Cant login to game

[Stien Family]

Ok i been away for quite a while now but thought i would login this morning and see what is new.  But the game says it does not know me need some help here.

[Anaris]

Well, if "quite a while" is more than three months, your account will have been automatically deleted. The game should have sent you an email about this; however, there is a known issue where it will not send it if the exact 90-day mark falls on a day when the cleanup script fails to run completely.

[Stien Family]

Timothy your telling me that my characters and my account is completely gone and do not exist any longer just because I was unable to log in for over three months!

five years of working on building  up my characters and now their gone just like that with no way to get them back.

[Anaris]

Yes, that's exactly what I'm telling you. And it's no different than for everyone else in the game.

You should have gotten at least two notifications from the game before your account was deleted. There was a period when these notifications were not being consistently sent out, but it was over three months ago now.

[vonGenf]

And it's no different than for everyone else in the game.

While I agree that it's fair, I am at a loss as to why it's necessary in the first place. Would it be a big problem to keep old accounts?

[Stien Family]

well the fact is i have been too busy in real life to worry about the game and its been probably 6 8 months since i have tried.  Not sure if it is really a thing or not. 

[egamma]

While I agree that it's fair, I am at a loss as to why it's necessary in the first place. Would it be a big problem to keep old accounts?

I'd say database performance/storage could be an issue, eventually.

[Anaris]

well the fact is i have been too busy in real life to worry about the game and its been probably 6 8 months since i have tried.  Not sure if it is really a thing or not.

It's not just about keeping old accounts. You're upset that your characters are gone, right?

Well, keeping a character means keeping around all its realm information, paraphernalia, fines/bans, contacts, etc. It also means that even if you never come back, no one can ever make another character with the same name on that continent.

[Tom]

While I agree that it's fair, I am at a loss as to why it's necessary in the first place. Would it be a big problem to keep old accounts?

Storage and performance have increased over the years. 12 years ago, it was quite a problem. Today it is easier, but there needs to be a time after which we really wipe your data. One reason is performance - we would have almost 40,000 accounts in the database today, and probably half a million characters if we didn't clean things out occasionally, and all that data would make everything else slower.

The other reason is legal. In the European Union, where the BattleMaster service resides, personal information such as e-mail addresses and names, may only be kept if you have a reason to do so. We do have a reason to keep the data from people who are playing the game, but not for people who don't. So after a reasonable period during which they can still be assumed players, just not active right now, I am legally obliged to wipe the data.

The exact time has never been defined because it varies for every business or institution and depends on many factors, so it's a judgement call until someone sues you and a judge defines it, which is a good incentive to really make it reasonable.


So with all that said, we could easily double it with todays servers, but even if it's 6 months we will have people coming back to the game, disappointed that their family was deleted.

Yes, it was. Sorry for that. But for everyone one of you, there are a hundred or so other players who also went away and will never come back, and short of precognition we have no way of knowing to delete their data, but not yours.

[vonGenf]

So after a reasonable period during which they can still be assumed players, just not active right now, I am legally obliged to wipe the data.

I had not considered that, kudos to you for actually respecting that law. I'm certain that's rare (it's certainly not the case where I work).

[Indirik]

We just got this message yesterday:

Freeman Deleted   (1 day, 9 hours ago)
message to all nobles of Astrum

alan beaird, the player of Pleasant Stien, has deleted him.

Did he really miss out on saving his account by about 24 hours? Crappy luck....

[Tom]

I had not considered that, kudos to you for actually respecting that law. I'm certain that's rare (it's certainly not the case where I work).

If it's a large company, they might simply have a legal department that has found a justification that they think will stand up to scrutiny. As a small indie project, I can't afford taking the risk, simple as that.

[De-Legro]

If it's a large company, they might simply have a legal department that has found a justification that they think will stand up to scrutiny. As a small indie project, I can't afford taking the risk, simple as that.

It is one reason I don't host ANYTHING on EU servers

[Stien Family]

1 day and 9 hours that how much i missed it by really!  now that really sucks. 

And you have valid points i agree Tim and Tom but you both know who your active players are and who are the active part timers as well.  So the point that I am trying to say is and I have donated not much but I have from time to time is i worked very hard to get my characters where they were and my work is all now for naught because of some time away from a  part time game.  That has promoted its flexibility of not allowing  player to be punished for being inactive.  seems like it may need to be looked at a bit closer. 

I thought I had been away longer but I do remember now that I login around July to let people know I would be away for a while but it turned out I was away for one day too long.

[De-Legro]

1 day and 9 hours that how much i missed it by really!  now that really sucks. 

And you have valid points i agree Tim and Tom but you both know who your active players are and who are the active part timers as well.  So the point that I am trying to say is and I have donated not much but I have from time to time is i worked very hard to get my characters where they were and my work is all now for naught because of some time away from a  part time game.  That has promoted its flexibility of not allowing  player to be punished for being inactive.  seems like it may need to be looked at a bit closer. 

I thought I had been away longer but I do remember now that I login around July to let people know I would be away for a while but it turned out I was away for one day too long.

Did you not enjoy the act of GETTING your nobles to that stage? I never truly understand post like this, maybe I am just different. I have never worked, hard or otherwise in a game. I have engaged in a game for entertainment value, and along the way perhaps I have progressed up some sort of arbitrary system of worth or rank, but never would I have done so if the act of getting there was not in itself enjoyable.

I too lost my in game family when I needed to take a break from Battlemaster (among other things) in order to focus on my young son and some developmental issues he has. Sure I miss my old characters and the power they had amassed, but it was never for naught. They were part of the game world, people remember what they did and what they accomplished, modest though it was compared to other characters.