A
Auriel
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From http://camelot-europe.goa.com/news/newsarticle.php3?id_article=1671
Excalibur crashes - more information
[2004-7-01]
As promised here is the news about the recent crashes on Excalibur.
As you all may or may not know, Albion lost its three strength relics to the Midgardian horde several days ago. The leading figures of Albion swore that they would bring them all back by the weekend and have therefore launched multiple massive attacks to try and regain what they believe is their due.
Over the last few days, hundreds of Albions have been pouring into the Midgard frontier, attacking keeps, harassing the enemy and striving to achieve their goals. The Midgardian forces also consisting of huge armies have valiantly fought them all this time, striving to retake their keeps and attempting to keep the Albion armies at bay. Seeing its two enemies locked in desperate battle, the cunning Hibernians also decided to participate, by sending their forces into the fray.
Eventually, there were so many people in Midgardian territory that the very fabrics of space and time were torn, hurling everyone nearby into an inescapable void of nothingness. Space and time eventually corrected themselves and our brave warriors could once again walk the lands of their fair realms.
***************************************
What happened exactly ?
To explain what happened, you need to understand how each server actually works. Each server (Excalibur, Prydwen etc) is not controlled by a single machine, but rather by a network of different servers each controlling a certain portion of the game, be it a specific series of zones for a realm, dungeons or RvR zones.
Gathering well over one thousand people in one zone (physical server) can overburden it, and can result in a crash. This in turn can result in all those people trying to log in at the same time, which puts extreme stress on the login servers. The login servers can in this process wrongly register an account as already logged in (ghosted accounts), which many players experienced last night. This is easily fixed by a reboot of both servers, which should normally happen automatically.
What will happen now ?
The hardware on the Excalibur server was upgraded recently and is just about top notch. While hardware upgrades may seem like the obvious solution, this is not an area where improvements would make much of a difference.
What we can improve though, is our response-time in the off hours, to make the impact of each crash smaller and reduce the instances of "ghosted accounts". This is something we are working on at the moment, and steps have already been taken that should reduce the downtime greatly. While reviewing the changes in our procedures, we will continue to make changes to improve the response-time to incidents similar to the ones we have seen these last few days.
On behalf of the GOA staff we sincerely apologize for the trouble you have experienced the last few days. Know that your woes and feedback do not go unheard.
Excalibur crashes - more information
[2004-7-01]
As promised here is the news about the recent crashes on Excalibur.
As you all may or may not know, Albion lost its three strength relics to the Midgardian horde several days ago. The leading figures of Albion swore that they would bring them all back by the weekend and have therefore launched multiple massive attacks to try and regain what they believe is their due.
Over the last few days, hundreds of Albions have been pouring into the Midgard frontier, attacking keeps, harassing the enemy and striving to achieve their goals. The Midgardian forces also consisting of huge armies have valiantly fought them all this time, striving to retake their keeps and attempting to keep the Albion armies at bay. Seeing its two enemies locked in desperate battle, the cunning Hibernians also decided to participate, by sending their forces into the fray.
Eventually, there were so many people in Midgardian territory that the very fabrics of space and time were torn, hurling everyone nearby into an inescapable void of nothingness. Space and time eventually corrected themselves and our brave warriors could once again walk the lands of their fair realms.
***************************************
What happened exactly ?
To explain what happened, you need to understand how each server actually works. Each server (Excalibur, Prydwen etc) is not controlled by a single machine, but rather by a network of different servers each controlling a certain portion of the game, be it a specific series of zones for a realm, dungeons or RvR zones.
Gathering well over one thousand people in one zone (physical server) can overburden it, and can result in a crash. This in turn can result in all those people trying to log in at the same time, which puts extreme stress on the login servers. The login servers can in this process wrongly register an account as already logged in (ghosted accounts), which many players experienced last night. This is easily fixed by a reboot of both servers, which should normally happen automatically.
What will happen now ?
The hardware on the Excalibur server was upgraded recently and is just about top notch. While hardware upgrades may seem like the obvious solution, this is not an area where improvements would make much of a difference.
What we can improve though, is our response-time in the off hours, to make the impact of each crash smaller and reduce the instances of "ghosted accounts". This is something we are working on at the moment, and steps have already been taken that should reduce the downtime greatly. While reviewing the changes in our procedures, we will continue to make changes to improve the response-time to incidents similar to the ones we have seen these last few days.
On behalf of the GOA staff we sincerely apologize for the trouble you have experienced the last few days. Know that your woes and feedback do not go unheard.
