Losing items from transfer when mailed

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Nymesis
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Losing items from transfer when mailed

#1 » Post by Nymesis » 29 May 2018 01:18

Hello - my DK Nymesis was transferred here a few months ago with a lot of items, including several stacks of enchanted vellums, LW armors and a bunch of assorted tradeskill materials. Since the xfer completed I have attempted to mail many of these items to my other characters or other players and they keep disappearing. I've opened numerous tickets about this issue and often about half the items get returned, but usually I am also told you guys were not able to find a record on the other half and I'm just out of luck on getting them back. Thats very upsetting. This only happens to items that came with the DK in the xfer - I have yet to see it happen to anything else.

I'm sure you can understand this is getting pretty frustrating for me. Certainly some of the things I brought with her were intended for my own use, I won't pretend otherwise - but the majority of the tradeskill items were meant as gifts to the server to help other players and/or guildies with at no profit for myself. Tho motives for the items shouldn't matter, however - I know that subject has come up before. At any rate, no matter what I intend to do with the items - they keep disappearing in the mail, and this should NOT be happening. I can't very well gift some materials to someone or donate to the guild, when the person accepting the items will probably lose them if they need to mail it to another character for crafting. Perhaps if I just wanted to sell it all on the AH these issues wouldn't be happening as much, but selling is not gifting, and if I posted at gift prices there'd just be one person thinking it was his lucky day, gobbling it all up and reposting for their own immense profit later - that wouldn't benefit our server in any way.

I thought at first it was an issue with my DK's mail - so a couple weeks ago I tried hand transferring all the items to one of my brothers characters and then back to another character of my own - then tried mailing some things again. Result: more things were lost in the mail, about half permanently as once again the investigating GM could find no record of half of the missing items.

I then tried bumping items into my friends and family guild vault, took a screenshot to prove they have a record somewhere and mailed some more - and still lost more that were only partially returned again. Even with screenshots to prove I had the items, I still only got half of them back. I've also opened a thread on the bugtracker including the screenshots I took. You can find the thread here: https://truewow.org/bugs/view.php?id=7119

One of the GM's investigating the latest bunch of lost items has been trying to convince me that I probably just typo'd when the screenshot clearly shows my characters name (correctly spelled) in the mailbox - I didn't alter it after I took the screenshot, I just clicked "Send". Even if typo's were to blame for some of these lost mailings - the characters who mailed them have very short friends lists that only include my own characters and members of my friends and family guild - so any autofilled name would be from those lists and it would have gone to one of them instead, but nothing ever arrived to any of these characters. And so far everything that has gotten lost was also in a bulk mail that included other items that GM's returned - this means there was NO typo.

I'm sure you guys are getting frustrated with my numerous tickets on the topic. I'm getting 10x more frustrated dealing with this issue. What can we do to get this to stop happening? Would it be possible to have a Senior GM meet my characters in game, hand them these buggy transferred items and have the GM delete the old and hand me a new? Maybe if they are just remade it will solve the problem, my items will stop disappearing and we can all move on with our lives w/o me needing to make more tickets every week. Please - whatever you can do to help with this.

For now I've just stopped trying to move any of the items around, but this isn't a solution.

Thank you - Nym

Note: I made a forum post about the issues with my DK's transfer months ago, when she was first transferred, but it stopped getting attention when I needed to take several weeks off for surgery IRL - I'm making this post now as instructed by a GM in one of my latest in game tickets.

There is also a bugtracker (linked above) open, and as I also stated above, I've opened numerous in game tickets about this. In another of my recent tickets I was informed you have assigned a specific GM to work on this and figure out whats causing the issue - thats great, I'm very happy I'm not being overlooked, and I really appreciate you working on it. Also in a conversation on Discord with GM's I was instructed to use the website mail system to email the senior GM's, this post is a near copy of that - tho I haven't received a response to that email yet.
“If you suffer your people to be ill-educated, their manners corrupted from birth; then punish them for those crimes which their first education disposed them, then what else is to be concluded, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.”

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Spectrez
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Re: Losing items from transfer when mailed

#2 » Post by Spectrez » 29 May 2018 03:34

Nymesis, just popping in to say im still investigating this issue - i have not forgotten you.

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Nymesis
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Re: Losing items from transfer when mailed

#3 » Post by Nymesis » 29 May 2018 23:44

Spectrez wrote:
29 May 2018 03:34
Nymesis, just popping in to say im still investigating this issue - i have not forgotten you.
Thanx - I appreciate it very much! Any thoughts on my suggestion we just remake the items I still have?
“If you suffer your people to be ill-educated, their manners corrupted from birth; then punish them for those crimes which their first education disposed them, then what else is to be concluded, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.”

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IronSharona
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Re: Losing items from transfer when mailed

#4 » Post by IronSharona » 31 May 2018 17:53

Edited: My understanding was incorrect so this has been updated.

I believe that the issue underlying this problem is identified. We have folks working to clean up a table or two causing database conflicts and unsuccessful mail transfers, and the missing items should appear either in a location where GMs can relink them successfully, directly to the player's inventory. Once this process is complete, it should not occur again in the future. It seems to be the result of residual dead-weight in the database, so to speak.
Welcome to the new decade! Let's hope the Roaring 20's come with just as much jazz, but a bit less prohibition and Great Depression. 8-)

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Nuko
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Re: Losing items from transfer when mailed

#5 » Post by Nuko » 31 May 2018 21:54

Hello!

The issue here is slightly arcane, so let me try and explain it without too much jargon. Basically, a long time ago when an item had been mailed, but the mail had expired without the item being claimed, the server would delete the item instance itself but not the reference to its id in the mail table.

Therefore, later on when that id is now being used for your item and you try to mail it, the server removes it from your inventory then attempts to add it to the mail "inventory" but that fails because there is already a reference in there with the same id, leaving your item still "existing" (ie the item instance still exists) but with no current location (ie there is no reference to it in your inventory any more).

I am about to run a script which will find all such items and return them to the inventory of their "owner" and then clear out the mail table of these old references. However, I am unsure as to whether the "owner" will be the sender or the recipient of the mail.
Nuko - In the event of malfunction, please insert tea.
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Nuko
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Re: Losing items from transfer when mailed

#6 » Post by Nuko » 31 May 2018 23:23

The script has just finished. Hopefully the items should be back and all the ghost entries have been removed from the database so this shouldn't happen again.
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"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

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Nuko
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Re: Losing items from transfer when mailed

#7 » Post by Nuko » 31 May 2018 23:27

Note that the items will have been added to whatever free slots the armory could find in your inventory. This includes your bank.

If it couldn't find any free slots, then it will not have re-added it, but the item will now be visible to staff members as unlinked from your inventory. As such after you've cleared enough space, let a staff member know (ie open a ticket) and they should be able to manually relink it to your inventory via the armory.
Nuko - In the event of malfunction, please insert tea.
"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

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