Note to self: Don't level a profession right before a restart
by Adam Holisky 
Dec 5th 2008 at 11:00AM
Here's a pro tip for you all this morning.Don't level a profession right before a server restart.
I finally got around to creating a Death Knight yesterday, and after working through the starting zone I decided to stop off and level my herbalism a bit before heading to outland. I know the market for herbs is strong right now because of Inscriptions (which I'm also leveling), so that seemed like a good idea.
I was working my way through Elwynn Forest gathering up all the flowers I could. After I hit 75 herbalism I went back to train to the Journeyman level and pickup Apprentice Inscription. There was about 5 minutes left before the server restart, so I decided that I would sit there and mill some herbs and make some ink.
Throughout the process I made about 30 Ivory Ink, which gave me 26 points in Inscription. The server reset then. When I logged back on all 26 points in Inscription were lost, however I still had all the ink. Quite odd.
It wasn't worth filing a GM ticket over since the materials were so inexpensive and I had them in abundance. But if this were the higher levels or if I was dealing with more expensive mats, then I would be throwing the hissy fits of all hissy fits to a GM. There would have been some real profession QQ tears flowing from my eyes. And they would have tasted horrible.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Bugs, Inscription
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Killer Dec 5th 2008 11:06AM
You are not alone. I have had this happen to me as well. Good practice is if you know when the restart is happening just don't do anything major 1/2 hr before the restart.
Spazmoosifer Dec 5th 2008 1:48PM
Based on what you are saying about the profession skill levels, I would venture to guess that the skill level might not get saved to their databases when you are actually leveling them, but upon actually logging out of the game (most likely in order to reduce the amount of network communication that is required while actually playing, thus reducing lag).
My guess is that it would be safe to level your professions, as long as you log out before the server reset. If you plan on staying online until the server is offline, then I would suggest not leveling them for 1/2 hour before the reset.
Cokenoice Dec 6th 2008 11:54AM
Back in BC I bought the 150 badge staff right before a reset. After everything came back up I still had the staff and my badges.
Discord Dec 5th 2008 11:07AM
Let them know anyway. It may help to head off a more serious problem later.....
Adam Holisky Dec 5th 2008 11:08AM
I know a bunch of folks over there read us, so this article will suffice. =)
West Dec 5th 2008 12:26PM
I had the same problem with weapon skill. I was grinding mobs getting all of my skills to max (in BC) and finally got the last 300. Sometime shortly thereafter the wow client crashed. When i logged back in, all my weapon skill progress was lost.
When i was leveling my profs (herb/mine) on my DK, I made sure to log out every hour to 'save' my progress.
Julio Biason Dec 5th 2008 2:52PM
@Adam: Do it anyway. It'll help them keep track of the things that need to be fixed.
Kakistocracy Dec 5th 2008 2:54PM
I let them know when one of my alts lost five levels of engineering, even thought the mats could have been replaced for a gold or two. By the time they got back to me, all they had to saw was that they assume I was lying, so they wouldn't restore the level. I guess this article is vindication.
king0lag Dec 5th 2008 11:08AM
I actually lost the last 70 points of my 450 fishing this way :(
I have no idea how this could have happened since it was HOURS of fishing.
GM Reply: I am unable to restore the missing skill, but it's easy to go out and just fish some more ;)
Yeah thanks -.-
jamesisgreat Dec 5th 2008 3:51PM
Exactly same thing happened to me - 40 minutes of fishing wasted. And I opened a ticket to a GM and got the same reply.
Its a load of crap really - just because its easy to fish those points back doesn't mean I want to do waste another 40 minutes doing it!
Also I got the achievement for 500 fish caught at the same time before the server restart, and when the server came back up I'd lost it. This is a bit more worrying - is this the case with all achievements that are done within the 15 minute restart window do you think?
West Dec 5th 2008 12:32PM
yeah, easy isn't the word i'd use and the GM is clearly implying that your time means nothing. I like to fish as much as the next guy but that's a rude reply from the GM to a serious gap in their platform.
since we are paying blizzard to provide us this game/service, would it be too much to ask them to regularly save my progress during my gaming session as well (and not just at the end)?
sure it may be computationally expensive to write each skillup to the DB, but there must be some middle ground of perhaps a writing the state every x minutes, or x many skillups. This way a client/server/network crash would cost you x minutes/skillups max and not hours of progress.
AJM1971 Dec 5th 2008 11:11AM
This happened to me a long time ago with leatherworking on my rogue. I learned my lesson :-(.
Maulgrym Dec 5th 2008 11:12AM
You still had all the ink, or had still *used* all the ink?
Losing the points in inscription but still having the ink wouldn't have been a big deal at any level.
We've noticed sort of wonky behavior before with these server resets (and crashes). The last one I still had credit for completing the quest I had just finished a few seconds before the server went down, but was located right near the quest giver instead of a good distance away where I had been. Something similiar happened to one of my friends at the same time.
Clearly their few seconds of rollback affects different actions differently. Which I suppose makes sense. They are saving lots of information in their database and completing a quest would be a trigger and get saved as you turn it in, but your exact position data on a crash might not be quite as important and get saved every 30 seconds or so.
Scott Dec 5th 2008 11:17AM
I figure it's something on the order of "oh, this stat's still fluid, we'll keep it in memcache and not write it to disk yet." Server reset comes along, something unclean happens, and oops, the stat was only current in mem copy - disk write was old. Maybe really old, in the case of Mr "lost 70 points of fishing".
Which means, you know, something to try is stop using a stat for 10 minutes after you do something you care about with it. 10 minutes of inactivity should trip any LRU cache writedown.
NB: I am not a Blizzie, I just play a gob engr on one of their servers. ;-) (and I'm not even 450 yet, oh noes!)
Pyeno Dec 5th 2008 11:15AM
ha ya losing stuff sucks, i once lost all mats for a crusador enchant before bc now that sucked..... weeks of farming trolls just gone.
Yeng Dec 5th 2008 11:19AM
I wonder if you would have luck if you logged out prior to the server shutting down. Logging out might push the data to be saved before the server shutdown.
Jack Spicer Dec 5th 2008 11:40AM
Yeah, I'm curious about this as well. Did you let the game log you off, or did you do it yourself?
h8rain Dec 5th 2008 11:48AM
I have lost a glyph that way. Bought it off the AH, grabbed from the mailbox, "installed" the glyph and like 5 minutes later the server crashed. When it came back up, the Glyph was gone.
Made a ticket and even had a fun chat with the GM. They mailed me a new glyph in the end.
Victory Dec 5th 2008 11:58AM
Poo flinging monkeys can raid, but apparently not do professions.
Ærynn Lómëhtar Dec 5th 2008 8:01PM
Qu'à la fin de l'envoi, je touche.