Pet disappears = working as intended

Punisher

Both time I lost my pet it was at yamato mines, once the server went down, logged back in after the server came back up, tryed to jump on my cu, it appeared as I did, than went I went to dismount to tell it to attack it was gone. second time was at server down, and was just inside the yamato mines, logged back in when the server was back up, told it to follow me and went outside the dungeon, hopped on my cu, recalled to luna to get bandaids, came back to to the mines, dismounted and it disapeared again. so both times it has happen to me it was during a server down and something to do with mounting and dismounting, or possibly I was mounting a CU that wasn't really there? I think yamato mines are the stable heaven everyone is talking about as you can always see random pets inside the walls and mountains. hopefully this can help somewhat and resolve the issue..

Punisher

Just a note that I have done this a 100 times before with no issues, so I'm guessing it is probably random?

JohnKnighthawke

We don't know any details or circumstances.

It's been their policy for years to not replace lost or stolen items. This is not new. Yes this would include a house. Given how many times I've heard people complain of losing server-birth rares to this bug or that bug and talk about it on Stratics.....

Yes the customer service of this game has been substandard for most, or even all!, of its history, depending on who you ask. This also is not new. I gave up on getting help years ago.

Yes, players need to take greater care with their in-game possessions. And yes this really should include not logging out with an un-stabled pet if you can possibly help it.

McDougle

My gargoyle logs out with various pets all the time issues happen when you logged with pet a then try to claim pet b when it doesn't show right away (this a separate and hard to reproduce issue)

gay

I've lost multiple faction horses that I've had for 20 years, all bonded. One even being a dark green SL horse. All because I logged out, each one poofing the same exact way.

I log in, notice my follower count is 0/5 yet I'm literally riding my warhorse. I dismount myself, it disappears then reappears four or five times over the span of about 6 seconds, finally to never re-appear again. Two of those times were with dead horses that died the night before but I logged out without ressing them, same scenario on log in the next day. The appear like pets normally do, then disappear, repeating over the span of some seconds. The only time I've seen something like this happen before is when people go afk with their pets out and server enters the nightly maintenance reset, or crashes.

Emails to mesanna were basically "give me a detailed exact of what you were doing before it happened" and it's literally, I logged in. It happened, all I can provide is the exact time and day. The last time I played that chr was the day before and I was pvping, everything was normal when I logged out. With the end reply being "welp sorry I cant help you didn't provide me with what I asked for. We wont replace pvp losses."

Yoshi

“ @Punisher thanks for your info, I already almost reproduced this issue before (having a pet logged in at server down) but I wasn’t using a mountable pet, I will try again to reproduce.
@gay how long ago was this? Because they fairly recently identified an issue with dead pets and they now follow you through servers as I’m sure you noticed. It’s possible your issue was resolved already.

Still awaiting an account of what actually happened with @rom “

gay

2 years ago was the last time it happened to me.

Pawain

Yoshi said:

“ @ Punisher thanks for your info, I already almost reproduced this issue before (having a pet logged in at server down) but I wasn’t using a mountable pet, I will try again to reproduce.
@ gay how long ago was this? Because they fairly recently identified an issue with dead pets and they now follow you through servers as I’m sure you noticed. It’s possible your issue was resolved already.

Still awaiting an account of what actually happened with @ rom “

From what we can gleam from the first post. 
The poster was doing a T2A spawn in fel with a Naj.  They went to the city of Papau to bank the scrolls and stayed afk in the city hidden.  The OP does not recall whether they stabled the pet before banking or going afk for a few minutes. Then there was query from the OP about why the pet was blocked and something about having another pet out.

I have never heard of a non mountable pet being duplicated by game mechanics.

Why are you exploring logging off at server down?  The OP did not mention this happened to this pet.  He only said he has done it other times.

Why are some parts of the conversation cut?  Why does the OP ask if the GM is reading a script on him? 

There is not enough information given by the OP for anyone to reproduce what happened.

But we did discover that the GM speaking from a developer stated to log off in a safe log out area for a few minutes to attempt to recover a pet that went poof.  

Yoshi

“Thanks Pawain, I too can read. Not sure your mostly speculative interpretation of events is going to help.”

Pawain

Yoshi said:

“Thanks Pawain, I too can read. Not sure your mostly speculative interpretation of events is going to help.”

Speculative?  What part is not what the OP said?

Other than me adding that I never have seen a non mount duplicate itself.

Where did you read that this happened at server down?

drcossack

Pawain said:

Lord_Frodo said:

Archangel said:

HOW on earth does a bonded pet disappear!???

Good question.  Another would be
How does a bonded pet not auto stable when logging off?

Does heat of battle effect pets?

Pets do not auto stable when you log off. They go into a nether world. If you die and log off they go into a nether world.  Some may call this nether world auto stable.  But we have no way to know if that pet goes into our stable.  I do not think it does. They return to you when you log back in if you are alive.

@ Rom they can not return things that go poof, or else everyone would have a Castle, rare pets and items going poof every day that need returned.

I swear I had a Blaze Cu out Mr. GM and it just went poof.  You can even see it in my stable on TC....

If you log out while dead, they do, in fact, get auto-stabled - go to a stable after you've revived and it'll be there.  If you're logging out while alive, the same thing happens.  The only difference is that the pet is SUPPOSED to return to your side because your character isn't dead; if you're in the heat of battle, your character is still subject to the log-out timer, but the pet is stabled.  Auto-stable has been in place for a long time & it's not hard to figure out all of its intricacies.

If pets are disappearing (and I have no reason to doubt the stories of them going poof - people are not THAT careless with something they've sunk a lot of money/time into), there is NO REASON why the GMs or developers can't replace them - server backups exist.  I don't know how far back they go, but it's not unreasonable to think that something they're informed of immediately can be fixed for a specific individual.

Merus

drcossack said:

Pawain said:

Lord_Frodo said:

Archangel said:

HOW on earth does a bonded pet disappear!???

Good question.  Another would be
How does a bonded pet not auto stable when logging off?

Does heat of battle effect pets?

Pets do not auto stable when you log off. They go into a nether world. If you die and log off they go into a nether world.  Some may call this nether world auto stable.  But we have no way to know if that pet goes into our stable.  I do not think it does. They return to you when you log back in if you are alive.

@ Rom they can not return things that go poof, or else everyone would have a Castle, rare pets and items going poof every day that need returned.

I swear I had a Blaze Cu out Mr. GM and it just went poof.  You can even see it in my stable on TC....

If you log out while dead, they do, in fact, get auto-stabled - go to a stable after you've revived and it'll be there.  If you're logging out while alive, the same thing happens.  The only difference is that the pet is SUPPOSED to return to your side because your character isn't dead; if you're in the heat of battle, your character is still subject to the log-out timer, but the pet is stabled.  Auto-stable has been in place for a long time & it's not hard to figure out all of its intricacies.

If pets are disappearing (and I have no reason to doubt the stories of them going poof - people are not THAT careless with something they've sunk a lot of money/time into), there is NO REASON why the GMs or developers can't replace them - server backups exist.  I don't know how far back they go, but it's not unreasonable to think that something they're informed of immediately can be fixed for a specific individual.

I think the issue of replacing items, even ones that can be verified from a previous backup, is the ability to trade/discard items.

I put my fully trained and scrolled blaze in the stable to get a record of it at server down… log in after server up and transfer the pet to another account then page a GM and say it went poof…. That I owned it can be verified, but how does a GM tell the difference when I page him?  I’m pretty positive UO doesn’t log everything.

It works for an entire shard revert since everything for every player gets reset (except shard transfers).  I can’t justify reverting an entire shard over one players lost pet though.

I’ve lost pets to bugs and it really sucks, but sometimes that’s the way it goes in a video game.

McDougle

The record of you trading would be there 

Pawain

I had a housing issue once and mesanna got involved.  She said normally they can see the trade history of a house but in this specific case, mine did not have one.

So the game attempts to keep track of housing, but we have no clue if it keeps track of pets or items trade history.

And with the Mercus scam above, you may be able to stick that pet on your vendor, we do not know if the Magencia vendor shows up when they look at our stable. If they can look in the stable.

drcossack

Merus said:

drcossack said:

Pawain said:

Lord_Frodo said:

Archangel said:

HOW on earth does a bonded pet disappear!???

Good question.  Another would be
How does a bonded pet not auto stable when logging off?

Does heat of battle effect pets?

Pets do not auto stable when you log off. They go into a nether world. If you die and log off they go into a nether world.  Some may call this nether world auto stable.  But we have no way to know if that pet goes into our stable.  I do not think it does. They return to you when you log back in if you are alive.

@ Rom they can not return things that go poof, or else everyone would have a Castle, rare pets and items going poof every day that need returned.

I swear I had a Blaze Cu out Mr. GM and it just went poof.  You can even see it in my stable on TC....

If you log out while dead, they do, in fact, get auto-stabled - go to a stable after you've revived and it'll be there.  If you're logging out while alive, the same thing happens.  The only difference is that the pet is SUPPOSED to return to your side because your character isn't dead; if you're in the heat of battle, your character is still subject to the log-out timer, but the pet is stabled.  Auto-stable has been in place for a long time & it's not hard to figure out all of its intricacies.

If pets are disappearing (and I have no reason to doubt the stories of them going poof - people are not THAT careless with something they've sunk a lot of money/time into), there is NO REASON why the GMs or developers can't replace them - server backups exist.  I don't know how far back they go, but it's not unreasonable to think that something they're informed of immediately can be fixed for a specific individual.

I think the issue of replacing items, even ones that can be verified from a previous backup, is the ability to trade/discard items.

I put my fully trained and scrolled blaze in the stable to get a record of it at server down… log in after server up and transfer the pet to another account then page a GM and say it went poof…. That I owned it can be verified, but how does a GM tell the difference when I page him?  I’m pretty positive UO doesn’t log everything.

It works for an entire shard revert since everything for every player gets reset (except shard transfers).  I can’t justify reverting an entire shard over one players lost pet though.

I’ve lost pets to bugs and it really sucks, but sometimes that’s the way it goes in a video game.

But that's the thing - the devs can look things up for individual accounts.  It's why Mesanna is able to unban them.  When I first purchased Diablo 3, I had some issues with codes (I believe for the Reaper of Souls DLC) & Blizzard's support team was able to find the code for me (I had redeemed a few and wasn't sure exactly which one it was) & apply it to my account.  Do you really think the developers here can't do the same without doing a server-wide revert to the last backup?

ForeverFun

Merus said:

drcossack said:

Pawain said:

Lord_Frodo said:

Archangel said:

HOW on earth does a bonded pet disappear!???

Good question.  Another would be
How does a bonded pet not auto stable when logging off?

Does heat of battle effect pets?

Pets do not auto stable when you log off. They go into a nether world. If you die and log off they go into a nether world.  Some may call this nether world auto stable.  But we have no way to know if that pet goes into our stable.  I do not think it does. They return to you when you log back in if you are alive.

@ Rom they can not return things that go poof, or else everyone would have a Castle, rare pets and items going poof every day that need returned.

I swear I had a Blaze Cu out Mr. GM and it just went poof.  You can even see it in my stable on TC....

If you log out while dead, they do, in fact, get auto-stabled - go to a stable after you've revived and it'll be there.  If you're logging out while alive, the same thing happens.  The only difference is that the pet is SUPPOSED to return to your side because your character isn't dead; if you're in the heat of battle, your character is still subject to the log-out timer, but the pet is stabled.  Auto-stable has been in place for a long time & it's not hard to figure out all of its intricacies.

If pets are disappearing (and I have no reason to doubt the stories of them going poof - people are not THAT careless with something they've sunk a lot of money/time into), there is NO REASON why the GMs or developers can't replace them - server backups exist.  I don't know how far back they go, but it's not unreasonable to think that something they're informed of immediately can be fixed for a specific individual.

I think the issue of replacing items, even ones that can be verified from a previous backup, is the ability to trade/discard items.

I put my fully trained and scrolled blaze in the stable to get a record of it at server down… log in after server up and transfer the pet to another account then page a GM and say it went poof…. That I owned it can be verified, but how does a GM tell the difference when I page him?  I’m pretty positive UO doesn’t log everything.

Reading background online ... all the items on a given shard are represented by an "objectID", with each item, player, pet, etc having their own unique objectID on a given shard.  You can see player objectIDs in EC in the chat window, for players that are outputting chat text.  You can also get the objectID for any player, pet, item, etc in EC.

If you trade a pet to another player, the objectID for the pet stays the same.  It just has a new "owner" after the trade.

If you move players/pets/items/etc to another shard, they get a new objectID on the destination shard.   Presumably, the objectID can then be re-used for other items where the items was moved from.  It's possible that cross-shard transfers have significant logging.  So in theory, it's possible for the UO team to track items that come and go across shards.

If a user loses a bonded pet, the object is likely deleted, and some other pet/item/etc can re-use that "objectID" place in the server game database.  The database may track the creation time of each object, so that can be helpful.  This is conjecture, but the game server likely has some logic like this.

These hypotheticals aside, if a players has a pet suddenly go "poof", without having released it, it doesn't seem like rocket science for somebody to consult a server backup.   Lookup all the pets associated with the player prior to the deletion "event", and check whether those exist, got copied off shard, or got re-purposed for a new object ("creation time").  Likewise, doesn't seem a stretch to re-create a new pet (with a new objectID if needed) based on the properties associated with that pet taken from a prior backup.  It just comes down to whether a team wants to deal with issues like this, or whether it's easier to just have some blanket policy around not fixing problems like this.

Note the "Mask of Travesty" issue where +20 skills resulted from transmog -- a change was made to revert these items in a flawed way (wrong skills), which required the UO team to manually fix these based on user requests.  So there is some other precedent here too...

Merus

drcossack said:

Merus said:

drcossack said:

Pawain said:

Lord_Frodo said:

Archangel said:

HOW on earth does a bonded pet disappear!???

Good question.  Another would be
How does a bonded pet not auto stable when logging off?

Does heat of battle effect pets?

Pets do not auto stable when you log off. They go into a nether world. If you die and log off they go into a nether world.  Some may call this nether world auto stable.  But we have no way to know if that pet goes into our stable.  I do not think it does. They return to you when you log back in if you are alive.

@ Rom they can not return things that go poof, or else everyone would have a Castle, rare pets and items going poof every day that need returned.

I swear I had a Blaze Cu out Mr. GM and it just went poof.  You can even see it in my stable on TC....

If you log out while dead, they do, in fact, get auto-stabled - go to a stable after you've revived and it'll be there.  If you're logging out while alive, the same thing happens.  The only difference is that the pet is SUPPOSED to return to your side because your character isn't dead; if you're in the heat of battle, your character is still subject to the log-out timer, but the pet is stabled.  Auto-stable has been in place for a long time & it's not hard to figure out all of its intricacies.

If pets are disappearing (and I have no reason to doubt the stories of them going poof - people are not THAT careless with something they've sunk a lot of money/time into), there is NO REASON why the GMs or developers can't replace them - server backups exist.  I don't know how far back they go, but it's not unreasonable to think that something they're informed of immediately can be fixed for a specific individual.

I think the issue of replacing items, even ones that can be verified from a previous backup, is the ability to trade/discard items.

I put my fully trained and scrolled blaze in the stable to get a record of it at server down… log in after server up and transfer the pet to another account then page a GM and say it went poof…. That I owned it can be verified, but how does a GM tell the difference when I page him?  I’m pretty positive UO doesn’t log everything.

It works for an entire shard revert since everything for every player gets reset (except shard transfers).  I can’t justify reverting an entire shard over one players lost pet though.

I’ve lost pets to bugs and it really sucks, but sometimes that’s the way it goes in a video game.

But that's the thing - the devs can look things up for individual accounts.  It's why Mesanna is able to unban them.  When I first purchased Diablo 3, I had some issues with codes (I believe for the Reaper of Souls DLC) & Blizzard's support team was able to find the code for me (I had redeemed a few and wasn't sure exactly which one it was) & apply it to my account.  Do you really think the developers here can't do the same without doing a server-wide revert to the last backup?

I’m quite certain that UO doesn’t store the movement of every time every item moves in game.

You really think a developer can tell exactly what time and from exactly what mob from an exact location I looted a black pearl from if I have one in my pack?  Or if I traded that black pearl to another character? Or if I dropped it on the ground and they picked it up?  It’s possible, but I highly doubt it.

And if unique item ids were that easy to track/trace every dupped item and account responsible for dupping would be long gone.  While I’m no dev, and have no firsthand knowledge of what they can and cannot see… evidence would suggest it’s not as easy as some here suggest.

gay

Every item in game has a unique ID.

Every item in game has a timestamp of when it was created.

Sometime after T2A or UOR every item has an item history which devs (uncertain about GMs) can access which tells how it was created (drop/crafted), how it has been exchanged, etc.

The servers track unique IDs and delete whichever one gets checked next and found to be a duplicate, it's not an automated process it happens when you cross from one subserver into another one (aka a serverline/dungeon) or when you initiate a server transfer.

Pets that enter the void are actually stored in a set of world control stones and boxes, which are physical things in game at a location that players cannot reach.

The chances that the devs actually have a means of looking back through logs and checking for a pet having existed are slim to none, the questions they ask when you email them are evidence of that in itself. In fact what they are asking for is to see if the player can explain to them a situation that they already understand a pet would go missing or get deleted, and if the player can do that then they will offer to "respawn" that type of pet but cannot replace the one that was deleted.

Danpal

I think it has to do with the potion I never used one and have never lost a PET TO A BUG. 

During the events I am on my sampire who has the same swamp dragon that is like 5 years old. Once it dies i do not rez him I can go for a week with him not rezzing and being in the lost pet world but when I log and am alive his ghost will always be there. 

Yoshi

“(I’ve lost a couple, never used a pet bonding potion)
but that’s not the first time I’ve heard that theory”

McDougle

I use potions all the time never lost pet 
I leave all my gargoyles pets out never lost a pet 
I frequently log into find my Fisherman standing next too my loaded beetle after being mounted when I log out never lost a pet log after dying in dungeons sometimes pets dead as well never lost a pet there's got to be something more the the OP mentioned 

Pawain

I lost a swampy in Hythloth, Paged a GM and Mesanna came and brought it back.  But I think the swampy issue in dynamic dungeons is its own thing.

Lost a Windrunner when both of us died, lost a Skree when it fell off a ship, never saw it again.

Never used a bonding potion with over 100 built pets.  7 days works fine.

popps

What is this frequent mentioning of a "bonding potion" often associated with players claiming to have lost a bonded pet ?

Is there aspeculation that it is easier to loose a pet that was bonded with a bonding potion as compared to the 7 days time bonding period ?

If so, I do not understand coding wise how this coud be a thing... I mean, once a pet is bonded, to code, the method via which it got bonded, that is, whether with a bonding potion or the 7 days wait time, should not matter.... a bonded pet is now a bonded pet, period.

And thus, all bonded pet should be the same, regardless of the bonding method used to bond them.

That they are then lost should be an entire different story, totally unrelated to the bonding method used.

Right ?

Rom

Pawain said:

Yoshi said:

“ @ Punisher thanks for your info, I already almost reproduced this issue before (having a pet logged in at server down) but I wasn’t using a mountable pet, I will try again to reproduce.
@ gay how long ago was this? Because they fairly recently identified an issue with dead pets and they now follow you through servers as I’m sure you noticed. It’s possible your issue was resolved already.

Still awaiting an account of what actually happened with @ rom “

From what we can gleam from the first post. 
The poster was doing a T2A spawn in fel with a Naj.  They went to the city of Papau to bank the scrolls and stayed afk in the city hidden.  The OP does not recall whether they stabled the pet before banking or going afk for a few minutes. Then there was query from the OP about why the pet was blocked and something about having another pet out.

I have never heard of a non mountable pet being duplicated by game mechanics.

Why are you exploring logging off at server down?  The OP did not mention this happened to this pet.  He only said he has done it other times.

Why are some parts of the conversation cut?  Why does the OP ask if the GM is reading a script on him? 

There is not enough information given by the OP for anyone to reproduce what happened.

But we did discover that the GM speaking from a developer stated to log off in a safe log out area for a few minutes to attempt to recover a pet that went poof.  

I went afk after a spawn. Yes hidden. Nothing having to do with server down. It was 6:30pm. My inquiry was how would it be possible for me to bring out a second 5 slot pet if I already had a 5 slot pet out. The game shouldn't allow me to bring out a new pet if I supposedly already had one.

I asked if the GM was reading off a script because they went from what I felt was trying to help me to asking if there was anything else he could help me with like if I had called for technical support for my cable box and after they helped with one problem they ask if you have any other issues. It was very disconcerting since they hadn't solved my problem yet and were trying to end our interaction.

What other information is required that I have not provided?

If you want to reproduce, go to a spawn with a 5 slot pet that you are not mounted on and log off.

Rom

popps said:

What is this frequent mentioning of a "bonding potion" often associated with players claiming to have lost a bonded pet ?

Is there aspeculation that it is easier to loose a pet that was bonded with a bonding potion as compared to the 7 days time bonding period ?

If so, I do not understand coding wise how this coud be a thing... I mean, once a pet is bonded, to code, the method via which it got bonded, that is, whether with a bonding potion or the 7 days wait time, should not matter.... a bonded pet is now a bonded pet, period.

And thus, all bonded pet should be the same, regardless of the bonding method used to bond them.

That they are then lost should be an entire different story, totally unrelated to the bonding method used.

Right ?

The mention of a bonding potion is me asking for a bonding potion after the game errored on me in reparation for what happened in order to make the blow of losing a bonded pet less severe. It is clearly something that should not have happened and having to wait seven days on top of the actual loss essentially makes the character unusable for a week on top of the loss.

Rom

Pawain said:

Yoshi said:

“ @ Punisher thanks for your info, I already almost reproduced this issue before (having a pet logged in at server down) but I wasn’t using a mountable pet, I will try again to reproduce.
@ gay how long ago was this? Because they fairly recently identified an issue with dead pets and they now follow you through servers as I’m sure you noticed. It’s possible your issue was resolved already.

Still awaiting an account of what actually happened with @ rom “

From what we can gleam from the first post. 
The poster was doing a T2A spawn in fel with a Naj.  They went to the city of Papau to bank the scrolls and stayed afk in the city hidden.  The OP does not recall whether they stabled the pet before banking or going afk for a few minutes. Then there was query from the OP about why the pet was blocked and something about having another pet out.

I have never heard of a non mountable pet being duplicated by game mechanics.

Why are you exploring logging off at server down?  The OP did not mention this happened to this pet.  He only said he has done it other times.

Why are some parts of the conversation cut?  Why does the OP ask if the GM is reading a script on him? 

There is not enough information given by the OP for anyone to reproduce what happened.

But we did discover that the GM speaking from a developer stated to log off in a safe log out area for a few minutes to attempt to recover a pet that went poof.  

The conversation with the GM is not cut or edited. The introduction above the picture was not included only because that wouldn't fit into one picture. The conversation above was mostly introductory and asking me where and when the pet loss occurred. 

Rom

There is no question that the pet could be replaced by the dev team. The information that it exists is located on a database in a table with all it's details such as stats and pet owner. That is stored on their side. The issue is willingness and them not wanting to feel like it is their responsibility to replace every item that goes poof.

Guess what they should want to replace every item that goes poof, because not doing so diminishes the quality of the game and lessens the faith players can have in it's persistence. These bugs should not occur and when they do they should not be met with a tough shit, and in the case of a bonded pet, having to wait 7 days to replace it.

popps

One thing would be nice and, I imagine, quite feasible if the Developers are willing ( @Kyronix ?) and this could be that, whenever a pet gets lost, the Tamer owning (and losing...) the pet for good, would be at the very least returned all of the powerscrolls invested in that pet which code knows since they are listed "enhancements".....

Sure, the player would need to find/tame another of the same pet and spend time to train it back up again but, at the very least, the scrolls invested into the lost pet would not also be lost....

Please, Kyronix ?

Lord_Frodo

While you were AFK your pet could have gone wild and that is the reason you were allowed to get another pet out

McDougle

We CAN'T EVEN GET A NEWSLETTER do you really think anything discussed here or any other thread is going to happen...