WARNING: Inventory Glitch Causes Irreversible Damage

[Jason Firewalker]

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)

A Technical Representative will be delivering World-Class support to you shortly. With 2 guests in queue, your wait time is expected to be 0 minutes.
You are now chatting with 'Nelson'
Nelson: Hey there, [censored]!
Me: hello
Nelson: Welcome to Pirates Online Live Chat!
Me: yes i have a quite unexpected problem
Me: that occured on sunday
Nelson: I see there has been an error.
Nelson: Aye.
Nelson: What happened, matey.
Me: and nobody has been able to help me until now
Me: i was picking up some loot
Me: and had received the "Plain Cotton Tank"
Me: however i didnt want this item so i tried to throw it out
Me: when the confirm screen came up it showed "Plain Cotton Tank" to be trashed
Me: however
Me: my "Adventure Long Coat" was trashed instead
Me: this really upset me cause that was my favorite coat
Me: and i cant obtain it anymore
Nelson: Aye.
Nelson: When did this happen, mate?
Me: i was wondering if there was a way it can be returned to me
Me: just this past sunday
Me: evening
Me: i sent a bug report with the log files
Me: no response was given
Nelson: Alas, there is nothing that I can do about this. The Bug Report is the best thing that could be done.
Nelson: What is the email address you put in the Report?
Me: [censored]
Nelson: Aye. I do see it.
Nelson: I'll go ahead and escalate this issue. I can't say that there'd be a reply right away. But it will definitely get looked at.
Me: well i do have 2 solutions possible to return my coat
Nelson: Oh?
Me: one would be to edit my inventory to place the coat in the empty clothing slot
Me: two would be to make the quest to get the coat available to me again
Nelson: Aye.
Nelson: I'll make sure to pass along those suggestions when I escalate the ticket.
Nelson: For now, I'd have to send it over to the developers to have a look. They can see the game logs to find exactly what happened.
Me: ok
Nelson: Aye. Can I help with anything else for now, Me?
Me: no
Nelson: Okay, mate. I'll definitely make sure to pass this all along to the Overseers.
Nelson: They'd be glad to know about this.
Me: hope to hear from them soon
Nelson: I'll send it right on over now.
Me: and hopefully the return of my wrongfully taken coat
Nelson: Aye.
Nelson: I'm on it, matey.
Nelson: Thanks fer sailin' by, Me! Fair Winds, mate!
Thank you for chatting with us! Please take a moment to fill out our Experience Survey.

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)

info: A Technical Representative will be delivering World-Class support to you shortly. With 1 guests in queue, your wait time is expected to be 1 minutes.
info: You are now chatting with 'Chase'
Chase: Hello, welcome to Toontown Technical Support.
Me: toontown?
Me: this is suppose to be POTCO
Me: hello?
Chase: My apologies.
Chase: How may I help you Me?
Me: well i have had a continuing issue with pirates online
Me: if this is not pirates online technical support please transfer me to the right people
Chase: This is pirates support.
Me: ok then
Me: it has been a week since this issue has been supposedly "escalated"
Me: and i have not received any status updates on the issue
Me: and honestly it is setting me on edge
Chase: What is the contact email address?
Me: [CENSORED]
Chase: I see that we have responded to this issue.
Chase: Unfortunately, we cannot restore the items.
Me: my coat was wrongfully taken from me in a glitch
Me: and it is your job to fix said glitch
Me: and amend any damages done
Me: and i have not recieved such a reply form this escalated issue
Chase: I am sorry for the trouble, but we cannot verify these events, and therefore cannot restore the items.
Chase: And email was sent by Nelson to that address on Thu, 27 Oct 2011,.
Chase: Check your inbox on that date.
Me: no it was not
Me: im looking at that area right now
Me: even in my spam
Me: any other game
Me: would restore my wrongfully taken items
Me: without question
Me: trust me ive been there
Me: i gave you all 2 possible ways to solve the issue
Me: and ur saying both are impossible?
Chase: I am going off of the information in the bug report.
Chase: It says that we cannot verify the lost items, and cannot restore them.
Me: why can you not restore them
Me: THAT was my favorite and signature coat
Chase: Deletion events are not displayed in the log viewer.
Me: that can no longer be obtained
Me: as it was a quest item
Me: one of the options was to directly edit my inventory to place the coat in the empty slot
Me: that i have kept open all week
Me: or
Chase: We cannot do that.
Me: remove the marker off my pirate
Me: or whatever you call it
Me: that prevents me from redoing the quest
Me: to obtain that coat
Chase: That is not possible either.
Me: why not
Chase: We cannot reset the quest line.
Me: why not
Chase: That is not something that we can do.
Me: and ur redundancy is amazing
Me: yet ur explanation has less life than a grave
Chase: Sir, I am redundant because I am telling the truth.
Me: forgive me if i dont believe you
Chase: Okay, I can have you talk with a manager.
Me: as any other game COULD
Chase: This is not another game.
Me: classic response
Me: but similar programming is used in many games
Me: to store the data of the players
Chase: Is there any other issues I can address for you?
Me: i want my coat back
Me: that is all
Me: ill be content when its returned
Chase: That is not possible.
Me: and again i dont believe u
Me: this item was wrongfully taken
Me: and it is your duty as u are paid to do
Me: to return it
Me: i can prove easily i had the coat before
Chase: It is my duty to convey what we are able to assist with, we cannot reset the quest, nor can we verify the event that transpired.
Me: again disbelief
Chase: Okay.
Chase: Thank you for visiting live chat Me! Have a great day!
info: Thank you for chatting with us! Please take a moment to fill out our Experience Survey.

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.

[Machazzard]

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!!

[akamystic]

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.

[Kat Five Knives]

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.

[Stephen O'Malley]

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.

[Jason Firewalker]

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.

[Captain Hector]

I am sorry for the loss of quest. But the second conversation was a bit rash on your side... but they SHOULD be able to reset the quest marker thing . I love that coat too, and if i had lost it, i'd certainly do what you did.
-Hector, Emerald Regiment Officer
-Capin Otter, PNC Member

[Captain Sharktooth]

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....

[Slasher]

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?

[Jason Firewalker]

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.

[Nate Swordwalker]

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

[Dark_Pixie]

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.

[richfireskull]

Originally Posted by Dark_Pixie

Disney certainly has the power to restore items, so why don't they do so upon request?

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.

[Dark_Pixie]

Originally Posted by richfireskull

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.

[Catherine Ironcutter]

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.