Why after 13 years;

[Ezekiel Zane]

is there still no way to protect characters from accidental and/or malicious deletion?

Why isn't there a way to backup a character and his/her inventory?

I just found out my 8 yr old son accidentally deleted a pre-AoS Legendary mage with a 50 million gold mostly un-imbued suit, several artifacts, several veteran rewards, 10 mil in the bank and a near arti quality, un-imbued, jewl set.

I'm pissed.

 

[Babble]

It is a game and UO chars are easy to rebuild.

Or maybe a sign to look for a new game that can restore chars

 

[Tazar]

Sorry for the loss...

This is exactly why I never let a kid play on my account... I'd rather start a new account with an advanced character than risk anything I have built.

 

[Meat Elemental]

Man that really sucks...even on the char selection menu it has the delete button next to the select button, even though you have to confirm the delete i have clicked the delete too many times by accident.

 

[Goodmann]

I suggest putting a ad on craiglist and selling this kid then use that money for the replacement gold, TEACH him a lesson

 

[MalagAste]

OMG I think I would freak out.... someone call child protective services!.... LOL. seriously I would be so mad I'd be shaking...

That would be one of those go to your room and don't come out for a week moments.

God I feel for you. If your on GL maybe I have some things that can help...

 

[Gilthas]

I should note that in some countries, while it's frowned upon, placing a child into indentured servitude isn't illegal, per se...

Sorry for your loss!

 

[Lefty]

Aww, You should be proud of him. His first time Grieffing and he aced it! He will make a great UO Player!

Joking, but kids are kids. Sorry for your loss.

 

[hawkeye_pike]

Damn, that's rough! You must have a clever boy if he figured out your password.

 

[Skrag]

 

[Ezekiel Zane]

Well, I let him out of his room and I had to apologize, because I yelled at him pretty good. He's a sensitive boy, he's his mom's.

Anyway, yep it sucks.

 

[Ezekiel Zane]

Damn, that's rough! You must have a clever boy if he figured out your password.

I've been playing UO with my 9 yr old daughter and my now 8 yr old son for about a year now. He had the password to that account as my daughter has the password to the account she plays. My son played the mage he deleted and my daughter plays a tamer.

Unfortunately, I don't have any throw away characters or accounts that are active. Oh well, aside from the cost and the time to train the new character, the only thing lost which can't be replaced is the PBD. I think I lost his named AoS robe too.

 

[Trebr Drab]

I never used my Vets rewards at first, figuring some day I'd use them all on some really cool stuff.

But one night, my son had a friend over for the night, and that kid got up in the middle of the night and got on UO and used all my vet rewards in trade to get things like an Orc Helm, a pure black robe, and other useless things. And I had explained it to him, not to touch these. I think there was 10 rewards, if I remember right. I was pretty good about watching the kids when they were around for everything, just being responsible and all that. Usually checked on them in the middle of the night when they stayed over. Just one that got away from me.

I banned that kid from using our computers for about a year because he knew better after my talks.

 

[Shinobi]

Man that really sucks...even on the char selection menu it has the delete button next to the select button, even though you have to confirm the delete i have clicked the delete too many times by accident.

Umm...just double-click the char you want to select.

 

[Lady Storm]

Once long ago there was a Dev member who wanted to address this very issue because accidents can and do happen throught no fault of our own. I had hoped it would go futher in line that if accidently deleted all you needed to do was go to a back up of that character from the files stored on our computer. With all the advancement in gaming at the Dev fingertips you would think it should be a simple thing to back up on our computer files that UO has done. I'd take this simple fix over all the gifts they have ever given us.

Kids though we try our best to teach them right and wrong, things can and do get mischievious and do things to parents that shall we say are to show us they can get revenge!

Good friend a few years back was dying and uo was his way to forget chemo pain, his 12 year old who lived with his mom came with her to visit.... while mom and dad were talking, jr sliped in his fathers bedroom and found the password and took the only account he could get access to(I owned the other one and this was going to be put in my name as well at the time).
Jr took gorillas and tamed them and put vulgar names on them and placed them in luna bank.
The account was perma baned, and there was no way UO was going to listen to me to help him get it back. He passed away shortly after. Children do things for reasons, we dont have to like their reasons. You can well imagine jr's anger, he was going to loose his dad.

To error is human ...to forgive is devine..... I think it goes... UO should have a heart and help its players. Its only pixels!

 

[Meat Elemental]

Umm...just double-click the char you want to select.

Wow what a excellent idea! Too bad my 7th char is the one beside the delete button....

 

[Willard]

Wow, That realy stinks! My son is 27 and I won't even let him use my main account---I made him one of his own. Accidents do happen---so it would be nice to have a character back-up feature.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

They won't because it'd make UO one-step closer to WoW, where they can do acct restore.
Yes, accidents happen, and there needs to be a way to do a restore in theses situations, Especially something as important as a character.Plus, they Can't because it'd make sense

 

[Coppelia]

In a lot of game, there's a timer upon character deletion to prevent this thing to happen. But UO's only 13 years old, it's still young, they can't have all these concepts.

 

[I Play UO]

OMG I think I would freak out.... someone call child protective services!.... LOL. seriously I would be so mad I'd be shaking...

That would be one of those go to your room and don't come out for a week moments.

God I feel for you. If your on GL maybe I have some things that can help...

Thank god you're not my mom.

 

[I Play UO]

is there still no way to protect characters from accidental and/or malicious deletion?

Why isn't there a way to backup a character and his/her inventory?

I just found out my 8 yr old son accidentally deleted a pre-AoS Legendary mage with a 50 million gold mostly un-imbued suit, several artifacts, several veteran rewards, 10 mil in the bank and a near arti quality, un-imbued, jewl set.

I'm pissed.

Why did you give your 8 year old son your account info?

 

[WarUltima]

Your son has the true spirit of a UO player.

Dont worry, maybe he will scam you a castle for your x'mas present with **** worth much more than you can imaging.

Hey sorry for the loss dude, but look at the bright side... at least he didnt delete all 7 of your character and remade 7 new character as the following, and this is the immediate screen you will see on your login screen.
Below is your characters on your main shard.

You
Just
Got
Pwnt
Learn
Two
Play

Hmm it can get worse if your kids did it like this... and you cant even punish them.

MryXmas Daddy
WeLuvYou
So Much
Please Please
Be careful
In Fel
XOXOxoxo

jk

 

[Luke Carjacker]

Well, I let him out of his room and I had to apologize, because I yelled at him pretty good. He's a sensitive boy, he's his mom's.

Anyway, yep it sucks.

Wow. I don't have any kids, but I've met them before My reaction to this story is:

1) It's not the kids fault. He's 8. It's an adult's responsibility to limit him from accessing things that they don't want him to. If he gets his hands on a gun, a hot stove or this month's issue of "Big Jugz", it is the adult's fault. If he was given the account info, then to punish him for doing something game related is just placing the blame where it doesn't belong (not on the 8 year old kid, on the adult).

2) It's not the game's fault. I understand, I'd be really distraught if any of my characters got deleted too, but seriously. The login screen does what you instruct it to. Now, if characters are being deleted through error, then I'd be really pissed. Deleted character recovery would be a nice feature, maybe something they could charge for. But login screen mechanics are not to blame.

 

[Kojak]

they have the i think 7 day timer on creating a new character after you delete one - why it isn't the exact opposite is beyond me - you should have to wait 7 days to delete a character instead - after you choose to delete the character, its name should be greyed out in the login screen to show it's pending deletion and that way you could change your mind before the 7 days are up and undelete it

that way even if your account did get hacked, at least they probably couldn't hold it long enough to delete your characters too

the way it is now is incredibly stupid and always has been - i don't know why they don't just change it (fix it in my opinion)

 

[Ezekiel Zane]

Why did you give your 8 year old son your account info?

Well, it was just a simple mistake. Both my kids are pretty bright. They both do well in school. My daughter is top of her class in all subjects.

They have each had access to an account for a year now with no major side effects. Both accounts have houses on the account and they haven't lost anything in the past. Mostly they only play when I'm home but they've become more adventurous as of late and started playing some while I was at work. I travel for work.

Anyways, I showed my son the process to delete a character and he said he remembers, not reading the warning gump, he just clicked yes. He's not the first player to accidentally delete a character I'm sure.

With the ridiculously low cost of storage nowadays, and the relatively low number of active accounts, I don't see that it would be an insurmountable task to put in a way to backup our characters. They already back up the whole shard don't they?

 

[Aibal]

It's what you get for letting an 8 year old play a game unsupervised. Blame yourself, unless your an X generation kid where it's everyone ELSE'S fault. You'll live through it.

 

[Coppelia]

Some UHallers love to play the tough boys and tell you it's your fault, it's the game, it's Felucca baby etc. They just forgot one thing : they are currently licking to the fabric the shoes of armless developers. It's cute, but anyone with a brain not too drown in burger grease and just having a furtive glance at the competitors would have noticed that there needs to be a timer before the deletion actually occurs.

 

[ress me plz]

is there still no way to protect characters from accidental and/or malicious deletion?

Why isn't there a way to backup a character and his/her inventory?

I just found out my 8 yr old son accidentally deleted a pre-AoS Legendary mage with a 50 million gold mostly un-imbued suit, several artifacts, several veteran rewards, 10 mil in the bank and a near arti quality, un-imbued, jewl set.

I'm pissed.

Totaly agree with you, EA plz protect us about accidental delete

 

[Olahorand]

I cannot understand, why this has never been taken seriously by the developers.

There are two things, which matter:
a) the Delete Character button is placed much to accessible on the selection screen. (I remember I reported this even in a former Beta of an Ultima Online client.)
This is crying for mistakes. And who always reads warning gumps, especially if he is in hurry or the gump is not in his natural language?
b) Hacker attacks happen, and those tend not only to clean out stuff from accounts, but sometimes also delete characters.

So there should be a timer, in which a deleted character gets frozen and resurrectable. Or it could even be made so:
Delete character, timer applies. During this timer no new character can be created on this slot and no character transfer can be used to this slot.
After the timer is gone, the character could still be available until creation of a new character on that slot. (This would help in case of a not immediatly spotted hacker attack, since a hacker usually would not return after a week or what ever the timer would be to perform the final kill.)
Let be the character recovery during the timer free of charge, while the recovery of a character after the timer run out would be charged as a service.

And for the time until implementing such a fix: allow GMs to perform such recovery of characters on request, since there would be no damage done. (Assuming the record is not immediatly purged from the database, and even then a static backup of this chars information should exist.)

*Salute*
Olahorand

 

[ress me plz]

b) Hacker attacks happen, and those tend not only to clean out stuff from accounts, but sometimes also delete characters.

this

 

[WarUltima]

Anyways just want to add my 2 cents again
Fyi I used to play wow for a years and one time ALL my characters (7) got deleted by my girl friend over a fight because I went out with my old crush during my high school years...

I didn't find out until 2 days later after I finally got back home. Within an hour after I logged on to a fresh created character paged a GM and verified my cd key upon my very next log in I was able to get all my characters back without missing a single gold and item. Maybe this is something UO can adapt. Hell wow gm is even able to track where all your gold went (usually to the hacker's account) and they either remove the portion of gold from his account or they sometimes do not do anything at all. But you WILL get everything back period. (This system in UO however can probably be abused intentionally to "duper legally" especially UO coding has no way to track the transection between characters (or you can simply drop items and checks on the ground and then pick em up to bypass the system record. And even if the hacker got caught he can always said the player was drunk and was dropping 548mill checks at bank for no reason gave away his castle for free (while the conversation was done over the icq) so gms cannot just "punish" him without prove and freely dupe all the items and give back to the original user (who could be part of this GM scam)

 

[Sukyanti]

It probably wouldn't be unfeasibly hard to change the character selection screen.
They've done adjustments when it came to the extra character slots, so it's not something that's outside the realm of possibility. They could move the delete button somewhere else to minimise the chance of accidental deletion, and maybe add an "are you sure you're sure?" safeguard of some kind.

But anything above that would require massive changes to the core of the game.
WoW and other games were coded with stuff like that in mind. UO was coded without a whole lot of cautionary tales to learn from. Hackers, reprisals and spacing out just weren't obvious things for them to consider.

 

[kelmo]

In the kids defense... He just likely did not know. In almost every other game out there you can delete and just start over. Walk the same path and get the same stuff. Same quest= same reward. They don't make games like this anymore.

 

[Lord Frodo]

Wow. I don't have any kids, but I've met them before My reaction to this story is:

1) It's not the kids fault. He's 8. It's an adult's responsibility to limit him from accessing things that they don't want him to. If he gets his hands on a gun, a hot stove or this month's issue of "Big Jugz", it is the adult's fault. If he was given the account info, then to punish him for doing something game related is just placing the blame where it doesn't belong (not on the 8 year old kid, on the adult).

2) It's not the game's fault. I understand, I'd be really distraught if any of my characters got deleted too, but seriously. The login screen does what you instruct it to. Now, if characters are being deleted through error, then I'd be really pissed. Deleted character recovery would be a nice feature, maybe something they could charge for. But login screen mechanics are not to blame.

Well said.
I do have grown kids and grandchildren and at no time were/are they allowed to be on the computer/internet without myself or my wife knowing it. With the way people talk on UO you allow your children to play without you being there, shame on you. There is no way this is your childs fault, you allowed it to happen by your own actions.

 

[Demonous]

most modern day mmos have a character restoration feature, its a shame uo never implemented one, u better believe if a member of the UO dev team had a character deleted on their regular player account, they would find a way to restore it

 

[Nastia Cross]

most modern day mmos have a character restoration feature, its a shame uo never implemented one, u better believe if a member of the UO dev team had a character deleted on their regular player account, they would find a way to restore it

When you think about it, they have already reverted to restore items during that big item loss in Luna. All they would have to do is go into the back up and retrieve the data for your account. Yes it would be a back-up and you would lose a day or so advancement, but I think it would be well worth it.

 

[Babble]

they have the i think 7 day timer on creating a new character after you delete one - why it isn't the exact opposite is beyond me - you should have to wait 7 days to delete a character instead - after you choose to delete the character, its name should be greyed out in the login screen to show it's pending deletion and that way you could change your mind before the 7 days are up and undelete it

that way even if your account did get hacked, at least they probably couldn't hold it long enough to delete your characters too

the way it is now is incredibly stupid and always has been - i don't know why they don't just change it (fix it in my opinion)

The 7 day new char counter comes friom a time when people found it profitable to make new characters take the gold then delete them.
No one accuses UO of being up to date

 

[MalagAste]

Thank god you're not my mom.

I just remember when my son was about 4 or 5 I kept telling him to stop running in the house. I must have told him at least 10 times... I even stopped him a couple of times and told him to find something else to do... but he was back at it in a few min. chasing the cat around and around the house... finally it happened.... he hit my clock... The clock was open and tall and it had 3 "floating" glass shelves on it that housed a very large collection of unicorns... most of them made of glass or china ..... well the shelves all fell and shattered every single one of my unicorns and reduced them to a pile of shards at the bottom of the clock.

All I could do was say "go to your room... don't come back down till your Dad gets home."... and I just stood there for awhile staring at the shattered remains... I think it took a day or so before I finally just figured it was bound to happen at some point and there wasn't any use in getting all upset about it.

I've never collected another unicorn to this day though... that's been probably 20 years or so...

I had a friend of my son's use my first UO reward... he got a cloak on some shard I've never played... then he deleted the character. *sighs*... He was like Oh... I didn't know you wouldn't get another.

As for not letting the kids play UO.... My daughter has never shown any interest at all in UO and gets really whinny if I ask her to work on a skill for me while I go get supper...

My son used to play UO on my main account... but he played on another shard. I wouldn't let him play on mine.

 

[NuSair]

Actually, they CAN recover the character (it has been done for me before), it's a quesiton IF they will.

 

[KoolAidAddict]

In a lot of game, there's a timer upon character deletion to prevent this thing to happen. But UO's only 13 years old, it's still young, they can't have all these concepts.

I like the Guild Wars way.........hafta type in the actual name of the toon before you can "commit" to deletion!