Update - Disconnects and Latency Issues

Whether unique item ids exist or not is irrelevant by itself. When I say item IDs, I'm clearly referring to the existence of a check that verifies that there are no duplicates. I assume this check is not in place, or is otherwise not functioning properly, which is the only valid explanation as to why these dupes are occurring (assuming they occur in the way previously described in this thread).

Let me put it to you this way

You have two options:
1) Every time an object comes into existence, you scan every single other object in existence, across hundreds of billions of them, to detect ID collision.
or
2) You don't commit saves until all steps of the save process have completed successfully, and if any point of it fails, you rollback the entire operation.

Which of those is more painful to do hundreds of thousands of times a minute?
Is it the one where you parse terabytes of data over and over and over? Or the one where you don't do anything but what you would normally do, with the added caveat that you do absolutely nothing at all if anything fishy occurred?

As for the transactions... neither of us really know the full specifics of the client-server relationship in this case, nor how structural changes may affect different systems already in place. I'm sure you have more experience with this than I do, but at the end of the day this is all just speculation.

I own a copy of one of their leaked DBs, and actually have the server infrastructure and training to use it, so I'd say I'm ahead of you on that one.

You realize he's a pro DBA, right?

A DBA who manages and specializes in the exact RDBMs they use, who has intimate familiarity with game design and delayed saving due to years of owning a MUD.