Plat is up and running.

Prime should take another hour or so.

More updates when I get the info....


GM Solomon

Now...hopefully you see why I didn't want to say anything until I was ready...::grumbles a little::




As I've said recently, there has been a significant amount of lag that was related to our system. Now, don't dance around the May Pole or anything, I've already said we were a cause of the lag before. :P

The lag was introduced when we started overhauling some major major systems to get them ready for "the future"...horses, more intelligent creatures, better combat, creatures that fight each other, etc. The pieces that were required for all these systems to work resulted in a major strain on our processing power, but as much as we tried to tweak the code to make it work, the end result was that we were going to have do something farther up the line than just re-work code.

The result is today's downtime during which we installed some new equipment that basically gave DR a major overhaul in terms of processing power. Many people were able to notice a significant increase in system response.

Unfortunately, during the maintenance, some code that talks from the game to the machine that stores your character's information went wonky. It was either expecting to still be talking to the old machine, or didn't understand who the new machine was. The result was that new characters were disappearing after the player logged out.

In addition, something else with the character database was altered that has now resulted in basically everyone that's logged in since we re-opened to become corrupted.

Luckily, we have a backup that was made right before we shut down this morning, thanks to some great tech guys we have in the back.

SO....the result?

We announced that we were going to be down for 12 hours. We came up a LOT sooner than expected, but some technical problems have resulted in the game coming back down while we fix those problems and restore the game from this morning's backup. When we come back up, everything should be fine and your character will be just as it was whenever you logged out last before we shut down this morning. In addition, much or all of the lag you've had to suffer through SHOULD basically be gone. This doesn't mean that you won't ever see any lag, since the majority of "normal" lag is a result of your ISP or your computer (regardless of how fast your modem or computer is), but it will mean that OUR lag should be wiped out.

Why did we wait before explaining this? First, to make sure it worked. Had it not worked, it would have been a massacre on the boards if I'd said two weeks ago we were shutting down to replace the box DR is on to get rid of the lag. You'd have roasted me alive. ;) Yes, admit it. You know it and I know it.

Instead, we needed to wait until we had enough of a load on the system to see if it actually DID do anything significant. From what I've seen and heard, it has. NOW I feel more comfortable putting my neck on the line and saying "The lag should be gone."

Yes, I'm sadistic and yes I enjoy keeping the suspense built up. I love seeing the random speculation, the guesses, and the crazy suggestions about what we're actually up to. It has nothing to do with me doing my best to piss people off or whatever. Anyone that knows me and has met me SHOULD know better. It's ludicrous to think I have anything but your best interest and the game's best interest at heart. You may not THINK I have your best interests at heart, but how many times did you think you're parents were jerks because they said "no" when you asked them for a pony or something.

Well....I am giving you ponies, so nyah! But I still have to say "no" or have to do things you may not like. It's a fact of life. Deal with it. :)

Anyway, I'll stop ranting now and return you to your normally scheduled DR bashing.

GM Solomon, who was not (nor ever planning to be) bikini waxed....ever ::glares at Riel::

We're back.

::Crosses fingers::

GM Solomon

Last February, I posted to tell you that we had made the decision to defer work on the fifth province in favor of finishing and enhancing the current provinces of Elanthia. I promised myself then I would update you within a year, and after reviewing this post with Solomon and many of my fellow GMs, it's time to follow through with that promise.

We made real strides during 2001 in achieving our (and your) vision of what the four provinces should be. Unless I'm misinterpreting your collective voice on the boards, I think that DR players as well as staff can look back on the last year with great appreciation for just how much was accomplished.

After much thought, we believe there is still more that needs to be done before we declare the current provinces sufficiently complete to turn our attention toward developing an entirely new province. I admit I'm actually a little surprised to find myself feeling that way; I had fully expected that I'd be posting here to tell you that finishing the fifth province would be given top development priority in 2002. But as the year drew to a close, I just couldn't bring myself to feel that the time was right to shift significant resources away from current systems and areas.

I know that players who focus on survival skills (particularly Rangers) were looking forward to P5 as something of a haven. I can't help but feel, though, that we still need to achieve a better balance of areas providing a wide range of survival skills both in and out of town in our existing provinces. In addition, the perfectionist in me wants to see major systems written (or rewritten) before applying them to P5.

I realize the Dwarven and Gor'Tog players among us eagerly anticipated the fifth province as an area of great historical importance, and I know that issue can't really be addressed through developing current provinces. I sincerely apologize for any disappointment this may cause, and hope that some of the other projects we are looking at in 2002 may ease that sting a bit.

We don't make major development decisions in isolation from player wishes, and this particular decision is based on our impression of what you, our customers, see as your priorities as well as what we as developers assess as being important for the gameworld. If we've misjudged in setting these priorities, then we'll certainly reassess them if need be. I'm frankly anticipating that your response will be some degree of disappointment combined with a general sense that you would still prefer to see enhancement of current provinces before moving on to a new one. Perhaps I'm wrong about that. If I am, I know you'll tell me <g>.

I've never regretted coming to these boards and being as straightforward with you as I can within the bounds of my NDA, and I don't regret it now. Whether you approve of this decision or not, I look forward to hearing from you as our customers. Your perspective will certainly be taken into account as we finalize our development priorities for 2002. Thanks for your support over the last year, and I hope we can continue to earn that support in this new year.

Best regards,
SGM Jovah
DragonRealms Product Development Team

Well...this thing is reaching "beast" classification.

Right now, still missing reports from 3 or 4 guilds and even with several two- and three-column tables, it's just a bit short of 10 pages long in Word (Arial, 10pt).

Look for it on Tuesday. :)

Solomon

Danalae and one of the superb techies just found four rooms in Prime that had over 200 of the offending critters "trapped" with no way out. They were just standing around sucking up CPU cycles....a LOT of them.

The offending creatures have been deleted and I am hoping this in itself will have a decent impact on system response time. Danalae is continuing through the area checking to see why the critters were getting stuck in the rooms they were in and we'll probably be turning off the area shortly until we can get the code responsible for the critters re-evaluated.