The end of mass DC's, double XP weekend, hween event!
Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2017 12:36 am
Within the last hour, we have had 3 incidents of the server freezing up, causing all currently in-game accounts to stay logged in, but preventing anyone from logging in until we forcibly restart the server. Players who lost items or duels on the exact time of the freeze will need to post a ::refund to get their items back - please be as specific as possible and use the given format in the sticky to reclaim your lost items. Please accept our apologies for the trouble!
However, a few minutes ago, a good samaritan came forward to explain to us how he accidentally crashed the server all by himself once he realized he was the cause of it. Now that I'm able to easily and reliably reproduce the freezing up of the server, I have started working on a fix, which will be deployed shortly. What the exact cause was, will be revealed once the update has been deployed - we don't want people with ill intentions to abuse this information.
All indications point toward this kind of mass DC being of the exact same nature as one that happened once several months ago and another time last year. There was one other mass DC during the first hour of our Armadyl GWD event several weeks ago, but that was due to an unrelated bug in the event code which got patched within the hour. Such coding mishaps can happen but are extremely rare, and during that particular issue I have learned about something new to avoid in database-related code.
I really hope - but am honestly quite convinced - that the fix I'm about to deploy will once and for all put an end to mass DC's in PkHonor for good. In the 8 years since I have started working on the piece of trash code that was our server, never has it been truly free of mass DC's. But we always managed to make them occur less and less often. In the past year, we have had about 6 total (of which 3 in the same hour). 1 was caused by event code which we fixed right away, now the cause of the other 5 has been found and a fix underway. Good times!
To compensate for the mass DC's and to celebrate both the end of mass DC's and the 8 year mark since I first started working on PkHonor - 1 November 2009 - we're hitting our community up with a Double XP weekend starting in:
and ending in:
Ironman Mode players can participate in this. However, do note that within the next week, we'll be lowering a few XP rates that have become a whole lot easier to train because of the presets.
After that, on 31 October, we'll be releasing our Halloween event! Starting in:
ending in:
However, a few minutes ago, a good samaritan came forward to explain to us how he accidentally crashed the server all by himself once he realized he was the cause of it. Now that I'm able to easily and reliably reproduce the freezing up of the server, I have started working on a fix, which will be deployed shortly. What the exact cause was, will be revealed once the update has been deployed - we don't want people with ill intentions to abuse this information.
All indications point toward this kind of mass DC being of the exact same nature as one that happened once several months ago and another time last year. There was one other mass DC during the first hour of our Armadyl GWD event several weeks ago, but that was due to an unrelated bug in the event code which got patched within the hour. Such coding mishaps can happen but are extremely rare, and during that particular issue I have learned about something new to avoid in database-related code.
I really hope - but am honestly quite convinced - that the fix I'm about to deploy will once and for all put an end to mass DC's in PkHonor for good. In the 8 years since I have started working on the piece of trash code that was our server, never has it been truly free of mass DC's. But we always managed to make them occur less and less often. In the past year, we have had about 6 total (of which 3 in the same hour). 1 was caused by event code which we fixed right away, now the cause of the other 5 has been found and a fix underway. Good times!
To compensate for the mass DC's and to celebrate both the end of mass DC's and the 8 year mark since I first started working on PkHonor - 1 November 2009 - we're hitting our community up with a Double XP weekend starting in:
and ending in:
Ironman Mode players can participate in this. However, do note that within the next week, we'll be lowering a few XP rates that have become a whole lot easier to train because of the presets.
After that, on 31 October, we'll be releasing our Halloween event! Starting in:
ending in:
