"a parcel change that precipitated a cascading prim return"

I got the response below as the resolution to a support ticket..

The history is that something returned _all_ owner-owned objects on a _mainland_ region. All individual-owned parcels were wiped clean (except for litter), all group-owned parcels had all deeded objects deleted. This wasn't just my land - it was every single parcel in the region. Basically, the entire sim was devistated.

LL's explanation for this was that "a parcel change that precipitated a cascading prim return." They also, of course, refused to even talk about a roll back.

I added a support ticket asking just what that meant, since I've never heard the term before. 6 months later, today, I get this:

Does this make sense to anybody? This reeks of BS to me..

Again, this happened to _every_ _parcel_ on a _mainland_ region.

edit: by "owner-owned" I mean the "Owned by parcel owner" number you see in About Land.

yep happened to me once long ago during a self replicating goo attack. Huge chunks of my own build started getting returned when the prim limit was exceeded. TG they now have some systems in place to prevent these attacks now. Sounds like somehow the prim limit was exceeded and stuff got returned.

It does happen unfortunately

Hmmm I have read it 3 times and still doesn't make things clear and evident to me.
The only thing i can see, is if there is multiple parcels on one region that share the same name. the prim count gets shared between 2 parcels of the same name.. this can cause confusion in the system maybe and just start randomly returning prims because it is confused as to the correct amount of prims should be on one parcel. when actually 2 parcels share the same name...
I probably just confused my self there.

lol

It makes perfect sense.

Say you have 2 parcels in one sim.
Parcel A supports 500 prims.
Parcel B supports 1000 prims.
You own both parcels so you have 1500 prims to use in that sim.
You put up a 750 prim house on Parcel A.
On Parcel B you have a forest, a waterfall, and some horses.
You decide you no longer need Parcel B and sell it.
Parcel A is now 250 prims over its limit and prims are returned.

Or even if you sell Parcel B to your alt, there are 2 owners and the prims are no longer shared.

But she said that it happened to each and ever single one of the parcels on that region. With this explaination it would only make sense if there was something like 4 tiny parcels and 1 giant rest parcel and all with the same owner. All the 4 tiny parcels going over the prim limit, and the giant parcel where they took the plus prims from getting a new owner. In that scenario you'ld have returns at least on all the tiny parcels - not on the giant one of course.

If there really were return on ALL parcels, and many different owners were involved, this sounds more like a technical problem and not a normal thing happening when one parcel gets sold.

I saw this happening maybe a year ago on the mainland region Manduca, it was more or less whiped out. One of my friends had 3 parcels there, and LL was called for help. Mia Linden showed up. First it was "we don't do rollbacks on mainland", but after causing some havoc (including here in the forum) they DID a rollback.

Yes... unfortunately it does make sense. Doesn't have to be mainland. Happened to me *twice*. D'oh! </me slaps forehead loudly>

Osprey explained it well.

However, usually it's not ALL the prims... but enough to bring it within the prim allotments. So maybe something else was going on there. But otherwise, it makes sense, I learned the hard way.

A quick related question... last time this happened to me, I had 3 parcels... 2 parcels over prim allotments, one larger parcel under. Was trying to change the group ownership... I couldn't think of a way to avoid getting prims returned. If I changed the larger parcel first, the smaller parcels would return the prims (which is what happened). If I changed one of the smaller parcels first, *that* one would be over allotment, and I'd get prims returned. Maybe I'm just being a bit dense but I couldn't figure out a way to prevent prims from getting returned, while keeping the 3 parcels.

I'd just join the 3 parcels into 1 parcel, change ownership and then split them back the way they were and nothing would get returned.

Of course it depends on the situation too, picking up prims might be faster/easier depending on how many prims the smaller parcels contribute.

I love the "6 months later" part.

As far as I know, the ticket I reopened specifically just to tell support that I am using their responses to train my staff how not to patronise regular customers by sending a pro forma reply without any investigation whatsoever - WEEKS ago - is still open. LOL.

Sorry guys - but you either need more staff, more training or things not to bork up and eat people's money and goodwill.

Yep. It absolutely wasn't just me doing a clumsy change to my land and getting a bunch of stuff returned. It was every parcel in the region - about 15 different land owners. From what the other residends there said afterwards, it all seemed to happen at the same time, too.

I guess I'm just venting because of the way they've totally blown me off through all this. It seems like this is a horribly serious bug and I find it hard to believe that this has only happened to one region (or 2, if what Daniel says happened on Manduca is the same problem) ever yet they just shrugged and chanted "we don't roll back mainland." The leaving the ticket open for 6 months then giving me an answer that doesn't apply to the problem does not help either.

I'm not someone to shout "fix it!!" or "LL sucks" or anything like that - I'm usually pretty pro-LL - but this may be one of the worst customer service experiences I've ever had. It's very disapointing, especially since I have no recourse or any supported way of raising this to a more senior person.


I wondered about that but eventually ruled it out. As near as I could tell, it was _only_ owner-owned objects that were returned. If we'd been gray goo'ed, these should have been the last objects to be returned, not the first ones. On my group-owned land, I couldn't find anything at all missing in the build (as they were set-to-group, not owner-owned). It was really pretty specific.

I wasn't quite understanding your particular problem, obviously. My explanation was just expanding upon the problem you said you'd never heard of, "a parcel change that precipitated a cascading prim return." Although not caused by the same root evil as the griefer attacks that happened in former times, the issue you describe seems like it adds up to the same end result.

As I recalled Lusk was razed a couple of years back through an attack, and was rolled back almost immediately. I'd say the problem here may be complicated by the laggy support system rendering a rollback impossible or at least much more difficult by allowing time to go by and not taking the issue seriously.

It would be more difficult to get a rollback on a sim not owned by one person, of course, but there at least should be circumstances outlined where that can be made possible, and an explanation of how that can be achieved.

D'oh!