I hate the new customer service window

[Dunthor Warsmith]

I2) The "rezz timer" counts down real time. Always was supposed to, any variance from that reality was a bonus and a BUG. (No, really. 3 hours from DEATH not 3 hours logged in. Before they made it 7 real time days it was 24 log in hours before a corpse ROTTED, pre-ShadowRest, and that counted sitting in Chat, on another Toon, on another Server, even at the Character Select Screen. I'd be happy to email you the P-n-P [policies and procedures] section from an old Guide manual if you don't believe me.)

I'm pretty sure that's not current. I couldn't find a patch message on EQLive about it, but I found one from Jan 15, 2003 on Caster's Realm (that's very soon after the EQLive archive starts, doesn't seem unreasonable that it wouldn't be complete):

Fixed ressurection timer that was counting down against the 3 hour limit when player was not logged in.

While not direct, it does imply that rez timers aren't supposed to decline while the player is not logged in.

There's the current edition of the CS Reimbursement policy, which states (originally in bold and italics)

The Resurrection timer for any corpse is 3 hours of online time. Online time includes any time spent on any character on the account in question, any time spent on any character on the account in question, any time spent at the character select screen, or any time spent waiting in chat.

While not explicitly saying it won't decrease while offline, that is the implication.

Another source, from the EQIM information page (which is undoubtedly out-of-date, but more recient than the 24hours online/7days offline rot timer example, which was removed Feb 13, 2002):

Regarding in-game side effects resulting from the use of the EQIM, EverQuest lead designer Rich Waters has this to say:
Being logged into EQ Instant Messenger does not count towards any resurrection timers, corpse timers, and the like. It connects you to the chat server, but isn't connecting you to the game world in any way that would affect your character at all.

I seems to me like the trend for these citations is that the rez timer is only supposed to decrease while the player is logged in in some fashion or another. I won't argue what was true originally - I don't remember and it's not relevant. The question is what is true when Tweedledea's corpse had its bug, which I believe would fall under "current" policy. As far as I can tell, "currently" corpse rez timers are supposed to only count down while the player is "online", which would make his experience a bug.

I don't know if there would've been anything a GM or outsource-mini-GM (since, as far as I know, there are no CS Guides anymore, only ingame-"GM event"-running Guides) could've done to rectify the situation, but it does seem like it was a legitimate bug and not simply a user error/misunderstanding. In my opinion at least, it feels a lot better to hear "Its a bug, but we can't do anything about it" than "Everything is working as it should, so nothing for us to do" (assuming the first is true, of course).

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On a side note, I've seen a thread or two about a player's horse reciently sticking around after they died. The horse never left, even when the player logged out, and the rez timer continued to decline (the player also had issues returning to the zone upon attempting to log back in) - maybe its something related?

[Cantatus]

This could've changed recently, but as far as I know, items can't hold more than 20 charges without being buggy. This used to be a big problem with the tinkered Aqualung. If originally had about 40-50 charges on it, but whenver you zoned, the number on it would drop to one. Offhand, I can't recall any items since then ever having more than 20 charges, but it is possible it has changed.

As far as the corpse thing, I recall logging off countless times when I died and going to bed to get a rez the next day. Honestly, in the 4 1/2 years I played, I can't remember it being any different.

[sumamael]

Well I don't really like the new system because I can not directly talk to a human person.

Example which happened recently:

I got a tell from a guy who is from the same country as me and knew my name from our local EQ messageboard.
He was stuck in a wall in PoN, camping /rewind and /q-ing out didn't work, it was kinda late and no druid or wizard was online from his friends.

The problem was that the guy doesn't know english too well, so he couldn't use the petition window nor tell his problem to the GM in the stuck character room so he asked me to petition for him.

I petitioned and explained exactly what was the problem, who was stuck and why I did petition and that pretty please tell me if they have questions.

Next day I get a reply from a GM through the petition window (not in game tell) telling me to use the stuck char chat room and they understand how frustrating the situation can be that MY character is stuck.

See? No one actually read what I wrote, they just sent a standard reply. The guy was still stuck in the wall the next day he logged on.

I understand that people can be expected to speak english on a decent level if they are playing an MMORPG on a US server, no the issue here is not that the person in question couldn't solve the problem himself.

The isssue here is that they do not read what you send them via the petition window and you can not explain your problem to a GM directly.

If the same thing happened before the petition window thing the problem would have been solved in a few hours.

[Thorvari]

I found the answer to your question about the Froglok stone here

ShadowCross wrote:

Prathun, you fail to answer a pretty important question:
The 255-charges were put on the stone because people did the quest while it was accidently an unlimited charge item. It was put on those at the same time the quest was changed back to giving out the 1-charge item.

Okay, that could be where the confusion is coming from. The explanation I was given was much different:
Changing the proc type and amount on an item has an unusual effect on pre-existing versions in the world.

You're probably aware of what happens to a weapon that has its proc effect set incorrectly. After we correct it, the existing weapons in the world give the message "out of charges" when they fire off and must be swapped by a GM for a working version.
In a similar fashion, an item that's modified from 1 charge to unlimited charges and back to 1 charge will flip to 255 uses. This is unintentional.

I believe a code fix went in recently that allows us to have stacks of items with effects. It also resets any item that's over the maximum charges down to max charges.

-Prathun

[Abazagaroth]

Itek:

You are wrong.

(And no, saying someone is wrong when they are demonstrably incorrect is not a "flame" =P)

Rez timers are 3 hours of *online time* (i.e. that you are logged into your everquest account). Corpses last 7 *real days*. That's the way it works, and they way it has worked for several years now.

It *used* to be 30 minutes - regardless - on corpses of characters under level 6 (maybe up to and including level 6, I can't recall exactly). It *used* to be 3 hours - online or off - on ressurections. It *used* to be 24 hours of online time *or* 3 real days (whichever came first) for corpses to rot I believe. All that was changed sometime in Kunark I believe.

The original manuals don't state anything about the actual times (just looked).

[Anaxo]

So that's what happened to my froglok stone! I was wondering why I left the game at the beginning of July with 236 charges remaining, and came back with none. I thought it was really funny when my illusion item got bugged to 255 after the unlimited charges accidentally went it; guess I should ran around as Zeb's only froglok mage a lot more before the bug was caught.

[Ixiola]

My experience is that resurrections are 3 hour timers on line (and being signed on to your account but not on the character in question count as on line) and 21 hours offline. Or more accurately, you have a total of 3 hours. But it takes 7 hours offline to equal 1 hour on line (hence max of 21 hours if you're completely logged off).

I've only been playing the game since about 2 months before Kunark came out, but this has been true since my cleric was high enough to rez (which is when I started paying attention to this).

I agree, the rez timer seemed messed up to me.