Not A Bug Logging into a completely different zone than where i left

Logged out in my guild hall. Went to log in, it says im in palacial guild hall. Hit enter and im in ToV Great Divide standing in front of Zrelik The Brave.

This is known. You camped in an instance. That instance was not "alive" when that character attempted to enter the world. If the right conditions aren't met as it tries to load you into the world and spin up that instance, the game will deposit you in a "recent" location where you left an instance because the one you camped in is not available.

Many, many threads in this forum about this.

The (temporary) solution is not to camp in an instance, never let an instance go away (usually 15 minutes or so when no one present) or find the secret sauce combination that allows the game to spin up an instance before the final check is made.

You could go a long time without seeing this if you have enough people in guild that there is always someone hanging out in the ggh. This happens in smaller guilds where sometimes there isnt anyone in the ggh. Like any instance it will close down in (I think) 20 minutes.

Someone marked this not a bug, so apparently its intentional...

It is completely intentional in the sense of why it happened is not a bug. When an instance closes (guild hall), the game doesn't always know where to put you. It usually puts you into one of the safe designation instance exits outside LDoN, but will occasionally put you to a recent instance exit as a safe place. Think of it as a safeguard, because if the instance crashed and didnt try to put you into a safe designation, you would be locked there until manually moved by GM to ever be able to log in again. The return to home alleviated that, but attempting to log in you would have been locked until return to home became available again. Its old code to prevent the game from being unplayable.

It should just drop you off in Guild Lobby, or PoK.

I agree. But is the guild lobby open on all servers on day one? I don't play on TLP so i don't actually know. If it is not, that would be why. The locations of all the LDoN exits are in existence on day 1 and have no lock behind them. Even without them open yet in an expansion, its a designated safe place (and then later a "last known instance exit"). If it is not open yet, you could have the potential for being locked out if you camped out of the now AoC original era content.

Yeah, thats what i dont get.

They could just as easily have had it send you to your bind or your origin point when the instance wont load.

My chanter just tried to log in to the guild hall and was ejected into a raid zone right on top of a raid boss because the last instance that toon was in was deathknell. If this is intended its just plain bad game design.

There's no instance of zones previous to Planes of Power, except the raid instances that AoCs now open up to allow TLPs the advantage of not having to compete for content like people did for the first half-dozen years.

I am well aware and that was what i was getting at. With the introduction of AoC they can't remove the code to use these safe drop points. They could change the safe places game designation to be the planes of power stone in PoK. If it doesn't know where to put you, it should automatically put you there and not a random last used instance exit such as exiting an instance after bannering in. Because on TLP before pop is open, the PoK exists and can be accessed already as a drop point. PoK is an empty exit with i believe 1 single stone that works/exists.


I am not saying anything against it not doing lobby. My original response was only to state that it was in fact an intentional condition that was met which is why it was marked as not a bug.

Where the game sends you when you log into a closed instance or a DZ you are no longer in is inconsistant. ToV was bad it used to place you at the same co-ordinates in the live zone which most times was a populated area causing instant death when you logged back in.

Ideally if PoP is unlocked it places at the NPC who created the last instance I was in or Plane of Knowledge. If PoP is not unlocked it sends you to your last LDON entrance or the NPC who created the instance.

Technically if PoP is not unlocked you wouldn't have a last LDON entrance since it would also not be unlocked =)

This is Everquest's subtle way of saying Maybe don't camp out in instances and jamming preloads onto a server for single character logins.

Personally I think it is bad math on EQs part. Trade, no, I won't spin up this instance until you zone in elsewhere, zone 2-3 more times, then I'll load the zone. How is that ever less server load?


It smacks of "That'll discourage them" level of thought.

It also smacks of a dev who failed math!

Also, FWIW i have gotten serveral exploration /ach from these bounces. Like Halas is a possible destination. So is Tranqulity and you race / class alignment is NOT taken into consideration. my Karana Druid landed outside Neriak and Ogre shammy landed in Halas.

Good catch, maybe EC tunnel then.

While yes it wouldn't be, but I get the impression characters all have that data field that is being read from so unless I'm way off on my understanding, I think it ends up not a problem as all characters created should have the field set to Everfrost by default (else someone on live thats never used LDoN would have issues logging in).

not a bug, but a really bad at math solution. Making us zone 2-3x to then server up the same instance is MORE server load than honoring the reques to begin with.

Or we could be part of the solution and just camp out in the lobby or a non instanced zone thereby alleviating the issue.

and then immediately spinning up the same instance becaues we camped there for a reason, so again add a load and zone (in the busiest spot in the game) to collect parcels and guild bank / tribute them.

It's dumb math to require MORE server load time to "reduce" server loads.

Although this behavior is called "not a bug", it is still a big, unexpected pain. It's not obvious that an instanced zone is instanced and a player may not be aware that they are in an instanced zone. It can be addressed in many ways even if the behavior is not changed. One easy change would be to add a warning message if someone camps in an instanced zone. The message could be something like "Warning: Instanced zone. Login may place character in unexpected zone if instance no longer exists." Something like this would likely address many of the player complaints about being surprised they ended up in a new zone.

Or simple: If you log out in a guild hall, and that instance is gone and it bugs out, then it logs you back in to the guild lobby. That's where most of this is taking place anyhow.

Most of the time logging out in a GH that spins down is safe, it'll spin back up allowing you to log right back into it. Other times you log into Upper Guk, or Everfrost, Ro, etc. Some place entirely stupid.