Pulled the plug? :P

[Tzael]

What do you expect? A shard move is not a patch or something, such a complicated thing takes time. I would not expect the server up before new year.

A number of us offered advice and suggestions on how to make the move as simple as possible. Unfortunately it seems our advice has fallen on deaf ears because what we've got is a convoluted transfer process that risks the integrity of the entire solution.

All too often I get the impression that decisions are made without any discussion or debate with those who know what is involved. If someone with reasonable technical experience had been involved then I can guarantee that the notion of transferring individual characters would never have been entertained.

[Ishar Xhaan]

Shard going down without any prior notice
Shard closed when they said first said they would count, and ask everyone by email
Shard closed without noticing people via emails
Shard going down without this famous count
Shard going down before a weekend
that PME/EII is really amateurish in all acts/decisions
Now let me ask , how will they ask people if they want to be transfered as it will be illegal for them to use our emails for this ? ( as I don't think GN will do that, after all it is not their problem anymore )
Now what kind of copy are we having if that was really the last day on Unity servers ?
Are we copying EVERYTHING so we can keep our buggy shard and slow database and all the problems we had in past due to different shard ?
After all that mess you really think there are enough people to open an other shard in NA ( as far as i could tell 100 people online has not happened for monthes , 50 was a high peek last few weeks ) ?

[Garfonso]

The game-database structure of unity is exactly the same as the one of the NA shards (if you don't look at the few last patches we didn't get)...

the only thing that is different is the account-database, which TG altered, but never told GN what they did and so on... GN still has to original one from AE.

At least that is what GN says/said.

@Tzael: How did you prove your "reasonable technical experience", so that they would listen to your advice?
Would you listen to advice of anybody you never met, know nothing of, and you don't know if he knows anything on the matter at all?

There are many people on this boards, that seem to know exactly how HZ works... at least they want me to believe that... I don't know how much of what they say is true... and I don't really care. But how should EI be sure what is a good advice and what is just nonesense of somebody that wants to be important?

In my eyes it's better to not listen to advice, if you don't know if it's good or not.

[Knud]

A short message from the responsible people to the comunity would be nice,
this silence is no fun...

[Tzael]

@Tzael: How did you prove your "reasonable technical experience", so that they would listen to your advice?
Would you listen to advice of anybody you never met, know nothing of, and you don't know if he knows anything on the matter at all?

Hi Garfonso,

My reference to reasonable technical experience is not experience which is founded within deep knowledge of the inner workings of Horizons specifically, but with reasonably sound knowledge of the general principles behind generic server setup and administration.

What has been proposed is a potentially complex procedure of setting up a fresh world, possibly with or without old events enabled - we don't know yet... Either way, the concept as we all understand it is to 'inject' our characters into this new world, and hopefully tie up our plots as well.

What would be much more advisable would be to recreate the Unity setup in both hardware and software as closely as possible, and then restore a copy of the game database. This could then be linked to a new accounts database and given some time to test the new setup the transfer could be quite painless.

Of course the ideal option would be to offer to take over the hosting operation of Unity in Europe by leaving the servers exactly where they are and taking over the hosting arrangement with Verio.

For all any of us know, maybe these suggestions have been taken on board. I'm only going by the last official statements made by (then) EI employees, and of course their plans may long since have changed from a concept of copying characters over to a full blown transfer of the entire game database.

*twiddles thumbs*

I'm getting antsy...

[Sigi]

Because nobody is telling us anything, we really don't know what they are doing, if they are doing anything at all and if so how they are doing it. So, whatever they do, be it the right way or the wrong way, It totaly stinks. I'm getting very angry.
That's the only certainty atm. No info whatsoever from either side of the ocean, so incredible rude!
Trying to stay civil but it's really giving me a headache.

[awdz]

with reasonably sound knowledge of the general principles behind generic server setup and administration

i really know nothing about server set ups and administration. i was talking about it with someone who seems to; they talked about how for mmorpg's like hz each shard is really a network of servers, not just a single server. each time you port, your information is being transferred from one server to another... after merge, a bunch of new islands appeared because the machines were then available to add to the networks that were the remaining shards. according to this programmer, the network of servers is a far more complicated beast than just setting up and administering a generic server.

he also commented about how he was very impressed by the seamless transitions within horizons compared with other mmorpg's. again, i do not have any knowledge of this but i respect his opinion.

so given that, i expect transfer of a whole shard to be rather complex and quite a challenge given the little (none?) training the current staff has had. i suspect they have considered your suggestions and adopted what they found likely to work. i wish i could be of more help.

[AA0]

That is quite incorrect in some aspects. Horizons servers are many servers strung together yes. New islands didn't pop up because more servers could be plugged in. Istaria is a zoneless world, that might apply to EQ, but not horizons. In horizons servers are given functions, not so much as landmass.

[Spartikus]

Actually even worlds with "zones" like EQ can run many zones per physical server. They just run on diff ports. So for example.. You could run probably 5-10 of your lowest population zones on a single physical box in EQ.. Where as your highest population zones would eaily stress out a single physical box.

I actually wrote a system to dynamically shift zones based on historical server loads over a weekly period. This allows me to run 5-6 physical boxes and serve 10-15 zones easily without having to chase around and make script changes all the time =)

Seamless worlds actually require a lot more overhead from the servers than zones and I kinda like zones.

[Peaches]

This is my first zoneless game and I really do enjoy this set up.

[vahrokh_the_ancient]

each time you port, your information is being transferred from one server to another...

It's not a sure thing, if the arrival is managed by the same server of the starting location, you won't transit (or, it the technology is more primitive, every teleport forces a low level transit - but not because it's needed but for easier management).
I.e. if you go from Dralk to Mahagra you probably still reside on the same server.

he also commented about how he was very impressed by the seamless transitions within horizons compared with other mmorpg's.

Well, some games have / had very marked (and exploitable) boundaries between geographic servers, WoW, Hz and the newest ones don't.
Hz is reconfigurable too, so you can decide what a server can manage, I think they changed that distribution when they put the isles in and they even posted about in a forum thread or was it on IRC?

In horizons servers are given functions, not so much as landmass.

There are both, DB server, authentication server and several geographic servers with "hidden" limits: when a player crosses those boundaries the current server hands the player out to the now pertinent other server.

[Garfonso]

Of course the ideal option would be to offer to take over the hosting operation of Unity in Europe by leaving the servers exactly where they are and taking over the hosting arrangement with Verio.

DANU considered that option, at least he said so in IRC or some forum post... I think it was IRC..

We all don't know what they do... maybe a chat with DANU would be good, again... *sigh*

it's all so silent....

About the servers:
There are some "borders" in istaria, if you cross them, you can be sure to have a major lag... if you run alone, you won't notice much of that, because there are often no mobs arround them (for a good reason), but if you run in a group, then other people will see you running ahead, until your lag is over (and often you are standing waaay behind them on your client)....
I often saw this happening, playing on 2 PCs at the same time with 2 chars in one group.
I don't know if that comes from different servers handling different areas or whatever... but these borders exists. (At least on unity, and you can get in real problems if you cross them in follow-mode....)

[Vlisson]

oh i see my topic about the question what the new owner can tell us got deleted ^^

can i get a reason for it please?

[Garfonso]

THAT is definitively something you should have asked per PN...

[Peaches]

I believe the problem is now resolved. And yes, this should have been done via pm.

[Vlisson]

i thought if something gets deleted or merged you get a pm?

but ok i have been wrong and want to excuse me for my imputation

i thought this thread "pulled the plug" has been already 2 pages with my settings and not only 1

now it has 2 pages because of the merge, i used the search feature but havent looked the first page of this thread

ok sorry

[Fridlekh]

Here's my interpretation of what I've learned about the server/sim side... almost certainly inaccurate, but possibly closer to other references.

The server and simulation are a collection of daemons. These daemons are activated as-needed, and on whichever piece of hardware has the most free resources. This allows for individual hardware node failure without systemic world collapse. Bottom line technology wise is that no particular sector or persistent NPC or whatever is tied to any particular hardware.

So each sector has a controlling daemon. As you travel around the world you register your presence with these sector daemons, activating child daemons if nobody has been there in a while. This produces tangible lag during high-speed travel due to things like community or spawn region managers having to wake up. The 'new server' that was tested off and on on blight woke things up sooner, as well as transmitted the locations of things from a far greater distance (giving the client more time to construct/render them) ... too bad that'll never see the light of day.

I agree with Varokh though about the functions of certain specific tasks being tied to specific hardware ... some things are just impossible or impractical to distribute dynamically.

[Amerelium]

From Luca:

"The only update I can give you at the present moment is that the game database has been succesfully transferred last night."

[Takora Drakan]

Well better than the silence, though the word 'successfully' is the most important one...

[Knud]

Dear EI/PMI,

now that GN stated the transfer of Unity data we would like to have a rough time schedule and/or any information what is going to happen to us....
To ignore our request's will not solve the problem, probably it will just cause adverse reations from the playerbase.
So P L E A S E give us a sign of life, even bad news are better than no news at all.
Best regards,

Knud