How to possibly recover items lost in trade

[meatybtz]

As i am sure many of you have experienced and for years so have I... occasionally there is a server side malfunction with trade and your stuff goes poof.... I have lost a tremendious amount of stuff over the years to our friendly trade stealing ghost. Got some items back from GMs but for the most part it was poofed.


So... I recently stumbled on a way towards possible recovery, at least in some situations.

When the trade goes awry and the items dont transact they are in fact stuck in some kind of que, not quite sure what. If you don't zone after such an incendent and you reopen trade with the same person the items can be seen in your trade window (sometimes called the trade window bug where ghost items or items given away become visible again as a ghost of an old transaction.. used to happen to me alot after selling items to a terminal). Now, so your ghost items that never made the transaction are still visible, decline the trade and the ghosts will re-appear in your inventory.. as ghosts... they are not real items but null things that will go away on zone (probably some legacy of one of the old dupe bug fixes.. dunno though I wasnt round then). However in some cases they are your real items because the trade process or whatever process handles trades in the game never transfered them and thus somehow thought the trade never finnished.. but at the moment they are still null items.. even after gettin them back into your inventory. I have found that moving them to the bank and then back to your inventory causes some check to occur and they become real items again. You can now trade them as normal. its not 100% and if you zone ( the person from whom is giving the item, not the receiveing person) then your out of luck because on zone the server seems to "catch-up" and do some garbage collection. At least now you can TRY and recover the items yourself... rather than hoping and praying that the GM will help you get them back. Give it a whorl, its always worth a try. So a rehash below

1. Item Lost in trade, have recieving player zone. If item does not appear.

2. Return to zone where the person giving the item was. Have the person who first tried to give you the item reopen trade and check if they items are ghosts.

3. If Ghosts are present, then have the person who gave the items the first time decline.

4. Check to see if the null items from the ghosts in windows have made it into your inventory. Your not out of the woods yet. Move nulls into the bank and bank window and back out again. They should at this point revert to their proper existance and you saved.

I only have tried this TWICE and it worked because i had three dissapearances in the span of about 30 minutes. First one i zoned and buggerd it. 2nd and 3rd times it worked and I got my items back.


** I brought this over from TECH HELP, it was in the wrong forum rather than wait on a mod to move it to a more suitable location. **

[Leetlover]

Or you can call a GM.

[meatybtz]

yeah, got 2-3+ hours to wait?

I managed to get in line for a GM, still, a week later no items.

Sooooo folks... you can listen to me and try and save yourself some time before going to the GMs, or you can listen to the guy above me....

Your choice.

[Leetlover]

I never wait more then 10minutes for a gm call.

[meatybtz]

Really? Amazing powers you have. Usually takes 2 days or more. I will write you off at this point.

This was posted to help players who play during REAL time and in the REAL game. Sorry but GM in 10 min? An Ark maybe. I was lucky a few times and got an ark in about 30min. Most of the time I wait till I log off, some times that is 2 6 hours. This is not a troll post Sabomoth. Its in game fact. Now if players want to try the trick to fix a problem without having to bother the support staff thats a good thing. Trying to leave something useful to AO players as I leave the game. Something more constructive than waiting for hours for help.

[SF_MileWorf]

I once got like 1000 stacked tokens that did nothing i dunno how that happened but i already had my 2,5k so i deleted the ghost tokens, i would reported it as a bug but i didnt know how the thing happened.

[PhoenixOfAges]

How you class your petition helps. Leaving it as the typical default of question means you'll have a long wait and likely end up with an ARK that can't help you. If you are in a crash loop on another char I generally get helped in about 5-10 min, lost items take longer usually but within 30min is common and I always got a GM. There are petition classes for both.

If what you listed works then cool but I've had problems with ghost items from my bank before.

[LV-62]

Lost item petitions are always handled by a GM, eventually. If you get a answer from an ARK first, they will ask for all the information you can give and then push it up the line to a GM. You can log out at this point if you want. Just leave enough free space in your inventory window in case you get items back.

I have this information from my own experience. Petitions may time out if you log out before they are handled, but once a lost item petition is sent up the line to be handled by a GM it won't time out. The GM can spawn the item(s) in your inventory even if you are logged off.

[darkblayd]

I've had issues like this regarding xfering buff pistols from mule to an alt.

Something to keep in mind is, if you take the item from a bag and place into trade window, DOT NOT place said bag back into bank before the trade is complete. Just a little something i picked up on myself.

(imo losing a pair of ql5 OET's just isn't worth the hassle of going through the petition process, but is still frustrating)

[Etyris]

I never wait more then 10minutes for a gm call.

Sorry, that doesn't cut mustard. I've waited 3+ hours when I'm #_1_ in the queue.

[Egeria]

Thanks a bunch for these steps - helped me just now to recover a bag full of buffing items that would have been very difficul/expensive to replace

[ziliath]

Really? Amazing powers you have. Usually takes 2 days or more. I will write you off at this point.

I have through 6 years as a player never once had a petition take two days (in AO, in certain other games 2 days would be considered incredibly fast). Very rarely has it taken more than a couple of hours.

[Moonleg]

Not long ago I had a GM contact me within ten minutes of petitioning - think I was reporting someone for trying to scam someone of their username/password.

I told him that was the fastest response time I'd ever seen.

Then he offered to put the petition back in the queue. :-(

To an extent it's a matter of luck. GMs are only human, remember that - they're not a bot constantly connected.

[IHaveHugeNick]

I have through 6 years as a player never once had a petition take two days (in AO, in certain other games 2 days would be considered incredibly fast). Very rarely has it taken more than a couple of hours.

I wish i could say the same.