Merchant Archive
Thread: Blair thinks that most people are not affected by vendor disaster
He posted that statement recently, on a hotfix thread.
And of course he is right, fewer and fewer people are finding selling things a fun activity.
lovely between the lines read on that one. Nice PR twist, too bad there are too many people here for something like that statement to be believed by.
Most people are not affected IE..most people dont have vendors *laugh*
We're sorry that merchants have lost billions worth of stuff but merchants dont qualify as "most" people so, we will get to you when we can.
Blair wrote:
NJ62 wrote:
With all due respect, people who do not read the forums willcontinue to lose vendor items. Ifthis issue cannot be resolved intomorrow's hotfix, please include a warning about it in the patch notes, telling people to delist and relist their vendors.
It does happen, but not to most people. We're working on a fix as quickly as possible. Thanks for your patience here.
Blair
Producer
I also found this reply puzzling. Equally as puzzling as their reluctance to warn players from incurring further item losses is their approach to fixing this issue. Somewhere in the vendor code a clock is put on items that issues a function call to destroy the item once the timer expires. The question here would be:
Why hasn't this feature been disabled while the fix is being worked on?
Instead they've asked for more information in an efforrt to duplicate the bug. No indication has been given about whether the log that tracks item destruction is under review. From November 27 to present this log file surely must have grown in astonishingly unprecedented volume, provided its in place and functioning properly. Furthermore there has been no mention as to whether anything will be done to attempt to place any or part of what's been lost to players.
Be thankful these are programmers and not members of the medical profession or the following might occur:
You slip on a banana peel and split your head open. You are rushed to the emergency roomwith your head bleeding profusely. A nurse hands you a form to fill out detailing how the injury took place. You flip the questionaire over and notice on the back there is a FAQ on how to avoid injuries. Several hours pass and by now a puddle of blood has accumulated beneath your feet and you have begun to turn pale from loss of blood. Eventually you are taken to a room and in walks the a doctor reading over the questionaire. He hands you the same blank form to fill out, suggests you read the FAQ printed on the back of the form yet again, while he goes off to consult with his team.
In walks an eye doctor who begins to test your vision so the team of consultants can determine why you failed to notice the banana peel in time. Next a shoesalesman arrives to make sure your shoes didn't fit too tightly. You look outside the door to notice this team of consultants now attempt to recreate the accident. A janitor is called in to recreate a floor that would only cause a person to slip on a banana peel. The janitor nods and someone holding a banana concentrates as he carefully peels the banana, delicately removed the banana from the peel, and drops the banana peel onto the floor. An intern is next to act, walking towards the banana peel and then slips on it. You notice the consultants murmuring over one of the stopwatches used to time the recreation of the accident. The distance of the fall is then measured carefully. The team of consultants put their heads together and finally nod in agreement. The patient, you, has slipped on a banana peel and split his head open.
As the team of consultants is called away to another task, the doctor enters the room and finally begins to stitch your wound.
Which leaves you wondering why nobody attempted to stop the bleeding when you entered the emergency room with your head split open.
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It makes you wonder why nobody has attempted to stop the bleeding from this vendor bug by disabling the part of the code that destroys items in our vendors.
isnt the real problem that the team is focused solely on new content...right now its vehicles...
there is really no one working on ongoing issues and bugs....
people started talking about this about a week ago....they where "gathering info" then....people ahve also tried to warn people on the forums but jackassa and garva just keep locking the threads for not being constructive...
Fricking funny! LMAO!
A'kira < MeS >
A'kira Energy Company - a MeS Operation
Mos Syn, Tatooine, Flurry
Visit "Resources" in your Planetary Map for the waypoint!
Where radioactives CAN cost UNDER 1cr/unit...regardless of PE*
"Let us do your energy grunt work!"
*All 300k (due to vendor bug losses) units in our inventory have PE's of over 770 - updated December 3, 2003
I hate to say this, but.... have you guys ever considered that maybeit's just not as easy as "disabling the code that destroys items"?
Just a thought....
JamesHighwest wrote:
I hate to say this, but.... have you guys ever considered that maybeit's just not as easy as "disabling the code that destroys items"?
Just a thought....
It must be..it SEEMS easy from here.. 
JamesHighwest wrote:
I hate to say this, but.... have you guys ever considered that maybeit's just not as easy as "disabling the code that destroys items"?
Just a thought....
That may be the case. Or it may not. We may not know how easy or hard it is to fix. But what I have flamed about, in several posts, is their refusal to warn people. An in game email to everyone, like the Act2 Holonews one we all got. Short, sweet, simple.
If you own a vendor please check your stock as items are being deleted after 14 days. You can relist from stockroom for a 7 day sale and operate as before the 30 days sale feature was implemented. We sincerely apologise for the problem and hope to have a resolution as quickly as we can.
What have we got instead? Braindead posts from officials, refusal towarn people who may not read these boards,and extremely slow reaction time (fix next publish??). TH's first guess where the bug is -30 days pass, the sale expires, then it's relisted for sale and then 7 more days after the item vanishes. Very interesting hypothesis - considering this feature is not even 30 days old yet (live).
And posts for more information on this bug, which appear funnily enough, after 4 entire pages of detailed information on this bug.
I'm not arguing how easy it is to fix it.
I'm arguing the way they are acting is unforgiveable.
FWIW I agree that there should have been an announcement in the patch notes and maybe even email to warn people. The email is a little unprecidented they have never used that for bug warnings that I am aware of. But they have used the patch notes to warn people before (the Spec. Edition goggles is one example) this would have been another time to do it. I"m not sure why it didn't happen but it didnt'.
You can help by telling merchants you know in game about it and askign them to pass it along. I talked to several myself who didn't know anything about it and encouraged them to read the forums and find out about all the details.
I am hopeful that the fix will be in place in the next few days, but I don't know how complex the fix is so I am not sure if it is something that can be hotfixed or something that will have to wait until the next publish.