Producer's Letter: August 2015 Updates

Discussion in 'News and Announcements' started by Windstalker, Aug 3, 2015.

  1. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    Okay: checklist for Crushbone and Everfrost (will worry about the Silvers later; they're not too complicated):

    Cleared the Shared Banks for both. X
    Updated the spreadsheets on people's various Depots in their homes. X
    Cleared everyone's personal Broker entries out, at least temporarily. X
    Saved everyone's house layouts (items in them or not) and a guild hall layout on Everfrost. X
    Unpublished any homes that were on those servers. X
    Made sure any name conflicts (at least according to EQ2U) were minimal. X
    Updated the spreadsheet on the saved guild hall's Depot--whoops! Need to do that...

    Uwk
    gettin' ready...
  2. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    Oh, yeah: make sure the rent is paid for at least a month, if not longer, on all properties: X

    Uwk
  3. Mocha New Member

    Heads Up Warning:

    1. Do not pay your rents up. Houses have a tendency to disappear lately and -if- they get reinstated by the GMs, you must have a screenshot proving any balances or paid rents, otherwise you won't be reimbursed.

    2. Put any player written books, items from your depots, and housing trophies in your bags/bank/house vault. Make sure to also screenshot depot contents. As things tend to disappear, if you don't have screenshots of your depot contents, you won't be reimbursed. If your houses go poof in the merge, when they replace your items any player written books and trophies will be blank. Whereas if they are in your bags, bank, or house vault they will retain the writings.

    3. Do not have anything in your moving crates, and do not exceed your base item counts before expanders. This includes building blocks and books being counted as items, not in the 'additional space' that has been made for them above that. Again, things tend to go poof, and are not being replaced. For example: Your house's base item count (not including books or blocks, remember, as we are counting these as actual items) is 300 - don't have more than 300 total items and crate nothing!

    4. Make sure to screenshot your housing list with proof of your expanders, otherwise it's a coin toss if those get reimbursed.

    A good friend of mine is going through this right now, and they have close to $400 worth of SC items, most of which are not available in game any more or are LON items and limited edition items purchasable only during certain times of the year that aren't being replaced, nor are they being compensated for them despite having proof of purchases and transactions on their account.
    suka and Uwkete-of-Crushbone like this.
  4. Strings Well-Known Member

    Have there been other merges recently?
    Uwkete-of-Crushbone likes this.
  5. Mocha New Member

    No, it was a basic transfer, but apparently there are new policies in place that won't allow them to fix the problems fully anymore. Or at least that's what the GM told them.
    Uwkete-of-Crushbone likes this.
  6. Gramma Active Member

    Cool. I have plans now. Nice plans for an alternate name.
  7. Merriel Well-Known Member


    Are we seriously going to have to do ALL this to prepare for the merge...AND take screenshots of everything we have purchased with SC and all the stuff in our depots, just in case we happen to lose them? Talk about a time sink! That is insane! And saving our house layouts in the game is not enough...we have to save them to our computer, somehow? Or is it safe to assume that the files in our saved house layouts within the EQII folders will be preserved, after the server merge? I guess I will have to spend the rest of the month running around just taking screenshots of everything in my houses and dungeons and guild hall, and what not. I have TONS of SC items and I will not lose any, or someone will definitely be hearing from me. :/
    Uwkete-of-Crushbone likes this.
  8. Catthib Member

    OK before people go into panic-mode, just -where- are you all seeing these "checklists" of recommended tasks to do before these server merges?? And seriously, I always take with a huge grain of salt when I hear about someone's friend's cousin's brother-in-laws stepdaughter who lost all her stuff and was told she couldn't ever get it back, that it was all GONE FOREVER mwahahah. I can't help but think that people are making this out to be way, way more complicated than it truly will be...
    ...but it WOULD be awesome to hear from DBG Dev-types or Holly or someone official who could maybe set our minds at ease!
    Ocarinah and Uwkete-of-Crushbone like this.
  9. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    Absolutely yes on that last (yeah, I don't necessarily trust the abilities of the Powers, not because it's their fault, perhaps [they don't intend to screw us up], but because of all the years of spaghetti code and deliberate obfuscation by those trying to make their jobs untouchable: "If you boot me, you'll never be able to figure this junk out!" "We'll take our chances. >boot<")!

    Is it true, o Powers, that you won't be able to help us any more if our stuff gets messed up in this, never-been-done before process (one-to-one merges, yes; consolidations, not so much)? Yes? No? Feedback to us? Help? :-/

    The last thing a company needs is a vote of "no confidence" by its customers. :-/

    Uwk
  10. Phyr Member

    okay When is the Merge? and what list should i do for it? I have TONS of items ACross 2 accounts on CB.
    Also maybe it was said but what happens to guild? Lvling up antoher guild to 64 solo is not in the cards for me.
    Uwkete-of-Crushbone likes this.
  11. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    With platinum going begging, I'm not too worried about that.

    That does concern me, but I think the only book I have out on my two affected servers on Gold (Crushbone, Everfrost) is one I had available for a housing contest, and that's over, so I can stow that. Thanks for the head's-up! :)

    Crap in a damn hat...that's going to be tricky. X-P

    If nothing else, where the hell is the info as to how many item slots are available in a "virgin" house before the expanders? Or do I have to go from city to city and rent another one of these for a week just to try to figure it out?

    That'll be tricky, too, but not impossible. Good thing I'm more into creating characters than houses. :-/

    Reminds me of the debate about Amazon yoinking _1984_ (ironically) off of people's Kindles after they'd already "bought" the book, essentially. Most people were up in arms about the "theft" ("It's as bad as if a guy broke my window, snuck into my library, and swiped my copy! How is that different??" [which, frankly, I agree with]), even though it was Amazon's fault for not being more careful about e-rights. Be that as it may, if we've bought SC items for real money, with real proof, and real transaction records, and the items are still in the real database somewhere, then why can't they be replaced, especially if the techs do a check and see that, yep, they're right, these items aren't in the owner's new place anywhere? :-/

    Uwk
  12. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    And, yes, I know there are folks out there who will jump down our throats at worrying about "housing crap," as in, "Well, if you just had a Sales Crate in your one house, you wouldn't be whining about this! Duh!" consider this: other games do PvP better. Other games' game engines are more robust. Other games have better ways, perhaps (I don't know; it's not that big a deal to me and I don't play other games besides this one!), of getting groups together, whatever it takes. One of the things EQ2 does better than any other game out there is house stuff. It's a voting bloc to be aware of, is all I'm sayin'. ;->

    Uwk
    Griffon Lady likes this.
  13. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    Okay, now that I've seen this again and read it more thoroughly, that's going to be impossible. Unless every single last one of our bags/boxes/etc. are the equivalent of Thick Bear Hide Backpacks, that's not going to happen. Books, sure. Housing trophies, no problem. But Depots? There are at least 55 Frostfell crafting materials ALONE in crafting depots (more if you go over a certain amount in a stack?), the 50 slots worth of fuels (and folks want bigger ones!) in those depots, there is no way in HELL we're going to be able to stagger about with six packs full of stuff, and only six bags in the House Vaults. Having 12 slots in the personal banks help, but uh-uh. Especially not if you include the stuff on the Brokers; I can guarantee you many of us use Brokers for "storage," complete with "not for sale" on the items, just to get them out of the Shared Bank (both of which are now empty on the two affected servers I've mentioned, just in case).

    If Guild Halls get messed up, and there's only one person qualified to empty their various Depots entirely (and stagger around with the contents), all of those will get forcibly emptied by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune too, eh? :-/

    Uwk
  14. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    I think saving the house layouts in the game does save them on the computer, in the saved_layouts file under EQ2 (or Everquest2, or however it's named). So that's a relief, since of the 21 toons I have on the two servers, they each have at least 4 houses...one free Mistmoore Crags Estate from the 7-year-veteran reward (useful for Habitrails!), then at least one of each sort from their cities: Freeport, Neriak, and Gorowyn for the Evils, and Qeynos (sometimes one "in town," sometimes one in the Harbor), Kelethin, and New Halas for the Goods, never mind any prestige places. So we're looking at something like 84 buildings total at least, with stuff in every single one of them, if nothing else but a housing portal (other places have the expanders straining, even with the Moving Crate [seriously, anything in there is just "true" in the layout file, as opposed to "false" for anything out in the house. But it's all there; how can the Powers mess that up? It's in the database!]). And even if I put up a bunch of stuff on the Broker to get rid of it, the deals probably wouldn't go through until after the end of August anyway, and I'd still end up risking losing them forever, rather than just to someone I can beg to get it back from. :-/

    EDIT: just did a head-count in my file folder: 93, including the layout for a Guild Hall on Everfrost.

    Uwk
  15. suka Well-Known Member

    the save puts a file on your computer in a folder that is in your eq2 folder
  16. suka Well-Known Member

    well, some things i will have to take chances on. I have every bank full of items for clothing that i put on my house actors as well as no - trade stuff. I don't have room for more items in my banks. If things disappear from my houses that will be bad but i do have a ton of those house trophies that i don't need to keep since i get one every time i republish my house. still this is a daunting task just with the published houses. I don't think Ceya and i took this into account when we created the tour.

    that is just the published houses. then there are the dungeons with all of the no-trade stuff and the heirloom stuff and if only we could stack stuff it would be easier.

    how long do we have? can we please have at least 2 months? three months would not even be long enough and i am working on it every day. can we please have a year? oh my, i am beginning to think this is impossible. kk have to make more accounts to hold all of this stuff.
    Uwkete-of-Crushbone likes this.
  17. suka Well-Known Member

    oh and are moving crates ok? if those will be ok that would help a lot
    Uwkete-of-Crushbone likes this.
  18. suka Well-Known Member

    went back up and read again- no my first guess was right- crates not ok. i am so very glad they are not moving eq1 at the same time. this is going to be bad enough
    Uwkete-of-Crushbone likes this.
  19. Ocarinah Well-Known Member

    A character transfer is NOT the same as server consolidation...
  20. GrunEQ Well-Known Member

    I've never been thru a consolidation, but I have been thru 2 mergers where my home servers were the ones I had to leave; and I've never lost anything. I'm hoping that the experience will be the same. ;)