This was done by our host with no warning. Unfortunately this is the challenge we face with the game being in Alpha. The email from our server host I receieved was:

"The most recent Rust update released by the developers have caused severe performance issues when using old saves. To correct this issue, we will need to wipe the server’s save data folder “myserverdata”. Our control panel will go into maintenance mode at 6:30 EST. During the maintenance, all Rust services will be restarted. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused."

I received this email at about 7PM, when the wipe had already been completed. There is nothing we can do, unfortuantely, but I wanted to give everyone a heads up as to why it happened.

-Rollin37