This does not happen 100% of the time, but it’s frequent enough to be absolutely godawful annoying. I’m going to state specific occurrences, because I don’t think I can generalize the problem clearly.
a. I logged the character out at the crafting stations in Claypool. When I logged in the next day, the character was inside Divinity’s Reach at the entrance portal.
I want to point out that that is not even the same zone as where I logged out.
b. Logged the character out in Swamplost Haven in Queensdale. When I logged in the next day, character was in Shaemoor near the entrance to Divinity’s Reach.
c. Logged the character out in Gendarran Fields next to the eastern portal to Harathi Hinterlands. When I logged in later that same day, the character was at the opposite end of the zone, on the bridge to the portal to Lions Arch.
d. Forced logout when trying to zone from Brisban Wildlands to Kessex Hills, due to a “new build” that was ready to install. When I logged back in immediately afterward, the character was in Venlin Vale in the extreme southwest of the zone, a section I didn’t even start exploring until several weeks later. The map between Venlin Vale and the areas of Brisban that I had explored was completely unrevealed, meaning the character didn’t walk there, and could not have waypointed there.
e. Forced logout due to “new build” while trying to zone from Gendarran Fields to Harathi Hinterlands. When I logged back in immediately afterward, character was at the opposite end of the zone on the bridge to LA.
f. Forced logout due to “new build” while trying to zone from Kessex Hills to Gendarran Fields. When I logged back immediately afterward, character was at the zone portal to Claypool on the extreme opposite end of the zone.
g. Logged the character out in Gendarran Fields on Provern Shore next to the pirate encampment. I logged out to the character select screen to answer the phone. When I logged back in, the character was inside Lions Arch.
Again, that’s a different zone. At no point was I logged out of my account, and if someone has been taking surreptitious control of my character by logging in as me, I would expect the client to have booted me to the desktop. It did not.
h. Logged the character out in Gendarran Fields near the Almuten Estate. When I logged in later that evening, the character was in eastern Lornar’s Pass, in a part I had never explored. The map in the area was completely unrevealed, so there was no way I could have foot travelled there from somewhere else, or waypointed there.
And apparently I spawned in mid-air, because the character instantly died of falling damage (no critters or NPCs nearby, no armor damage, and I could hear it happening while I was still staring at the loading screen). I attempted to WP to Trader’s Forum in LA. After six minutes of loading screen, I got an onscreen message that the waypoint was “contested” (how is THAT even possible?), and I was being redirected to the next nearest safe WP. Where was this “next nearest” WP? Even further to the east, in Snowden Drifts, another different zone, in a section I had never previously explored.
I can’t possibly be the only person experiencing this, but I could not find another thread devoted to it. In most instances, the pattern emerges of a character being sent to the opposite side of a zone after a forced logout while zoning, or after logout near a zone portal, but neither of these is an acceptable situation. As for being moved to a different zone, I can’t even begin to guess what is going on there. In several instances, not enough time passed for someone else to hijack the account, and nothing appears to be missing (I would at the very least expect gear or mats to have been sold if someone else was logging into the account). It seems more like the game has an inordinate amount of trouble keeping track of a character’s last location. It shouldn’t be possible to send a character to a locked WP or an area that hasn’t been explored yet. This ridiculousness is really ruining the game for me.