Creating character during crash = embarrassing

Created a new character, before I entered starter town I clicked to save character, then after the error message, selected a town and saved. The character select screen appeared, but the new character did not show up, and character select screen was nonresponsive.

After exiting the game, server was unresponsive to login for a while, then went down, and back up.

When I logged in, the new character was present, but when I logged him in, he had no clothes, no skills, no tools, no bag. Nada.