GOA, fixing the wrong problem

Oddor

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jan 7, 2004
Messages
34
While introducing Erivoss as a spokesman for GOA was a step in the right direction it didn't do much to solve the actual problem. The problem still persists and since Excalibur is currently down I now have enough time to write my own flame post instead of satisfying my addiction.

The obvious problem here is that there is something wrong with the Excalibur server. It crashes easily when faced with fairly high numbers, at least in the Midgard frontier. While I'll accept the fact that a handful of zones can only handle so many players I believe that the US servers are more populated than Excalibur during prime time and I'm fairly certain that Excalibur is not the only server to see a lot of players gathering in the same frontier. Thus I maintain that the problem lies with GOA and not with Mythic's software.

Last weekend GOA's inability to run the DAoC service smoothly was clearly demonstrated. Excalibur crashed and was down for over 48 hours until it was brought back up on monday morning. Reading GOA's own statement about the crash one can see that a server reboot takes only a couple of hours at most. Thus, it's easy to conclude that there was NO-ONE monitoring the servers during that weekend. DAoC is a game that can be played 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. However, it seems that GOA only provide service 8 hours a day, 5 days a week or about 23% of the time which are also fairly quiet hours compared to evenings.

Erivoss looked promising at the beginning of this week and for a couple of days I was glad to see that we finally had someone to talk to that would talk to us back. However his hands were quickly tied and I don't expect him to reply to this post. Actually, GOA's attitude is quite apparent when reading between the lines from Erivoss' introduction post; he does NOT get paid extra for being on call during evenings and weekends. He DOES, however, get paid for creating and translating GOA-only quests. This sounds like a very wrong order of priority to me and yet another example of GOA's incompetence.

So why don't I simply just put my money where my mouth is and stop paying GOA for this so-called service? I have invested a lot of time creating my characters and levelling them. As have I spent countless hours making friends (and enemies) which I would rather not lose. However, my patience is at an end. If GOA does not get it's act together I will move to the US servers and I will try very hard to convince other players to do the same.

Those reading Barrys World's forums know that I have been in contact with Julie from Mythic regarding GOA's performance during the last 10 days and I will be sending a copy of this post to her.
 

NetNifty

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Dec 23, 2003
Messages
254
Definatly a problem with Excal imo, dunno how many mids or hibs were in mid frontier but im sure there was only around 200 albs and Excal has coped with about 500 or so total before on relic raids without going down, also someone posted a link to a post on camelot-europe.com by GOA saying prydwen successfully coped with 600 or so players.
 

Tilda

Moderator
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5,755
the US servers are by no means perfect and they too crash. Excal is THE most RvR active server in the world, no where else do they get over 1000 (500 albs, 400 mids, 100 hibs) people in the same "zone" (zone being mid frontier). Yes the french/german servers may have more on them, but they are distributed all over the place. Its when you get large concentrations in the same places problems start. Its impossible to provide 100% up time and imho GOA do a good job.
In the last year, bar patches the servers have been down 2-3 days total, thats pretty good imho. Try SWG, where servers come down every day for 3-4 hours and then tell me GOA suck.
Whining about their performance in the last 10 days is hardly reflective of the last 2 years which have been generally trouble free. In the last 10 days excal has been in turmoil as albs pledged to get their relics back and this behavour is also, not reflective of what normally occurs in RvR. IMHO when albs get relics back or get bored, the server will get back to normal and there wont be any crashs.

It realy irritates me having to reply to these sorts of posts as I know if someone dosn't say the other side of the story everybody will start saying "Everybody on FH thinks GOA suck" when thats not true at all, just 99% of people can't be bothered to waste time replying.

Tilda
 

Tilda

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also, credit to them, they have imo got their act together. The server response time has greatly increased and we're getting the regular updates that so many people whined about. What i find odd is that these updates state the obvious ("Server down", "server up now" etc) but some how this pacifys the flock...
 

Oddor

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jan 7, 2004
Messages
34
Yes, I'll gladly give GOA credit for that fact that they're improving - although quite far from having gotten their act together.

However, Tilda, you seem to be replying to the general discontent amongst the players. While I agree with most of that discontent I brought up three distinct points in my post - none of which you commented on:
  • Recent crashes have more to do with GOA than Mythic
  • Servers are left completely unattended 75% of the time they're being used
  • Erivoss' job is not being appreciated by GOA but he's still being manipulated by them
If the above points turn out to be false then I will be the first to complement GOA on doing a great job and I will feel better about subscribing to their service.
 

Ning

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jan 2, 2004
Messages
489
There are 3200 Players on avalon with the same hardware as Excalibur without any crash. I think GOA is aware of the problem on Excalibur and is trying to fix it. It's not a permanant problem (only for 10 days).
 

Dargir

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jan 9, 2004
Messages
40
Tilda said:
the US servers are by no means perfect and they too crash. Excal is THE most RvR active server in the world, no where else do they get over 1000 (500 albs, 400 mids, 100 hibs) people in the same "zone" (zone being mid frontier). Yes the french/german servers may have more on them, but they are distributed all over the place. Its when you get large concentrations in the same places problems start. Its impossible to provide 100% up time and imho GOA do a good job.
In the last year, bar patches the servers have been down 2-3 days total, thats pretty good imho. Try SWG, where servers come down every day for 3-4 hours and then tell me GOA suck.
Whining about their performance in the last 10 days is hardly reflective of the last 2 years which have been generally trouble free. In the last 10 days excal has been in turmoil as albs pledged to get their relics back and this behavour is also, not reflective of what normally occurs in RvR. IMHO when albs get relics back or get bored, the server will get back to normal and there wont be any crashs.

It realy irritates me having to reply to these sorts of posts as I know if someone dosn't say the other side of the story everybody will start saying "Everybody on FH thinks GOA suck" when thats not true at all, just 99% of people can't be bothered to waste time replying.

Tilda


Doubt it was 1000 players in Jamtland when Excalibur crashed.
 

Teknoid

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jan 6, 2004
Messages
66
crashed last night with less then 200 albs in jamt, so much for the "over populating" being the problem.

and for those of you who keep backing up GOA saying that we are causing the problem by all bundling into one area. well please tell me, what is the reason that so many players came onto DAoC. It wasnt so we could all XP char after char, you can do that in UO, EQ, Horizons, it was because of the PvP, and more to the point, RvR. The game was created with the intention and dreams of allowing hundreds/thousands of players gathing into one area, and having loads of fun killing one another. GOA servers struggle to handle 200 players in one area now.

next point, the problem should be minimal. As most of you are aware, there is basically a different server for each zone, and IMHO, when Odins server goes down, it shouldnt effect the rest of the game, that zone should be able to be rebooted, while the rest of the map should play on normally. This is almost the case, when odins goes down, the rest of the realms carry on playing, only for us to then find the entire server farm to be rebooted, and everyone kicked without warning.

GOA/Mythic Fault, not the players.
 

Arindra

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jan 5, 2004
Messages
163
Not too sure where the evidence for 'busiest rvr server in the world' comes from.

Usually people point to lwrp scores on camelot seer. Problem is these has always been bugged to hell because GOA has never been able to produce reliable xml data (if you rightnow them on the subject, the xml, is apparently still in 'beta', seems to have been in 'beta' for the 18 months now ;) ).

GOA lwrp (when it produces any numbers at all) is in fact rp scored in the 7 days leading up to the last rp you scored. Meaning the GOA server numbers are all considerable overestimates.

Someone who is, for instance, on holiday for a fortnight, will still be contributing a full week's lwrp the whole time.

I don't doubt excal is one of the busiest rvr servers, simply becuase it is a fairly busy server in terms of population (though certainly not the busiest). But people sometimes get a little carried away with overstating just how relatively strong excal rvr is.
 

Stranger

Fledgling Freddie
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Dec 27, 2003
Messages
249
Tilda makes rude guesture at you... you're a bad bad girl u know =(
 

Faef

Fledgling Freddie
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Jan 6, 2004
Messages
30
I am pleased that Goa or rather Erivoss is keeping us up to date though this does seem to be tailing off a little. I am also pleased that they have improved response time to server crashes, though like mentioned earlier is it necessary to reset all servers when they do, obviously the authentication server and the actual affected area? They could atleast give a 1 minute warning to save any unwanted problems i.e. mid trades etc.

My concerns that I would like addressed/anwsered are thus:

- I am fairly certain Ive been involved in battles of similiar scale without the server falling over, what has changed to now cause this?

-Stated in the original crash post, the root of the problem was stated as a rare amount of people in the same area. Now that this has happened several times its obviously not 'rare', does this mean that rr forces now need to be restricted in size?

Basicly what Goa are doing to investigate the problem and what are the results of said investigation and if they have reached a stage where they can tells us about a plan of action, if its been formed. At the moment based on past performance with regards of lack of communication I'm starting to feel a little like this is being swept under the carpet.

Summarise:

*I agree with Tilda Goa are doing a good job with server uptime.
*Communication was poor but has improved recently (though this needs to continue and seen to be continued, all about perception).
*Server recovery time has improved significantly.
*Whats the results of the investigation of excalibur over last 10 days
*Whats the plan of action to address the root of the problem i.e. not recovery plan.
 

ibes_aka_nyd

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jan 7, 2004
Messages
44
Teknoid said:
next point, the problem should be minimal. As most of you are aware, there is basically a different server for each zone, and IMHO, when Odins server goes down, it shouldnt effect the rest of the game, that zone should be able to be rebooted, while the rest of the map should play on normally. This is almost the case, when odins goes down, the rest of the realms carry on playing, only for us to then find the entire server farm to be rebooted, and everyone kicked without warning.

i do beleive GOA mentioned that they have found a problems with the network so even if areas are on differents servers, they could affect each others.
******
And if GOA haven't been gr8 in the last few days (coming back from new year), maybe its coz teams were depleted coz of holidays periods.

Doesn't excuse anythink but atl east it could explain.
Also I wouldn't say that other servers (ie US) r better until u've tried them.
 

Twisted

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jan 4, 2004
Messages
51
When you get alot of people all sharing bandwidth , network , and the same server ..... you are going to have problems ... full stop .

The more the people ... the greater the problem .

The awnser is simple .... Limmit populations in zones via a capping system. There could be a number of reasons why Mythic doesnt do this ,

a) it could be that the code , as it stands , will not allow this ... this is most likely as Mythic are building a new RvR and frontier .. maybee to allow this.

b) By capping the numbers they could be open to legal action by trading standards .. for lying in their initial advertising ... ( very unlikely ).

I mean todays hardware simply isnt up to the job of collecting vast numbers of people in a dynamic 3D space .. nor is the network routing system .....

SO ... if you want to improve this ... go spend 10 years in Computer Hardware R+D ..... whining on a forum ... is just giving your self a hand job ....

OR ... if you gonna whine ... please make it funny .. so i can have a laugh .. otherwise this place gonna go the way of barrys ... and well may as well close it now.
 

Asq

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jan 14, 2004
Messages
401
Hoping today's servermaintenance will fix the problem (in part). The thing that still frustrates me beyond belief is the reaction from GOA on questions about problem fixing, stopping servercrashes from happening again and any decent information about their activities. Getting a link to the news (in a Rightnow reply from GOA) is not a satisfactory answer.
 

Glendower

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jan 10, 2004
Messages
51
GOA is nothing but a bunch of unskilled, lazy, incompetent twats.

Keep hoping they will just go under or sell off and get a decent company in there.

When you have total crap performance (regardless of the basis for it), some slight improvement still leaves you with crap. This game is supposed to revolve around relics and RvR. If the system cant handle it, then the game is not functioning.
 

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