Test Server 22 March 2011

[Grey]

Went over to the test server today for a little bit and tried my hardest to replicate the issues I experience on THF Live server.

The two primary issues at this time are (1) Character lockup / crash on zone and (2) Zone lag when characters zone in.

For the first batch I loaded up 5 of my characters, the 6th is newer then the most recent test server DB dump. I was able to log in all 5 characters at the same time. Two of them were not currently in the vale so I gated both to the vale.
No crashes and zoned extremely fast.

Next I zoned all 5 characters to Eryslia, the Kingdom of Wind.
No issues.
Zoned all 5 to the forest then to the vale. Again no issues.
Next I zoned all 5 characters to Doomfire, The Burning Lands.
This time I noticed it took a few seconds to load into the zone but no client crashes.

I decided to try and zone to several zones at the same time. Three times I zoned characters to zones by them selfs and once again no character crashes.

The next thing I wanted to test was the lag I have experienced in a zone when someone else zones in. Other players on THF have acknowledged this same issue. I went to DS with 2 characters then zoned in the other 3, clicking the statue 5-10 seconds apart.
There was a very slight latency blurp as characters zoned in but nothing like I see on the live server.
I zoned out and in several characters and each time noticed zone lag for a second.
On the live server this lag usually lasts 4-7seconds.

Tomorrow I will make some characters on test and see how I fair with 8 or 10 characters zoning around at the same time.

[materous]

Also keep in mind Grey that there aren't nearly as many people connected to the test server as there are to the live servers, this will indeed impact your results as well, so something that may take just a second or 2 on test, may take much longer on live just due to the larger amount of people connected (in theory anyway)

[Grey]

Which is something I spoke with strait about and was a theory he brought up.

[materous]

haha great minds think alike

[Psizer]

Also, the crash on zone issue is related to frequent world.exe crashes. When world.exe closes unexpectedly it will "disconnect" clients while zoning. I suspect that world.exe crashes are mostly caused by players inadvertently and as such I would expect test server to crash less frequently due to low population stress issues. Which in turn means you could expect to havens no zone server caused zone crashes.
At least that's what I understood the cause to be.

[Grey]

Just need to puzzle out why the population is causing the issues that it appears it is.

[materous]

When world.exe closes unexpectedly it will "disconnect" clients while zoning.

My only thing with this is, shouldn't it effect all instances of the game equally? I run 5 characters, i zone them all, and only 1-2 crash, never all 5, and its not the same ones either. I've had the world.exe crash issue and at that point all 5 will go down at once while zoning, and then it usually kicks me to the char select/login screen.

[Zaria]

Yesterday I had fewer issues with crashing then I normally do. I was doing a lot of zoning due to a ground spawn collection quest. I crashed twice and each time it was when zoning into the Glade. The time would have been around 6pm ET. I am running the SoD client. I don't know if that information helps but hopefully it will.


EDIT: That was on the regular server, not the test server.

[Banderas]

When world.exe closes unexpectedly it will "disconnect" clients while zoning.

My only thing with this is, shouldn't it effect all instances of the game equally? I run 5 characters, i zone them all, and only 1-2 crash, never all 5, and its not the same ones either. I've had the world.exe crash issue and at that point all 5 will go down at once while zoning, and then it usually kicks me to the char select/login screen.

Same scenario here. I run several toons and only some of them freeze/crash when zoning.

Not necessarily always the same toons, and not necessarily on the same system either. Seems random, but I can't point out what it is I might be doing to cause that.

[Lola]

Hello,

my input on the topic on live THF server.
i run 12 toons:
full graphic options = random crash when zoning
high graphic / old models = max 2 crash in 5 hours session

i zone with clicky gate, succor etc...

I meet issues (1toon freeze when other toon zone in sometimes also with a 2 sec lag approx.

Imac 27 i7 8giga SSD hardware for system & eq