A Warning For Everyone!!!

OK, tonight a friend of mine took one of his mules, emptied everything off of it into storage, and deleted the mule. He had 10 black dyes, 10 silver dyes, 6 red dyes, 7 blue dyes, 14 yellow dyes, 19 orange dyes, 12 green dyes,and 19 purple dyes on that mule. When he made a new character and then later on checked his storage, all of the dyes he had put in there mysteriously disappeared. He sent an email to support and they sent him some generic email back saying:
Wow. That was probably 50k gold in BLACK dye alone. WTF. I guess don't use storage for good items? I dunno, but that is total BS. Some glitch screwed him out of probably 75k gold worth of dye and god forbid he try to farm to recoup his losses.... man I get more irritated with this game everyday it seems.

So the warning is... don't use our storage?

I'm not sure how he lost all that, I've never had a item transfer problem, unless he was WAY lagged, and left/deleted before the dyes were officially in the storage.

If he lagged, it wasn't apparent, as lag usually is.

This is a tough one for Anet as it is for support in all games. As regrettable his loss is, and trust me its a lot of regret, Anet is in bad spot with the precedence of issuing replacements. I don't think Anet is staffed for this type of problem. It would require quite a bit of money and time to establish that he actually had all that he 'says' he had and then prog everything back into his storage. That lags, crashes, and bugs account for many lost items as well as experience, is a known fact. It is also a known fact that Anet can get that back for him, the real question is will they? They have not made (as far as I know) any official statements referring to replacing lost game material.

Wow something I never thought of.... I remember once in Diablo 2 I was transfering stuff onto my mule... and when I dropped the item to the floor there wasn't the usual sound at all... -and no rune- either!

I suppose if you'd want to be careful with the storage issue try xfering everything.. then shifting the last item from one slot to another.. :? then wait to log off

he should have bought the storage insurance.

Jeeeze i bet he could have dyed whoops died

omg he lost some dye.. not like his life's gonna be bad now. if he wanted the gold that he could get from the dyes then why didnt he sell them yet? and color of armor doesnt make any difference except for looks. the game still has some bugs and it's not like nobody knows so when it happens, well, bad luck, but why make a thread about it? need attention?

i'm sure you would be smiling and making happy posts on forum when you lost items worth for 50k.
a forum is still a community, where people can share their aggrevation and happiness.


cheers,
makk.

Erm, perhaps so that others didn't fall foul of the same bug ? Do you assume the worst of people for fun, or do you just like to troll ?


Thanks for the post Lasher, I have deleted a few characters so far without problems, but I can assure you I'll be extra careful when getting rid of my mule to free up a slot for PvP. 'omg he lost some dye.. not like his life's gonna be bad now' might be true or not, but losing the various superior runes and gold items I have stored would be of significant detriment to my enjoyment of the game, which is the point of it afterall.

Same problem here... I lost some gold and equipments I was transfering to my storage from a character I wanted to delete. The gold did show in the storage... so I went ahead and deleted the character... but when I got back to my storage with my primary character... no gold left in storage. At least now I know I was not dreaming and that it is probably a bug. Next time I will actually transfer from storage to my primary character before I delete anything. :/

seems to be a [attern here guys can you see it???

when you delete a character everying that character had be it skills, gold, items even if they are no longer on his person are deleted along with him.

I had the same thing happen as well. I only lost a tiny bit so it was no big deal but frustrating. What you can do is put it in storage with the mule then log in you main and take it out of storage and then delete the character.

I know that's a pain but that's what I do now.

Just for the record... i've played since the pre-order day ahead. And i haven't once had a problem with the storage... it has never deleted even one of my items. While this sounds like a sad excuse to try and scam anet... i am sorry if he lost all those dyes... cause well, that would suck... But i keep things in my storage on a constant basis, without ever having one ounce of a problem...

Bad luck can suck.

And for those talking about losing gold... meh... i create new characters as soon as i reach lvl 20 and have a sufficient amount of skills, and i just set the gold in my bank, and delete my character(after selling all items, so i can't relate to the supposed lost items). You guys need to be more specific if you really want anet to do anything about it... Because it sounds like "bs".

Pretty much, when you talk to anet, you'll have to be Very specific on to what you lost, the exact amount, and when it happened, and what you did, down to ever last detail... did you talk to a merchant before storing, and after storing, and blah... so on... can't just send them a report telling them you lost things...

You might want to give GW a chance to look into the matter. Did you expect them just to give you the items back without checking first? I'm sure there is some sifting through the logs and I can imagine they are rather large.

No, it must be some bug, because I've transfered items between characters and deleted, and I still have those items.

Here is a helpful hint, if you're so worried about losing your dyes your 'mule' was holding.

After you transfer the stuff, get on another character and check to be sure the things are there.

If this happened to myself, yes, I would be agitated, but moreso if it were items I use, rather than dyes that I was hoarding merely to hoarde them and maybe get tons of gold later. I don't really get the need for so much gold, other than to buy items, ridiculously priced, from other players, which are hardly worth it for the price at times. Not even sup vigor is worth the hundred platinum, when it is only twenty more HP than you would have with a minor. Perhaps to balance a major or superior rune a bit, but just the same, doesn't seem actually worth anything for such a minimal upgrade.

This story in particular sounds fishy... where is the guy who actually had this problem? Why are you posting it for him? How do you know he's not just mad because he made a stupid mistake and tried to make himself feel better about by getting you (his friend) on his side of the argument? If he isn't willing to push the subject enough to post about it (and he is the only one who 100% knows how the stuff went down), then that certainly puts some doubt on the story. Get him in here to argue and then we can tell him none of us have yet to have items 'disappear' mysteriously out of our storage. Until then the credibility level on this claim is zero.

I've only deleted a character once, and I didn't lose anything I'd put into storage. That was a while ago. This problem is either new, or only affects a handful of people. Nice of you to warn people about it, though.

One time I was so sleepy and accidentally sold superior vigor to merchant for 25 gold.

For those of you questioning my credibility: if you don't believe me, that's fine - I hope it happens to you. I have never scammed nor gotten on guru and posted frivolous crap (well, unless it was in off-topic lol). I posted this because it is my friend IRL and he is the only officer in our guild, AND he hates forums. I love forums, so I posted it - don't believe me? Fine, piss off, this is a warning for people who do more than troll.

I probably have 30-40 dyes in my storage - gotta have some options by the time you finally get a character to where the final armor is.

so if you delete a character and put all the item into the storage, its gone forever?

I don't think I've had this happen to me. But usually, to be safe, I turn things like dye into gold (through magic )

No, I'm not saying that - what I am saying is this DID happen: he took everything off of his mule and put it all into storage. Then he logged out. He proceeded to erase that mule to make a new character. Later on, when he switched over to a different character and looked in storage, none of the items from his mule were in there.

also he could have a keylogger on him and wile he wasnt on somebody could have stole his stuff

I'm pretty sure they would just steal the account, not the items

I kinda doubt it.... I mean, he had a lot better stuff than a bunch of dye LOL.

I've had this happen and totally believe you Lasher.

I started a new character and went out and gotten one item and some gold and tested it and the same thing happened again.

It's not fishy, it's real. I'm not asking for anything back, I only lost a total of maybe 200 gold and I have no ulterior motive in this.

If you look in the bank with a character you're keeping it will stay. If you put something in and then delete right after that it goes. Test it out before you call him a liar.

I'm not saying that A-Net should take his word for what he had but they should probably fix the problem.

Yikes... I've got a tone of dye in storage and it looks like now would be a good time to sell. But then again... what's to say that my gold will be safe after I sell? Hmmmm... a dilemma.

My way of avoiding this bug, as it did happen to me.

Put all the stuff from the character to be deleted in storage.

Log on your main.

Place all the items from the mule into your mains inventory, may not be possible sometimes.

Log off main, log on mule, make sure everything is ok.

Log off delete mule.

Big pain in the butt, but it works.

Dont put all your eggs in one basket - and checking your storage with another char is a great idea.

The same thing happened to me. Here's how they treat their customers...

<start correspondence>

=====FIRST EMAIL=====

Subject
lost inventory (bug report)

Customer (xxxx) 06/20/2005 10:14 PM

Hello,

I lost many inventory items including:
two 10 slot bags
expert salvage kit
salvage kit
id kit
aprox 800 gp
two minor swordsmanship runes
minor vigor rune
14-22 beastmaster sword
+8 shield

This is how it happened. I decided to delete a character named "XXX" because I wanted a w/r instead of a w/mo. I expert salvaged his armour and got 3 of my runes back (listed above), and went into my inventory. I needed some more room and DELETED SOME ITEMS FROM INVENTORY (these items I deleted included quest items from other characters; 2 Eldritch Sextants). Then I put the above listed items into my inventory, and all was good. Or so I thought...

I then proceded to log out, log in, delete XXX, and start another character. I went to post-searing with my newly created "YYY", and went to storage. My inventory had reverted to the state before XXX went in for the last time. The Eldritch Sextants WERE BACK. I _know_ I deleted those items and i _know_ I deposited the above listed lost items.

This happened Sunday morning. I have been scanning GW forums for similar reports. My puter never crashed during the entire time or anything... Im at a big loss (so to speak) as to why this happened as I have done the exact same thing in the past without a problem.

If there is any chance of restoring my inventory that would be cool.

=====FIRST CRAP RESPONSE=====

Response (GM Mullusk) 06/20/2005 10:45 PM
Hello,

Thanks for getting in touch regarding your missing item. Unfortunately we are unable to replace your lost item (or insert specific item). However we will transfer this report to our Quality Assurance Department. They will examine the situation that took place in order to learn if we need to correct a problem that may have caused this item loss to take place.

Regards,
The Guild Wars Support Team

=====SECOND EMAIL=====

Subject
lost inventory redux (bug report)

Customer (xxxx) 06/21/2005 12:11 AM
Hello,

<you wrote>
Thanks for getting in touch regarding your missing item. Unfortunately we are unable to replace your lost item (or insert specific item). However we will transfer this report to our Quality Assurance Department. They will examine the situation that took place in order to learn if we need to correct a problem that may have caused this item loss to take place.
<end>

I didn't lose an item. I lost many items, as in practically my entire inventory.

I wouldn't care so much if it was one item but it was _many_ items (of considerable value). They were lost due to a bug, and no fault of my own.

Please roll back my account to Saturday and things should be okay.

=====SECOND CRAP RESPONSE=====

Response (GM Mullusk) 06/21/2005 12:22 AM

Hello,
Thanks for contacting Guild Wars Support. As said in the previous message our QA team will look into this issue, but we will not be able to replace the items, or roll back your account, sorry for the loss and inconvenience. If you have any further questions or comments, feel free to contact us.

Regards,
The Guild Wars Support Team

<END>

That was verbatim.

Actually i DO have a few "comments", but I wont contact them again.

So as you can see, anet sucks, and THEY DO NOT CARE.

The upside: GM Mullet was prompt with the crappy/generic responses, and their QA Department is going to look into the issue. That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Someone flame me now like 2/3 of the posts on this forum. If not that, then at least tell me I have a keylogger on my computer and this is my fault and that anet is the best.

Sorry but i can't believe this place sometimes, just rediculous.

No response needed, be warned.

Dyes of the same color stack.

The bug has to do with deleting the character in question before another character gains access to the vault. It happened to me once, and so ever since, I'm careful to log into another (non-soon-to-delete) build and access my storage before I go back to delete the mule build. I'm surprised they've not fixed it yet, I reported my incident almost a month ago.

EDIT: It's not that they care, because I'm sure they want every customer to be happy. It's that what you are asking them isn't possible. They probably don't keep saves of your build that are older than whenever you log out of GW. Anything more would take up too much space, and they'd have to charge monthly fees to pay for the servers. They have no way to double check your claims. So there's no way for them to make sure they aren't giving you free stuff. So, they can't do it. But they still need to fix this bug, it's well known and common.

this gives me cause for concern since my mule is also my dye carrier, and I don't like her so I'm going to replace her eventually... but I will do as suggested and log in with my main, make sure it's all groovy smoovy and then log out and proceed to delete my mule.

As for Anet's "crap response"... this seems to me a minor bug since this is the first time (in my fanatically vigilant presence in the game and on these forums) that i've heard of it and only one person responded with "yeah me too". Since it's a rare bug it's probably low on the list of priorities and myself I'm quite pleased with the fact that they have representatives surfing the forums and listening to the community. I think that Anet (or NCSoft rather) have absolutely garbage skills/ideas/team when it comes to music, acting and writing, but i love this game and I could never ever criticize their excellent commitment to a community that gives them nothing after buying the initial account.

I suspect it's more to do with the way the came doesn't save the character until you leave the "instance" your in, I've had minor warpage when I've been switching between PCs, nothing too bad, but you can reproduce it by doing this:

log in to GW on PC1, travel to zoneB from zoneA

leave account logged onto PC1

log into gw on PC2, you will find yourself in zoneA, while kicking the character on PC1

I know, they don't.

That's a pretty major bug, but since this is mostly a PVP game it probably isn't a big priority.

I can see how it happens now, and why GMs are in a tough spot.

A warning should be stickied until this is fixed.

hahahah thats a good one.. I like it...

Were do I buy this storage insurance you speak of young one?

I have made sure that I transferred most of my items from my Mule onto my Warrior, and I have never had that bug. The only problem I have is the way the connection (via a ISP) keeps cutting off, but that's a thing that ANet cannot fix...


IF you EVER want to delete a character, move all of the items to Xunlai Agent {Storage} and switch characters to recieve the items. Logout and repeat this step until either

1. You have moved ALL iteams and Gold/Plat and gold
2. Your other items aren't as good as your other inventory, or
3. You are stacked out of space (requires sacrificing/salvaging/selling items)

Then delete your character and use the character(s) you have used during Item Transferring and you'll have a 100% chance of keeping your items, rather than losing a Wizardspike on another game like I did in D2...