WARNING: Inventory Glitch Causes Irreversible Damage
 

The Scenario:
Fairly recently last Sunday evening i had embarked on yet another hunt for the great weapons deep in the Raven Cove Mines. While there i had picked up a normal "Plain Cotton Tank" which was quickly added into my inventory using the "Take All!" button. However i like my clothing more exotic so i immediately tried to trash it. As we all know a confirmation pop up appears to make sure you want to trash that particular clothing. It had displayed the "Plain Cotton Tank" nicely with its name displayed below, so i hit "OK".

What happened next is nothing short of disturbing. My Adventure Long Coat, as we all know is only obtainable by completing a quest you can only do once, was trashed RIGHT OFF MY BACK! I was wearing the coat at the time and that is what was trashed instead of the shirt.

Naturally i was in shock! That was one of my most prized clothing wrongfully taken before my eyes. I wasted no time in emailing disney about the issue and sending a bug report with the appropriate log files. I was told to contact Technical Support via live chat as soon as i could which would be Wednesday.

3 days later i contacted a rather helpful technical supporter and we had the following conversation: (minor editing made to hide personal information)

After a Week of no response to this "escalated issue" i today contacted pirates online live chat again and the following (disturbing) chat ensued: (again hiding personal information)


in short Disney Technical Support has failed their duty to solve issues and amend the damages caused by them. Be wary Pirates as i doubt they will even acknowledge this bug exists and it was my own fault for throwing my beloved Adventure Long Coat away. This means also it will likely not be fixed and will haunt other pirates besides me.

I'm really sorry for the loss of your coat, and it is probably very annoying to be treated like that..... but........ haahahahhahahahahahaahhah, you grilled the life out of him. That was so funny, almost as if you were trolling the GM. But anyways, I hope everything gets resolved!! :D

I had a similar issue when my staff from the Ravens Cove quest disappeared. I was unable to get it back after chat, email and speaking to a live person.

I'm sorry but this is just not right. My kids play WoW and RIFT and anytime they lose something due to a glitch or if someone hacks their account, everything they lost ( money, inventory, weapons, etc ) are all restored. ONce my daughter, who is GM of a guild on WoW had her acct hacked and the hackers took control of her GM toon and raided the guild's bank. WoW banned the hacker and restored everything. It took a few days but they made it right.

Obviously, they leave all items up to quest or probability and they keep no logs of anyone obtaining any loot (or not very detailed, at least). I would certainly expect better, but then again, they didn't restore any weapons at the rollbacks either. Allowing them to restore loot at this point in time would just open up a huge can-o-worms anyway.

I'm still bitter when I lost a Blightfang Edge; what takes 4 hours to obtain one night has still not been retrieved after 400 hours, and it's even worse in your case.

Best thing you can do is send email feedback, and maybe rally up some friends and other avid players to do the same. I know I definitely will after this.

thank you for your support O'Malley. believe me they havent heard the last of me. I plan to be in these conversations with them every day until i feel satisfied.

That is too bad. :( I've had problems with Live Chat too, (not about this specific issue) but I can back up your point about them not being the most reliable.

Now I'm kind of hesitant to play the game a lot until these bugs are fixed....

Oh wow. Reading this I dunno if I will be on for a while. I haven't been on in a while anyways. But I don't think I would with that kind of thing. It happens all the time everywhere. Fortunately, you didn't get the "Please hold" but yeah, they should be able to do something about it. You tried calling live chat, correct?

the 2 above quotations were from live chat conversations that i had transcripted to my email. i had sent a bug report and a few email forms previously stating basically the paragraphs above the quotations.

Oof, that's sad mate. That really was your prized possession, sorry it's gone. :( Keep at it!

Disney needs to sort out an inventory restoration system or something, or they are going to have many more angry players on their hands. I'm not too sure, but I think I lost something from my inventory also, that I could buy again, but it was still nowhere to be found, and that could have proved to be a problem if it was something else.

Disney certainly has the power to restore items, so why don't they do so upon request? It really isn't too much to ask to give an item back to a player, or at least reset the quest. If the bug is in the game, and it isn't the player's fault, the player has the right to ask for the item back. I noticed in your conversations that the support representative didn't give any reason for not giving your coat back. It was just 'No.'.

I think Disney should either fix the bug or restore the items. Your argument about any other game giving items back is certainly valid. I assume all they have to do is copy/paste the coat file into your inventory. They transfer characters between accounts, and they also restore characters that have been accidentally deleted, so why can't they restore a missing inventory item, exactly?

I just think the whole situation is ridiculous, and you at least deserve your coat back after all that trouble.

my guess is because they are afraid of players who would take advantage of that feature to gain a weapon (i.e. world eater or something) that they never had in the first place, but a coat.....they should have helped Jason.

Yes, I suppose they worry that that will happen, but it doesn't really take long to check to see what quests the player requesting a restore has completed, or check their inventory from an earlier date.

The first person was definitely more helpful...

You know what I do? I take a screenshot of anything I might want back if they get deleted due to a bug or setback. Like my Legendary. I have multiple pictures of it, with my name/email on the official file I would use for such a thing. I heard of someone getting a specific item back like that. Different game though, it was Toontown when that happened, and it was due to a bug.

Mates, I know the screenshot thing is a great idea but there is one slight thing...people can copy and paste images of a legendary weapon from the Internet and paste it inside the e-mail to trick Disney. Although they may be able to check the date and the player, they may not notice and may be fooled by this. The screenshot thing isn't a bad idea, yet still not a good idea either.

They would have to take a picture of the clothing item/weapon being used by the pirate, as so to not be PhotoShopped....

^Just from that, you should know that you have gotten the wrong person.

I'm extremely sorry to hear about this, especially with such a nice item. It is very wrong that they would not give it back to you. As others have said, it really is not that hard, and any other game would do it. Why POTCO doesn't do it, I have absolutely no idea. If these people aren't trained to do it, then that is just bad employee hiring on POTCO's part. If they don't want to do it, then its that person. If they are not authorized to, then I have nothing to say other than that POTCO should fix their employee guidelines. It's only going to take-what? 10 minutes of their time? Less, probably? Why is it that hard to just do it? I side with POTCO on a lot of things, this is not one of them. They need to get their act together with their customer service, especially when it is a bug in the game that causes it.

What I find interesting is how an accidental character deletion which is almost always going to be on the part of the player can be fixed, but they can't/won't fix a problem that was created by a bug in their game. It is absolutely unacceptable that POTCO refuses to give this item back to you. As you said, any other game would do it. I would do everything in your power to get it back, not really for the sake of getting it back, but because as the customer, you have rights, and it is completely unfair to penalize you for something that is their fault. It is like having a house worker break your T.V. and then refuse to fix it.

Keep trying, Mr. Firewalker. Do not give up, because the treatment you are getting is completely unfair.

Their argument that they cannot check to see if you did possess something is invalid. Otherwise, we would have had completely empty inventories when the servers were reset this past February. How did they know what we had before the update that caused all the problems??

yeah.. that's what I thought....

I love you big D, but please give Jason his coat back.

We need player rights! It's time of the civil war of the mid 1700's!!! Arrrgh!!!

For one thing, they say that ALL data is theirs, and the reserve the right to do what they want with it, so why WEOULDN'T they give it back, or at least let the people who have already done it re-do the quest, and get whatever items from the quest that is not in their inventory. Savvy?

All i can say is WOW!!! This is so not right.

I had a little talk with live chat too. "chris told me this..Chris: There is no problem with another Pirate that stands in anothers shadow." if thats how they feel why did they remove the Coin emote?

I hope you get your jacket back Jason.

episode 2 i guess of the discussions:
all i wanted was one simple answer to a question: WHY cant my coat be returned?

if anybody wants to help annoy disney into action, feel free to do so non violently.

I already sent in my request for more detailed server AND user logs. Got a response, representative only really liked one of the things I mentioned (not having to do with this). Whether or not they take my other requests seriously, I'll just have to wait and see.

I really don't understand why they can do a pirate restore and not an inventory restore. As I've said, Disney can easily bring back your coat or open the quest again, so it's pretty much a case of them refusing to do it. They say they need proof that you've had the coat before, and haven't got it now. This can easily be checked by the representative, by going into the files to see the quests that you've completed, or simply looking at an earlier backup and seeing that you had the coat.

This is not fair, because Disney have made a mistake on their part, and are refusing to compensate for it. It just isn't fair.

Id post the chat that i had with POTCO Technical Support from Friday but alas there is nothing to copy and paste.

POTCO Live Chat refused to even chat with me aver nearly 30 min of waiting in an empty line. I take it i was being deliberately ignored because of my previous chats.

Its always Disney who do funny stuff that kills everthing...

There is but two things I need to tell you right now.



1) As said in the Member Agreement of Pirates Online:

This is why they can get away with it and not do anything. They aren't responsible for that glitch that wrongfully deleted your Adventure Long Coat on your Pirate config file on their server towers because of this paragraph in the Agreement. We have to complain enough to them to get this agreement to change, if wanted.

2) Disney runs a game that's known to have tons of problems due to their outdated Panda 3D game engine and the lacking intelligence of the developers to program it to work correctly (hint hint, the lag for example).

Wow. Can't believe the Member Agreement stopped you from getting your item back.

It's so lame.

I know how you feel though. I lost my Fine Cutlass because of this bug, too.

well those lines also put a dent into their story as well.
that means the data showing that my coat is deleted is recorded somewhere in their files, no?

does not All Account Data include one's inventory and it can be "altered"?

so they can give my coat back but refuse not to for some ungodly reason.

1) The answer to the question in Yellow:

Of course. All progression-like actions are auto-saved constantly to your Pirate Save file. This includes whatever you found in Loot like Weapons and Clothing.

Every time you get a new item, the game overwrites your Pirate Save data, so the next time you login, you'll still have that specific item in your inventory.

Same goes if you delete something from your inventory. Every deletion action is also recorded and auto-saved into your Pirate Save file, because honestly, it would be annoying to have to delete the same item again and again upon game launch.


Yes. It is recorded. However, it was a packet of data sent to the server then probably auto-deleted by the server tower itself (or a human monitoring it).


It gets deleted because they didn't create a system where each account on their server is given packet logs so Tech Support people can see which action took place and when, possibly also able to undo the action. Every account would have that specific function, and that takes a lot of effort to program, I would think, but it's possible. Other game companies have that.

I guess that happens when they try to create new services from scratch tied to Panda 3D game engine that has little documentation support or lack of compatability for MMO functionality services.



2) The answer to the question in Orange:

Yes, everything in the game that behaves as a progression action like the inventory is included and, can be altered.

There's two things they can do:

1) Pirate data roll-back (We've experienced this a lot during summer, I think).

But, ask them if they could roll-back only your pirate data to the day before the game wrongfully trashed your Adventure Long coat. Disney does back-ups for all accounts on the server and save "stable" data in case of major malfunction.

You still have hope by this method until the next back-up is done, saving the data of the deleted Adventure Long Coat value (0, if I am not mistaken. 0 meaning you don't have it in inventory. 1 meaning you do have it in inventory.)

2) The developers have to specifically go into your pirate save file and change the data manually. In reality, this rarely/never happens, because their Member Agreement states that it isn't their problem and they don't have to help you.

And yeah, they chose not to help users specifically because it doesn't mean more pay to them.


Best bet is the roll-back idea. It's not completely lost yet.

thank you Ice_Storm and everybody. Ill be sure to make quite an argument on Wednesday to hopefully not just get my lost coat back but also help others retrieve their lost items as Ive heard that Im not the only recent victim.

The truth really is it's all possible for them to restore it.

They just chose not too/takes too much time.


and...


No problem :D.

I'm terribly sorry for yer loss, mate, I too have had issues with the inventory system, losing my Thunderspine in a crash, PROMISED that I would get it back, and then rejected a week later, despite providing valid screens and sending the log files.

The words in big text.

I asked them why they don't accept screenshots or log files specifically saying you had such item/progress.

They responded to me saying something like:

Sigh. We need account packet monitoring services on POTCO...

well being that disney hasnt answered my emails, phone calls getting endlessly transferred or "i cant help you with those types of issues please contact our technical support", unanswered my bug reports, and ignores me on live chat.

people are already volunteering to speak for me, and if you feel this injustice on their part needs addressed, feel free to join them in doing so. we need to speak out at them. Not for just my lost coat but for others who have told me their stories on the same or similar glitches.

with any luck somebody will hear it and something will be done.

Something will be done as long as a lot of people complain about the same issue on a daily basis to them.

Yes, I will also speak about their injustice and incompetence about fixing game-breaking glitches such as this and how they don't SPEND MONEY giving more services for us in case of data loss.

I just tried to talk to them, they said over and over and over again that they cannot speak to us about somebody else's account. Worth a try, I figured as much from them though.

Another way Disney fails us, I'll try to email them Boss, but Disney is very stubborn, they want your money and that's it, so I don't think they'll do anything. Sorry about the jacket Boss.... :(

If you want proof that the manager of Member Services do e-mail players based on major frustration, here is the e-mail they sent me on the issue of cheaters not getting banned when they constantly exploit in PvP modes:

After complaining multiple times, I finally reached a e-mail by someone of higher position. It isn't as much as a problem as before, but it still need works.

That said, they rarely have the manager type e-mails to players unless someone is really wrong.

Further claification on how they can/cannot restore items based on the case. A chat transcript below explaining just that:

Having said that, you shouldn't give up on trying to get your Adventure Long Coat back, so long as you can prove the glitch works or if they can reproduce it and then maybe they will be able to manually return the lost item.

So, they do have power to restore items... however, like Sean said, it is VERY unlikely.

Still a chance though!

well i wouldnt know how to replicate teh glitch for one, all i know is i had a Plain Cotton Tank looted from a loot pouch in Ravens Cove Mines Caicos Server, clicked "Take All", shirt was in inventory, attempted to throw shirt away, confirmed to throw THE SHIRT away, My Long Coat then was taken right off my back.

im not risking my last and original red longcoat to this glitch.

I don't think they want you to reproduce it, just explain it to them what happened and they will try it out and see if it does the same thing.

Then they decide if they restore or not (Really, they should restore it for you anyone because it's really their fault for programming it wrong).