EQ1 - Missing Character Issue Post Patch : EQ1 EverQuest 1 News

It was like a nightmare .... finally the red sticks were gone, but my main character, Syncere, was not on my character list! Where was she? My character list was full, stating I had 8 out of 8 characters (didn't I used to have 10?!), but no main? How could this be? Did I delete her by accident? Impossible.

I immediately logged on an alt, starting complaining to my guild mates in Crimson Talon, and petitioned. There was nothing in the knowledge base discussing the problem, at all. What could have caused this? My guild assured me that SOE could get my cleric back, even if she had been erased (how could that have happened, though?)

So I started doing some digging. In EQ2, if your character disappears, it might be because you cancelled Station Access and lost your extra character slots. Since I should have had more character slots than I had today, maybe deleting a character to make room for another would work. Following this train of thought, I deleted a level 3 alt I once made, since she had no gear to speak of and was expendable. And there she was, my cleric, magically appearing at the bottom of my character list.

I logged her on to let my guild know the raid cleric was not gone forever, and almost immediately got a petition from the GM. The response time was under 30 minutes between the time I petitioned and got a personal response -- very nice. I was very gratified that the GM was so responsive to my issue. Turns out this was not just my problem, it was a lot of people's. Many (or all) of those people who had 10 character slots filled up lost two of them as a result of the patch to remove the stick figures.

Some April fools joke, eh?

To resolve this issue, petition, and if you must have your missing character(s) back immediately, you can delete one (or two). For those who cannot delete one or more of their 10 characters to get an important one back, they must wait to have their issue resolved through technical support. Of course, no one should ever have to delete a character as a result of a technical problem (in my case the deletion of a level 3 alt was not a big deal, but that's not the point).

Doing a little more research, I found a thread on the technical support board addressing this issue. It is most likely the result of the patch to remove the stick figures. If you had ten character slots on your EverQuest account, you are probably down to eight, and the ones at the bottom of the list will not appear. I am told that Technical Support is working on a fix for this issue.

I don't know a worse feeling than logging on and having a beloved character mysteriously gone. Luckily, Syncere was just hiding. I do hope that they post something about this in the knowledge base, and not just in the tech support forums.

It is unfortunate that a lighthearted patch for Bristlebane Day ended up being not so funny for a lot of people. Let's hope this gets resolved soon.

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/posts ... _id=109616