As i understood, they have heavy problems with database because of the heritage items and some bugs with references. Probably, the developers need a "frozen" DB to fix the issues. That's why the server is down all the time. IMO
Technically the server is not down all the time. It's been switching from Online for testing and Offline. Judging from the activity, I believe they're trying a lot of different solutions and building/ applying them to test online.
Pretty sure they said that to reset from an unaffected backup would undo too much player time. Like a month or more.
From the Announcements forum: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...6-outage-recovery-update.172569/#post-1347379
Update from Discord: 4:39 PM (US eastern) Ravalox: In a meeting with Chris now ... will be publishing an update here and all the places shortly with the plan!
Discord is an app and a simple website. If you don't mind making a login on it you can enjoy the discourse yourself: SOTA Discord
Update from New Britannia: 800 PM (US eastern) Beaumaris: The game remains offline. Backups are occurring once per month? Oy!
Not once per month on backups. They retain backups for as long as a month. However the issue has apparently been going on longer than a month...
QA server is up with a copy of live for us to check out. https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...tive-phase1-recovery-from-r106-outage.172577/