Thank you for the original post and the following responses. You have helped me keep the faith.
I was about to leave for good in the last couple of weeks. The item of greatest value to me in this game, the one irreplaceable thing I own, my guildstone had disappeared without any reason. I had placed it into my bank for temporary safekeeping and next I looked, it had simply gone - I searched everything, everywhere, but it's not there. The 'Stone Ghost' was the very heart of the role-playing guild of the Golden Horde and since almost all the players have now left for new horizons, it seemed that the guildstone's loss was itself the final omen - time to spread Haruchai's ashes upon the wind and leave. A history stretching back to Spiritwood before the Cataclysm and the inheritance from the
Oymak Batachikan clan was lost in some impenetrable bug or catastrophic mistake by me.
The loss of a small bit of virtual property should not matter as much as it does, but the memories and friends that stone represented most certainly do matter. Yet when I finally logged in again to drop the tents scattering Mongol lands, I found too many memories still. There are still legends to be written, events to be planned and friendships anew to be forged.
Even the simple pleasures of the game are enticing. (Does anyone else find the monotonous crunch, crunch of mining to be a great stress reliever after a busy day?

)
The posts here remind me that this game is all about what one can contribute as well as what the game design offers. Times such as the defence of Trinsic alongside the great armoured
Han knights, fighting the great Plague of Yew shoulder to shoulder with the Guardsmen even as they sneered at us 'outsiders', scything with the Bloodguard through the lizardmen pouring into Britain, these songs must be sung to the young - and new triumphs added for campfires yet to be lit.
The loss of the Stone Ghost is grievous but turning away from eleven years of memories would be more so.