[Bishop Edward]

I would argue that, Option 2, while seemingly more popular, would be relatively more unfair than Option 3 to older players on the basis that:

No matter what investment in the server that players did or did not make prior to February, Option 2 treats actions taken over the past 7 months differently. For new players, it says: "your actions over the past 7 months are worthy of being recovered" while for older players, it says "your actions over the past 7 months are irrelevant just because you should be happy with what you had before that" etc. Why not treat all actions affected by the server crash most harshly (those which were unrecoverable having happened after the backup) equally?

Thus, I would say that if we wanted to treat new and old players alike - fairly - that Option 3 (or something more similar to it if not exact), would be the better compromise here.