Guild Names, Mail, and Server Merges

While there were some interesting changes to how disputes over Character Names were handled in the first of these new Server Merges, Guild Names stuck with the original rules established long ago. During a Merge, if both servers have a guild of the same name, the one created first keeps its name, while the other receives an unceremonious “x” suffix.

While it has been a relatively smooth Server Merge between Blackburrow and Everfrost, it has been marred by some Guild and Player Name issues, other scheduled server downtime and maintenance, and some niggling issues with Mail.

More after the jump…

Guild Names

Where Guild Name issues became complicated is the shoddy records kept by EQ2Players. The Server Merge scripts (newly updated for 2010) are only as good as the data, and that data suggested that some guilds which folded long ago were still alive and kicking. Due to characters transferring off of servers, or other issues, the data might have suggested that a guild still existed when it didn’t. Anyway, with today’s fixes, issues with 43 guilds were automatically resolved.

From Rothgar:

If you remove the guild members normally, the guild will be flagged as deleted when the last one is gone. What I suspect happened is that the last guild member either transferred to another server or was deleted in some non-standard way that led to this problem.

This only occurred with 43 guilds on the entire server, so its not that common of an issue. We’ve already updated the merge scripts to flag guilds deleted if none of the members are active, so this won’t be a problem in future merges.

We’re bringing down Everfrost at 3pm PST for 15-30 minutes today. During this time we will fix the issue with battlegrounds not updating quests and at the same time I’ll fix all of the guilds who were improperly renamed.

And after the maintenance, Rothgar:

Now that the maintenance is complete, 43 guilds that had name conflicts should have been fixed. Also, players that could not receive battlegrounds tokens and quest updates should now be fixed.

If your guild is still affected, naturally you should file a /petition.

Mail Issues

Players have been unable to receive mail attachments such as the Frostfell item. These players see the attachment, but receive a message that they are Unable to retrieve the gifts at this time.” Characters with names that temporarily had xx suffixes are now not able to view any of their current or saved mail.

From Rothgar:

We will be attempting to fix the mail issue Monday morning. We have to run another script to try to restore the mail after the rename.

Character Names

So before the Server Merge, some new rules for Character Name conflicts if the same character name existed on both servers was announced:

1. Whichever character logged in within the past 60 days received the naming preference.

2. If both characters either have or haven’t logged in, then it comes down to number of days played.

From Rothgar:

If you had your name changed so that it ends with an “xxy”, you will be receiving a free marketplace rename potion within the next couple of hours.

If your name was changed so that it just ends in “xx”, you should be able to use the /rename command already in game to change your name.

EQ2Players

Lillya of Antonia Bayle pushed Rothgar for some explanation of why EQ2Players is just so inaccurate:

ANother bug from the stationplayers site is that a guild will not show up in the query for a guild if it has less than 3 members. You can get around this by searching for a known player in the guild, and then one can see the guild. There will be a lot of n/as that abound in the various boxes, however.

Rothgar, can we please hear SOMETHING about the current plethora of issues with Station Players? Please? Like guild chat being broken from the site, paperdolls going missing, data not being updated, etc? It is my current pet peeve with the game.

Rothgar gave a surprisingly candid answer:

This isn’t really the right forum for discussion about Station Players. As I mentioned earlier, we are aware of the MANY issues that result in our old data export methods. We’ve developed an entirely new system for exporting character, item and spell data, and it works GREAT!

Now all we need is EQ2 Players to be redesigned to use this new data feed structure and it will be the “most awesomest” website you’ve ever seen. Unfortunately the department that does the web development is under pressure right now from other games as well. So we are somewhat at the mercy of scheduling.

That said, let’s keep this topic about Blackburrow and merge issues. Feel free to start another thread in the EQ2 Players forum.

Of course dozens of threads have been created in that forum, but as there is currently nobody from the SOE Platform team assigned to work on EQ2 sites (they are busy working on DCUO sites and Forums 4.0) that such posts are fruitless.