Character wipe after server restart

[crazyblue50 0]

Yeah me and my friend spent about 6 hours on characters together and before we got to the northwest airfield the server restarted without warning or crashed. And I logged back in 5 mins later to see me a fresh spawn on the coast and tried to relog on to other servers and it was the same. But my friend spawned in just fine with all of his loot and stuff. So yeah wtf happened there?

[MuchHigher 65]

I have noticed sometimes after rejoining a server that just restarted I sometimes will be a fresh spawn.  Normally I just Exit as soon as I see Test 1 2 3 and then rejoin and I have all my stuff again.