if anyone has played Ultima Online then they will know what I am talking about here.
The Ultima Online way of saving data is to have the server take a couple of seconds out of its running time to do a \"world save\" every 10 minutes or so.
what I mean is... that once every 10 minutes (or however ofter the server likes) the server does a \"world save\", where it will simply pause everything for about 2 seconds while it saves (obviously the faster the server then the quicker the save *slow servers in ultima online sometimes took 7 seconds*)... then the server keeps going as usual till the next save.
then if there is a link dead or the server goes down for any reason, you will just start back at the last save point.
Obviously this world save would have to save progression points and XP and practically everything.
the server could have a backlog of saves in which it could revert back to, should something go seriously wrong during a save or something.
atleast then you would know that if you lost 10 minutes worth of skill gain or something, everybody else has lost it too lol.
Methos