[Molly]

We have two items that are unique, in the sense that only one player can have it at the same time. One is the sword Excalibur.

And our way of handling that is, that you only have the sword on loan from King Arthur. You cannot put the sword in a container, give it to someone else, or drop it in a crash proof house. When you log out, the sword returns to the stone from whence it came. Only players that complete a rather elaborate 10-step quest of helping King Arthur can draw the sword from the stone, but quite a few did complete that quest. So the first of those who logs on and finds the Excalibur available, rushes there to grab it, and keeps it as long as he/she is logged on.

(On a side note, it took some rather advanced scripting, to ensure that they were no duplicates in the game, while on the other hand not having the sword go poof, if you lost link for a few seconds, which happens pretty often and is rather irritating. The scropt solution I set up myself didn't work, but eventually I got some help from some players, who are better at scripting than I am, and we ended up with a bug free, but very long script).

The other item is the Blue Band of Victory, the ultimate PK reward, which you get by challenging the holder and defeating him. If the holder doesn't accept the challenge, the BBV is forfeited. But the holder has to be on line to be challenged, so we've been in the position that the original poster describes a couple of times. The solution, if we have the e-mail to that player - (which we usually do, since only long time players have a chance of winning that PK fight) - is to mail them, and give them an ultimatum: Unless they show up within a month's time to defend the BBV, it will be forfeited and we remove it from the player's inventory file, and put it back in circulation. If we don't have an e-mail adress, we send them a mud mail in game. At least then they have been warned, before we grab it. And they always have the option to challenge for it, if and when they return.

The last time this happened, the holder was in the US army, and disappeared from sight for almost 2 years, while he was in Afganistan. We tried to mail him, but didn't get any response, since he wasn't allowed to by the army. But we actually went lucky, since he happened to return from the deployment before the time limit went out, promptly showed up, and defended the BBV. (Since he naturally was a bit ring rusty after being away from the game for such a long time, he lost the first fight, but managed to win it back in a re-match...)