EVE database issue causes thousands of items to go missing
When the EVE Online server booted up today from its scheduled daily hour of downtime, GMs began receiving reports of missing items and disappearing market orders. After some investigation, CCP decided to shut the server down for an extended downtime to get to the bottom of the issue. The problem was eventually traced back to a database script responsible for recycling old itemIDs from trashed items and assigning them to new items. It was found that some new items being created in the database weren't getting IDs and so were becoming lost in the system. Up to 114,000 items may have gone missing during the 75 minutes that the server was up.
Players that were logged in between 11:28 and 12:43 GMT may have discovered items missing if they unstacked items, bought anything on the market, looted anything from a wreck or cargo container, mined any asteroids, unloaded ammo from their guns, deployed structures into space or delivered any industrial jobs. Players that weren't logged in at the time may also have been affected if they had any market buy order activity or "want to buy" contracts filled during that 75 minutes.
CCP has assured players that the impact of the bug was minimal, stating that 114,000 items represents only 0.0071% of the total items. Whether that refers to the total number of items created during the 75 minute up-time period or the total items in EVE is unclear, but it seems the impact of the bug wasn't enough to warrant a server rollback.
The server is now back up and operating normally. Any players that think they may have lost items due to today's database issues are urged to petition the matter in-game and wait for a GM response.
