... the DB has keeled over

Only for a couple of minutes..seems intermittent right now..but I wonder how much is traffic from the issues with the system.

Also, I'm wondering about the typical turn around for these things. I knw someone recently mentioned on another post of mine that Bethesda are pretty good. How quick do you expect many of these GFX bugs to be fixed?

Seems like launch day problems with games, supporting websites, and/or servers for said games is becoming
a common occurrence in the gaming industry over the last couple of years. It didn't used to be that way.

Eh. I honestly dont have much faith in Bethesda for bug fixes. Yeh theyll do them quick enough, but they usually end up causing even more problems(Fallout 3). Theyll likely tell SD to get their act together though. They also completely drop a game after release in terms of support, theyll put a few people on patches and get the new guys to make the DLC but they just move on for the most part.

I dont have any experience with previous SD games myself, anyone who was around for Quake Wars have a comment on it?

quake wars was well supported after game release by splash damage, the only thing it didn't have was DLC.
otherwise they listen to the community and fixed any major bugs as quickly as they could as far as i remember. don't worry splash damage wont desert us

Is this why my character has vanished? I hope it is.

Hey, could even be anonymous LOL