New efforts!

[MWRuger]

Storage is cheap, keeping track of data and keeping data accessible isn't.  I work IT at a Fortune 100 company, and there is lots of data we keep for 5 years, 7 years, 15 years and we occasionally get memos from Office of General Counsel on data we have to ensure gets kept until notified to the contrary. 

Everything else is disposable. 

Data to support deactivated operations, after a time, is deliberately destroyed to ensure corporate resources aren't wasted dealing with it.  All email auto-deletes after 6 months unless manually marked business critical.

I wasn't contending that NCSoft has no trace of it's account records, I'm sure they have lots -- Activating that data to get actionable information out of it to restore people's accounts after two years is another story.

Certainly true. That said I suspect they still have the data. It may no longer be useful to them but to me it seems like a very piece of bait, if you want to sell a ten year old game and it appears that they do wish to do so.

But as I have said as much as i would love to have EVERYTHING back, I'll start from scratch. Also I think that while it may not be able to retrieve that data easily or quickly, it can be done given incentive. i would gladly pay a restoration fee for my accounts to help defray the costs of reactivation.

Shut up and take my money!

[LaughingAlex]

Certainly true. That said I suspect they still have the data. It may no longer be useful to them but to me it seems like a very piece of bait, if you want to sell a ten year old game and it appears that they do wish to do so.

But as I have said as much as i would love to have EVERYTHING back, I'll start from scratch. Also I think that while it may not be able to retrieve that data easily or quickly, it can be done given incentive. i would gladly pay a restoration fee for my accounts to help defray the costs of reactivation.

Shut up and take my money!

I'm of the same mindset.  To me, it's an opportunity either way.  If I get my account back, i'll still need to make a new character for my plans.  If I don't, ok so be it.  I'll start fresh, as it'll have saved me the trouble of renaming and remaking toons as I had plans like that anyways.  I was in the process of remaking a number of characters anyways, and it'd also mean the game economy would be fresh, and  not suffer from a bloated influence supply(that I did take advantage of for costume creation, thing is though i know how to make the costumes I used anyways).

[Thirty-Seven]

Honestly, the idea of NCSoft selling my account data makes me a little uneasy.  I think it'd be safer and easier to not have to worry about integrating past NC data like that into whatever new system gets set up.  I mean, it'll be hard enough to shake the dust off and get all the moving pieces moving again on a new server architecture, let alone having to integrate a (potentially incomplete) database of old account data.

Can you imagine the uproar if say, only accounts created after a certain date were kept and so only like 25% of players were able to have the info retrieved for whatever reason (maybe a shift in encryption or some sort of storage/compression issue)?

Plus, it gives us the added bonus of starting afresh with all of us getting the same fair shake at names and also allowing them to not be forced into using the same servers... they can drop it down to 2 or 3 maybe and get us all playing together, which I think would be great!

[Harpospoke]

Honestly, the idea of NCSoft selling my account data makes me a little uneasy. 

My mortgage account data has been sold twice in 5 years.    :o

[Harpospoke]

Starting to feel like CoH forums in here.......perhaps our game is destined to return!

lol.   I was thinking the same thing.  Sounds like some of the old ideas again.

[Harpospoke]

Nobody, except the IRS maybe, deletes data anymore.

Hee hee...I get it.   8)

[Harpospoke]

I wasn't contending that NCSoft has no trace of it's account records, I'm sure they have lots -- Activating that data to get actionable information out of it to restore people's accounts after two years is another story.

I don't know how they think exactly, but it seems to me knowing that there were people actively wanting to buy the game at shutdown, plus first-hand knowledge of the size of the player base...would cause someone to keep things in good shape.

[LaughingAlex]

I don't know how they think exactly, but it seems to me knowing that there were people actively wanting to buy the game at shutdown, plus first-hand knowledge of the size of the player base...would cause someone to keep things in good shape.

It's considered good practice to keep backups and, even at times, good practice to keep even former employee user accounts intact when it comes to networking in case they come back.  Generally what happens is the accounts are merely deactivated by administrative rule in those cases.  In this case, they'll probably return to us as free but locked accounts until we re-activate them.  I still have my credentials as I never discard that stuff, I am hopeful i'll be able to log back in with them.

[Thirty-Seven]

My mortgage account data has been sold twice in 5 years.    :o

Heh, I'm right there with ya buddy, and I'm not comfortable with THAT either, but it is what it is.

[LaughingAlex]

Heh, I'm right there with ya buddy, and I'm not comfortable with THAT either, but it is what it is.

Imagine a college loan debt that also creates a catch-22 due to companies saying your a criminal because of your debt when you have no record, then when they say they'll make an exception for college loans, turn and decline ya later.  Yeah, I know the feeling.

[SpectaPhantom]

I'd like to have my old account back. They're a lot of memories there. I would imagine they would keep some sort if data. I would think they'd keep it for various reasons, legal reasons maybe? I dunno anything about this sort of thing, I'm just taking a stab.

I wouldn't mind restarting though. Just having a playable game back means much more to me than a silly charater I can remake. I have planned out the 2.0 costumes in Icon should everything work out :).

[MWRuger]

Truly, as always we really won't know until whoever is buying the game reports what is actually available, what's doable, how and when they can do it.

We just don't have enough data to do much more than speculate.

But I would rather be speculating about the game coming back then just mourning and remembering.

[Thirty-Seven]

Speculating is fine by me... it's great fun!

[kiario]

I'd like to have my old account back. They're a lot of memories there. I would imagine they would keep some sort if data. I would think they'd keep it for various reasons, legal reasons maybe? I dunno anything about this sort of thing, I'm just taking a stab.

I wouldn't mind restarting though. Just having a playable game back means much more to me than a silly charater I can remake. I have planned out the 2.0 costumes in Icon should everything work out :).

So is it safe to use ICON for planning costumes for the eventual relaunch? I mean, is it the same as in the complete product?

[Thirty-Seven]

What do you mean "safe"?

It's no more or less safe than it was a month ago.  And there's no way to know for sure what aspects of the costume creator will change, most likely nothing will change from what we had available on Live at shutdown, but who knows?

I would venture to guess that as long as you aren't using elements from i24 that were available on Test in your version of Icon, you should be safe to use those exact costumes when and IF the game relaunches.

But as I've said before, we know little more than a Magic 8 Ball in terms of "sureness" about anything.

[Black Gold]

While we're on the subject of restoring data, would the character XML's from the Titan Sentinel be useful at all?  Is that even a possibility for restoring characters?

[Thirty-Seven]

*Shakes Magic 8 Ball*

It says: "Future foggy, ask again after announcements that may or may not exist come August and then ask the Devs that may or may not own anything what they plan to do about that."

In short, no one knows and no one would be under any obligations to make those work, but, again who knows?

Were I in charge and I was unable to secure account data from NC, I might want to get folks like Codewalker, GuyPerfect and TonyV in the loop to figure if I could make use of those files and also ascertain whether they are untampered and valid.

I assume you mean the ones from Sentinel+, right?

[Black Gold]

Yeah , my crystal ball couldn't come up with anything either.

[Tubbius]

Nobody, except the IRS maybe, deletes data anymore. Storage is way too cheap.

Corporations keep everything they can because you never know when you will need it. At the very least you keep it for seven years or so. Most potential lawsuits would have been filed by then. Most auditors don't generally go back further than 5 years (unless they suspect fraud and can make a case for it).

No idea what good those records would do them, but they don't know either so they keep 'em. Seriously, it is very unlikely they deleted them. How accessible they are is another question. But they kept them, just for marketing if nothing else.

Character data is probably tied to account but stored separately. If you recall, it was a bigish deal when you could log into your account from inside the game. This was something they did only because they wanted to enable in game purchases. Before that, you had to exit the game if you wanted to buy something then apply it your account.

Most likely, they just turned off the game in NCSoft accounts as noted previously. My account still shows Guild Wars and even the promo codes for Guild Wars.It could be something as simple as NCSoft having a master game list and turning one off. All accounts associated with that game will just no longer show it. Remember, they have experience with closing games.

I teach at a community college.  One of the pieces of software I use allows us to access class records going back a couple of years.  Other than that, the college's website has evidence for all my pay stubs and tax records since I started working there in 2003.  However, none of these bits of information show up automatically unless I know where to go looking and what passwords to put in.

If my lil' community college where I work can do such, I'd wager that NCSoft still has everything, albeit deactivated or invisible somehow.

[Thirty-Seven]

Whether they have it or not is one issue, but the other question will be will they be able to make it work with the account system they set up, will it be complete and compatible with the new server setup, and will they even want to use it?

Personally, I'd be tempted to start everyone from scratch with new accounts and brand new wiped servers.  But that's me.