMax - provide a better, faster, way to recover lost items.

I used to think this game was released 2-3 months too soon as everything we have been doing for two months has been little more than Beta testing.

Now I think this game was released 6-9 months too soon. Every new patch breaks more of the game than it fixes. Code regressions are as omnipresent as bots in Coldharbour. Each new day brings a new game breaking bug or exploit.

And what does ZOS devote development time to fixing? Improved interior lighting - something nobody who plays this game was requesting.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/106452/pts-patch-notes-v1-2-0/p1

Whoever at ZOS establishes priorities for the dev team needs to be fired for incompetence.

@nlttk2b16_ESO, sorry to see you go. Let us know if they ever email you with something useful. As far as I know from the forums, nobody who has run into this problem has managed to get it resolved, and they just unsubscribed in the end.

We need a "this is so sad T_T" option under the message, that's what I'd give yours(that's also what I'd give to a lot of mod generic responses here). I'm really sorry it happened to you=(

They probably hadnt thought of or anticipated the need to be able to extract specific character data from backups. One of the downside IMO of a new MMO company. This is just my supposition. They will likely be able to do it eventually. It goes hand in hand with character transfers to console/eu/na/pts.

The customer support is quite alright, but it is very dreadful that their game does not have a kind of character snapshotting. What if "my little sister" or whatever deletes a character of mine from my login screen? No way to restore it? That is so 1897, definite reason for me to quit the game on such an occasion, for I sure as hell WONT do all of it again.

Uh, there should be no designing of any tools for what every major database has built into it. If your DBA is that incompetent, then fire him and hire me. I'd be happy to make six figures restoring backups. Hell I do that now for multiple businesses and don't make six figures. These guys are total amateurs.

So yeterday, I finnally received (Most of) my items back as well as my skills (Via a skill reset, not a backup restore).

Here is the email they sent me:

''Hi *******,

As ****** mentioned on the phone, I've been given the go ahead to restore as many items as I can, and replace the others to make sure that you're good to play. You should find a large number of mails marked 'Item Restoration' waiting for you in your mailbox when you log in!

If there's an equipment slot that's not been covered, or a specific item that you were looking for or anything of that nature, please get back to us and let us know. We can then find either a suitable replacement or a replica.

Also, as promised, I've added a months game time and the Palomino horse to your account. When you log in, you should be able to purchase the horse from your nearest stable for 1 gold!

I've also added the gold you spent on horse upgrades (9250g) as well as respecced your character, so you should have been returned all your skill points! If there's anything I missed, just let us know.

****** will give you a call this evening to make sure that everything is good to go, as I'll be out of the office by the time you're free. I'm very sorry for how long this issue has gone on, and I wish you all the best on your adventures!

Please do not hesitate to reply with any questions or concerns and we will do our best to address them.

Warm regards''

I haven't had the oppurtunity to log in yet, since I had uninstalled the game and still haven't redownloaded it, but I might do it just to check. It still isin't clear if my horse upgrades will have to be done the same way as normal (Waiting 20 hours in between) but other then that, everything else sounds to be back.

Took exactly 21 days and a dozen emails and a 50+ comment forum thread, but it sounds like it's been fixed to the best of what they can currently do.

awhecknum1ub17_ESO wrote: »

Wow - this is unbelievable customer service. I am no MMO programmer - but cant they go back to the date this happened and roll that toon back to its former glory? Why is this such an insurmountable issue?

It's not an insurmountable issue, it's a conscious design choice.
Zenimax has consciously chosen not to take advantage of the reality of all modern databases which have the features you've described.

Call it an audit trail (going way back), call it a transaction log, transaction journal, call it a trail file, call it a snapshot, call it whatever you want, it's a backup or record of a live data system that can be used to restore any byte of information at any point in the past.

It's been part of all databases since databases have existed. It is, in fact, the point of the existence of many databases.

Building a tool to restore a player to a previous point in time should be part of the initial design document of any MMO. Right under the heading "Customer Service Tools".

Many people in this thread seem to be under the misunderstanding that databases are complex, misunderstood, lacking in features, and difficult to administer.
None of that has been true for the past 15 years.
They are all (even the free ones)
easy to use
well documented
easy to administer
feature rich
high performance

To claim otherwise simply demonstrates (however well intentioned) ignorance of reality. Zenimax is doing it wrong.

Niliu wrote: »

adam.s.jonesub17_ESO wrote: »

This is unacceptable. I mean wow possibly one of the worst I've seen.

Actually WoW is light-years beyond...

WoW actually has an automated item recovery system to address all the hacked accounts stripped bare to fund the nice gold spammers who steal your gold then sell it back to you.