A full shard revert was never feasible anywhere but in the minds of the people who transfered characters. There was no way several thousand players were going to be put through an unnecessary process for the sake of a couple of hundred or so. Especially when records existed from which to restore lost characters without going to that extreme.
Incorrect.
A full shard revert was possible, and not as you say never feasible. We have all logged on before to find we have reverted 10 minutes or 30 minutes etc on every shard.
A full shard revert became impossible and not feasible ONCE they ONLY reverted Atlantic and not the other shards. Up until that position was taken and implemented it was entirely feasible. That decision instantly created an 'Us and Them' situation which is very clear by the posts on this thread, where those who have LOST stuff (not just Atlantic players) and those who have NOT lost stuff now argue the merits of a full shard revert. It instantly created the fall out problem of every transfer conducted over 12 days becoming a major issue, dupes of items/characters, lost characters as well as for those on Atlantic the loss of 12 days play. (Hence a seriously bad decision, made after a corrupted data base was discovered).
Had we all woken up yesterday morning, and I mean ALL, every shard, to find we were missing 12 days, and the announcement had been:
"Due to issues beyond our control, I am sorry to have to inform PLAYERS that we had to revert to a Dec 5, 2012 7:00 am EST back up. We have tried to retrieve a more current back up but we have been unable to do so due to corruption issues. Each active
account will receive- "A blessed pair of boots with 'I survived the 2012 time warp' +2 MR, 140 luck, 10% LMC 5% SSI" as some small means of compensation for this unfortunate rollback."
No one would have been any the wiser and it would have been a shock to all and everyone would be in the same boat, and everyone would have had to support each other and assist each other to get stuff back. Everyone would have lost 12 days, that would have to be 'redone'. The issues of characters disappearing, hundreds of items that players worked hard to get, some over many years, just going poof would not have happened. Instead we have this mess where some players have to carry the whole burden of losses while others say 'I have my stuff, why should I lose it now'.
If they are able to replace items that people lost then that will just open another HUGE can of worms as if they can now 'find' lost items & characters then any who have lost before will have a justifiable claim to recover lost things prior to this collapse.
Everyone keeps saying this just affected Atlantic players, in fact even in their announcement the Devs single out the problem as being solely to Atlantic players. Sheesh they even only offer to compensate Atlantic players. What about all the players affected from other shards? What about them?
Atlantic is the main hub shard for pretty much the majority of transfers, it is like the super market for all shards. People are coming and going from other shards daily to trade. Since the advent of the shard shields the amount of stuff moving across shards on any given day is huge. There is a whole economy out there using shard shields as a monthly run around with goods being carted to and from by players on all shards. Just on my shard we have 3 players who I KNOW of (there could be a lot more) who offer transfer services of items every month. The person who moved my stuff also moved stuff for 3 others. That is 4 Oceania players affected just by ONE transfer from Oceania to Atlantic. So just because their may only be a couple of hundred transfers it doesn't mean only a couple of hundred people are affected. It could be a thousand. You don't know.
I guess Petra, it IS ok, as long as you're not one of the couple of hundred, as you put it. Sucks if you are tho, you just became the scapegoats for the 2012 Time Warp, but that's ok as long as the majority lost nothing. The other couple of hundred (or thousand) are expendable and don't deserve equal protection as players? Sheesh, they get a months game play (along with a hundreds of others who lost nothing but just happen to have logged onto Atlantic in whatever period they are going to use).
The devs have caused this 'us and them' situation, it was a very knee jerk reaction to a big problem and has now created even more of a problem and worse, a divisive UO, singling out some players to lose while others go about their merry way.
They slapped the horse on the bum when they just reverted Atlantic, so now it is impossible to do what should have been done to start with.