Ahh, scariest 2 hours of my life!

[Lilosh]

Saves every time you loot - that I know for sure. Server crashed and I was ML. I kept all my exp but my husband and others in the group... muahahaha! They were *not* happy.

Hahahahahahaha. Gratz.


-Lilosh

[Dunthor Warsmith]

I've been in a handful of crashs lately (grrr...) and all I have to say is that "Character_01 saves" does NOT mean you are safe up until that point

In the last two crashs I was on for, I was restored to a point moments after my last zone - on time that was a few minutes, the other that was ~2hours prior, with numerous lootings/trades/food consumption, all of which cause "Dunthor saves." to be echoed to my chat screen.
Another time, long ago, GFay was crashing every few minutes (zone, not server). I did the same tailoring combines (tattered armor? I think) over 5 times, and if I remember right, you get a character saved after closing a tradeskill container after doing something in it (ie walk up to forge, do smithing combines, close forge, save)

It really caused me to wonder what that Character saves bit means. Anyone remember back when they did the lvl 1 wipe on live servers? They said you had to actually DO something, like kill a mob, to change the timestamp and save the char - zoning wouldn't do it. Things like kill a mob cause the "Character saves" type response, zoning doesn't. So they're clearly two different mechanisms of "saving" - my question is what does each do.

My impression, based on very little, is:
Zoning - a "hard save". Copies your basic data (equipment, inventory, xp) into permanant storage (ie hard drive). Some how manages to NOT flick the little "last date saved" flag though.

"Character saves" - some form of soft save. Maybe converting the "pile of changes" into a new "base" form? [explanation of what I mean - look at Microsoft Word, the wordprocessing software. You open a previously saved word document, make changes, and hit "save" again. It doesn't save the document in its current form - what it does instead is a 'quick save' - it save the *original* document and a *list of changes made* to the document. That is why they recommend to do a Save As... periodically (I think Save will do it too infrequently, but not sure), because Save As..., even to the same name/location, will cause it to generate a new edition of the document - just the document, not a base with changes. So I'm wondering if that's what the "Character saves." is - changing the base version with changes and creating a new base version.] It seems to fit with the concept of "saving", but would explain my experiences with having numerous "Character saves." data be lost on crash.

Anyhow, just my crazy thoughts.