For you non-WoW players, you'll be bored to tears on this post. But for six million World of Warcraft players, the major pre-expansion patch that occurred Tuesday has been nothing short of a bloody car accident.

As a rundown, the patch was to have been completed by 1 p.m. PT.

Nope.

Then it became 5 p.m. PT.

Nope.

Then it was 7 p.m. PT. This one Blizzard achieved, but many players got a HUGE nasty surprise when they logged into their new, improved characters: All their bank bags and banked items were missing.

Then came the flood of game master tickets. Then came the "We're working on it" message.

Five hours later. Still a problem, and no one seems to know quite what's going on except that most high-level players have lost anywhere from a couple hundred to several thousand gold.

Here's GamerAndy's own explanation of what's going on if your bank bags have disappeared and what's supposed to happen to fix it.

Explanation after the jump...

Okay, so here's a quick and dirty explanation of what has happened to your bags, where your items are, and what you should and shouldn't do to fix it.

What Happened

Many players logging in to their characters have had one of several things happen. The most common complaint is that every bag and every bag slot in their banks have disappeared, along with most of the items in those bags.

Others have experienced a similar event, except that all empty bags and slots have also disappered. Full or partially full bags were unaffected.

A smaller amount had bags that were not being used and just sitting in inventory disappear from their inventory.

For the most part, I've noticed that this only affects 14-slot bags, but not ALL 14-slot bags.

Where Are My Items?

Maybe I should call this "Where the *&%# Are My Items" because that's pretty much the overwhelming reaction once a player realizes his stuff is missing.

First, relax. You're probably okay. This is what I've determined from doing a lot of reading and some experimenting.

Your bags have disappeared, but not your items. Your items are in a sort of "no man's land." Think of it as purgatory. They are stuck between your bank and the bags you're carrying.

If you'll notice, when your bags disappeared, any space in your carried bags were filled with items from your bank inventory.

Right now you have a sort of "cache" of items sitting in the ether. If you made space in your carried bags right now and reloged, chances are these missing items would reappear in your carried bags.

Thing is, if you had a lot of items in multiple bags in your bank, you don't have any way to make room in your carried bags.

What Should I Do?

On Wednesday, December 5, at 2 a.m. PT, Blizzard is set to initiate rolling restarts to fix this problem for those who have yet to log in.

However, from very poorly written and generally cryptic posts from Blizzard, it seems that this will not affect you if you have already logged in and found your stuff's gone.

If you have already logged on and found bags and/or items missing, send the GM a ticket in-game or via email at WoWGm@Blizzard.com.

Everyone should keep track of what's going on with this issue by going to WorldofWar.net or to this post on the Blizzard forums.

What Should I *NOT* Do?

I suggest if you have not logged into your character before the 2 a.m. update, DONT! That way if you have experienced the magical disappearing bag situation, you'll be fixed by the update.

If you have found you're missing bag slots, bags, and items, there are several posts circulating around the Net that suggest you remove your WTF or Blizzard_itemsocketing folders. These don't work. You can try, but if you're really experiencing this global phenominon, it will only serve to pass the time.

Blizzard suggests you DO NOT BUY NEW BANK SLOTS. According to the forums, if you buy new slots it cannot guarantee you'll be reimbursed for the cost. They're asking patience, and considering the cost of higher-level slots, I'm willing to take them at their word.

I'd personally also suggest you do not do anything with your inventory so that any subsequent missing items can be tracked down more easily.

If you're missing items from your bags, pretty much that will have to be handled on a person-by-person basis. Knowing how Blizzard is in the past, you'll have to know exactly what's missing, so hopefully you know what had pre-patch.

Hopefully these links and tips will help you find a place of peace in your current state of panic.