Missing NPC's for just one account

[Aescleal]

Hi folks,

We have twice encountered an issue where a player enters Elwynn Forrest and there are no NPC's, and neither can that player see the other players on the server until they leave Elwynn Forrest.

Has anybody else had or heard of this issue? Upon leaving Elwynn Forrest, let's say entering Stormwind, other players and all NPC's are immediately visible. But if you were to turn around and enter Elwynn Forrest once again, shush... all players and npc's are invisible again (just to that one player character).

Could this be a DB issue? Or could it be a client side issue?

If we log in as another character on the same account, the problem is gone. So, thus far, we've created new characters and started over, thinking it was unfixable.

Maybe there is a character cache file that can be deleted, or maybe something in the DB can be changed or removed in order to fix it? I've tried deleting the player/character folders from the client-side WTF folder. But that didn't fix anything.

Oh, I should add. It is the same no matter what computer the player logs in from, so the problem follows them from computer to computer (sounds more and more like DB).

Any thoughts on the matter are appreciated.

Aescleal.

 

[Aescleal]

I don't know if this is the same issue or different. I also noticed (same area "Elwynn Forest) that my GM character sees this area fine as long as [.gm on]. But if I [.gm off], all npc/mobs vanish. When I turn GM back on, they all re-appear.

What would be causing this?

 

[Jack Sparrow]

SMSG_UPDATE_OBJECT failing

 

[Aescleal]

SOLVED: I believe I found the culprit.
In database: emucoach|Tables|characters, look for [playerFlags]. These characters had an outrageously high number in that field. When playerFlags on that character is reset to 0 the issues went away and it seems no ill effect yet...

Aescleal

 

[Aescleal]

SMSG_UPDATE_OBJECT failing

Hi Jack Sparrow. Thanks. What does that mean though?

 

[Jack Sparrow]

Every spawnable thing in world is an object, SMSG_UPDATE_OBJECT is the packet that displays these creatures, players, gameobject to the client. This packet handles spawning, despawning, and updating these creatures to the client.

It is the largest packet that is sent, it holds values like Health, Level, position, GUID, transport position, etc. When it fails, the client will not be able to see anything. In your case it seems the player flags got messed up (which is included in the player part of this packet)

 

[Aescleal]

Wow, okay! I like that... I mean not that I broke, but that what you said makes sense to me (surprise to me). So in this case, is it safe (DB) to reset the data in [playerFlags]?
I'm really starting to enjoy finding things like this.

 

[Jack Sparrow]

Yeah of course, playerFlags is a bitwise storage, so it seems odd it got messed up for you, I think it's fixed in later versions of cata repack though.

 

[Aescleal]

Thanks Jack Sparrow.