Shattered Kingdoms

I am pretty sure Reykur' s wipe was because of sessions he voided. It was during a time where actively was super low and there wasn't much to do. So I spent over 100 hours online during the month but still got the hoarder flag and was wiped. After that event I ensured Lorain did not void and still got wiped on two more occasions. One random bug with disconnection and reconnecting that caused the mirror pfile bug that wiped all limited items and then the end of month bug that I know I had plenty hours, did not get the hoarder and retained leader flags and still lost half his kit and random stuff in his container. I don't have a clue on what could cause the last instance, but I am not going to invest time in a game where when a bug undoes my work and all I get is a tough luck. If this was once in a blue moon, I can get over it. But I had it happen all in two months time. That is more than I can stomach. I do recommend that the code is evaluated to prevent this and that the policy of returning gear is also evaluated. I can accept getting back non-claimed items that where wiped to prevent unnessary duplications. But without some change by code and policy, you will not see me back in the game.

If you void and then you are logged out, you will lose your pet. I think this is because in practice the system is moving you temporarily into a separate, "safe room", and if you remain away then eventually you are logged out, in a room separate from your pet, which will always cause you to lose your pet. I personally have never noticed this voiding to have any effect on equipment.
If you void and come back before the system logs you out, I've never seen any "buggy things" affecting pets. I personally have never noticed this voiding to have any effect on equipment either.
Also personally, I've never known anybody else in the game to ever be hit with the situations that Trag has encountered, nor anybody else to have encountered any "consequences" from voiding, so it may be a premature leap to make that assumption without further data showing that anybody has ever actually been hit by a bug, or faced "harsh consequence" from voiding. I void often on every character that I've ever played, and though I have lost a billion pets, never encountered a consequence of it.
I don't know what the "jloot bug" is, so I can't comment to that.

There is a long-standing rule in the game that loss of equipment will never be replaced, although some staff (self included) have broken this rule in the past (and shouldn't have), and Dulrik himself has bent it a very few times (including at least twice for Tragonis). Nobody wants to see Trag go, and I fully relate to where he's coming from. I also understand the reasoning behind the policy and wouldn't expect it to change.

Overall, there's certainly something that's happened to the characters of this player (Trag), but I'm not aware of the same circumstances affecting any other player in the game to date. I'm no coder and no guru in debugging code, but I do know that the more frequent & detailed occasions of something happening, the easier it is to track down the variables that may be causing the problem. Unfortunately, in this case, there's not a lot to go on, as far as I know. If the issue hasn't ever happened to any other player, then presumably there's little need for any new players to fear, as the likelihood of this happening to them is statistically tiny, and even with the low player numbers, much more likely that any loss of equipment would come at the hands of another player or a botched PvE run. It sounds like the EQ loss on the first character (Reykur) was likely due to low activity, but the other character issues (Lorain) are certainly a concern and harder to identify. As a coder, D hates bugs, and he's usually pretty persistent to root them out. BAI is probably right that the bug itself is what D will focus on, and the more information that he can get in replicating the problem, be it related to specific equipment, or to possible pfile corruption, or any of the other billion aspects of the code base, the more he'll have to work with in identifying and addressing the issue, whatever it is. It may be harder to track back and identify after a character retires.
I can only theorize as a layman, but I do know it's on his radar and he has spent time investigating, but have no idea how close to finding & fixing.

this is stupid.

it is stupid to say we banned an entire subset of players because we didn't want other players to get scared off and stop playing, but we also just let bugs destroy establish characters and do nothing to stop it, no apologies, no changes, nothing.

like.

why play?

The month Reykur got hit with hoarder I spent over 100 hours online. Granted most of those times I spent twiddling my thumbs because it was me and maybe one or two other players online so I often ignored the game while doing something more entertaining and would frequently void.

Another change I would advocate is the Insta jloot in landing in the sky. Everytime I flew on a pet in an air room I was deathly afraid I would drop connection and log back in landed and dead and delooted. Since you dismount while disconnected. Just get rid of that. I don't know anyone who is like geewiz, I am so glad I get Insta junked in air rooms. And npcs that can final strike is dumb too. At least elves can survive that though.

That's frustrating. Sometimes when there's nobody else online it can take a while for other players to show up with whom you can interact. And sometimes it takes seeing an active player online to keep other people from logging out from an empty game. I had a character once who was mostly inactive, then became active in the last 2-3 days of the month, picked up some decent equipment just before the monthly reboot, then came back with a hoarder flag. It was disheartening, even knowing that it wasn't the intent behind the code. It's reasonable to reconsider the mechanics behind some of these issues, including thieves, at times of low player count.

Agreed on the air rooms. I mean, I can understand some items being destroyed by a fall, or depending on the type of area you're in, being scattered and lost. But for the most part, if you're flying somewhere and fall, it's the eventual contact with the ground that will kill you, and it's reasonable that your armor and weapons, while maybe damaged, would still largely be intact and positioned relatively near your corpse. I guess when a plane explodes, the stuff inside it can be scattered around for miles, but equipment that is securely strapped to your person is not likely to do so.

Except in the most extreme circumstances, I agree about final striking. The code behind it is so severe that players won't use it except in the most extreme circumstance, so I would think the same mentality would hold true for the random sorcerer NPC, especially one who is less likely to receive a sympathetic resurrection from the gods than a heroic PC.

I would also like to add that this issue has dated back up to two years based off less credible sources that I do not wish to mention. This may give an general idea of how long this bug "may" have been around.

In the meantime, can we unretire Trag's account before the account gets permanently deleted or is it too late? Not for his sake, but for debugging purposes because we dont want this to be indirectly swept under the rugs due to policy reasons.

Due to the current policy in place, things can easily be swept under the rug. For example, if policies allowed it, and IMMs were having to regularly having to replace loot, then it would suggest that this type of bug should be high priority. From my personal experience, I know all too well how tempting it is to just turn a blind-eye on something that needs to be done, rather than actually do it especially when we have to factor in different levels of priority.

The main question is what items are being lost?

Regardless of Tragonis's horrendously bad luck, you can tell what happened to some extent based on what items he lost.

For instance, the hoarder flag may or may not have been appropriate, but those items lost that time are easily explained by that.

I've seen more than a few complaints of losing items on log out, only for me to double check the item and it's a "no save" item, or an item that will basically always go away when you log out.

My suggestion would be just to note when you lose an item, and if it's something you can easily obtain again, do so and see what happens. This frequently is the case with things like inn keys, or some quest-related items.

If it's some kind of end-game item that it isn't so easy to test with, feel free to shoot up a prayer about the item.

If it's an assortment of items, or something otherwise unexplainable? I would send a log to Dulrik, or at least the character name, the items in question, and a relative time of last logout with the items.