Now restoring codes for deleted donor accounts
Posted: 11 Nov 2013, 22:11
As many of you know, every few months we prune the server's inactive accounts and characters. Anything of 10 months that has gone unplayed is removed from the server so that we can keep our database performing well and remaining clean. Last January, we rolled our donor preservation allowing donors to opt-in to a service that would protect them from this deletion process. All new donors were immediately flagged automatically.
However, we continue to get ~10 people every month asking us where their accounts went, and if they could have their donor codes refunded. For a while we have continuously turned these people down due to the fact our records primarily in the mid-2011 and below range were exceptionally bad, making it very difficult to fully prove legit donorship. While I doubt many of these cases were ever fake and attempts to get free codes, we stuck with out policy. This resulting in many players simply never returning to the server, which is simply not beneficial to either party.
This has been going on for a long time now and every single time I have to respond to these emails I feel guilty. I feel terrible that players lost what they worked on for many years, and had to take time off due to work, school, military, or even personal issues. While we cannot restore the characters lost, I now want to extend an ability for them to rejoin the server with having access to donor characters they paid for.
Therefore, if players can provide adequate proof (email records mainly) that their accounts have been deleted while they had donor access, I will be granting them new codes to use to refund these items/donorship that they donated for. I hope this policy change will be beneficial to the community, as well as path an easier way for players to return from being gone in the past.
Thanks,
Henry.
However, we continue to get ~10 people every month asking us where their accounts went, and if they could have their donor codes refunded. For a while we have continuously turned these people down due to the fact our records primarily in the mid-2011 and below range were exceptionally bad, making it very difficult to fully prove legit donorship. While I doubt many of these cases were ever fake and attempts to get free codes, we stuck with out policy. This resulting in many players simply never returning to the server, which is simply not beneficial to either party.
This has been going on for a long time now and every single time I have to respond to these emails I feel guilty. I feel terrible that players lost what they worked on for many years, and had to take time off due to work, school, military, or even personal issues. While we cannot restore the characters lost, I now want to extend an ability for them to rejoin the server with having access to donor characters they paid for.
Therefore, if players can provide adequate proof (email records mainly) that their accounts have been deleted while they had donor access, I will be granting them new codes to use to refund these items/donorship that they donated for. I hope this policy change will be beneficial to the community, as well as path an easier way for players to return from being gone in the past.
Thanks,
Henry.