Chris

Ultimatum Launch: Server Issues and Streamer Priority

UPDATE: Server stability issue appears fixed. Be careful with your database page sizes, people.

Hey everyone,

It's been a long day but we wanted to put together a few thoughts while we have a moment waiting for our next server fix to build. This launch has been rough, to say the least. In this post, we plan to address both the ongoing technical realm stability issues and the conversation around streamers getting priority in the login queue. We are sorry that this is being addressed so late in the day - we have been giving the server issues absolute priority and haven't had time until now to write up this explanation.

Let's start with the technical issues.

Immediately upon launch of the league, we could see that the queue was running incredibly slowly. At the rate that it was emptying, it'd be at least two hours t... Read more

Extremely Slow Queue Processing

When the Ultimatum league started this morning, it was immediately apparent that the login queue was moving quite slowly. We are investigating this, and so far it appears that the reason is that this league's character migrations (which are a process that runs when a character logs in, to convert it to the new internal version) are much slower than normal.Users are getting in and the game is stable once they are through the queue, but it's going to take a while for the queue to clear and we're very sorry about that. We're acutely aware that a similar problem occurred last league launch and we thought we had resolved it.Queue processing should speed up as more characters are converted, and we are trying to find other solutions that will help in the meantime.Once again, we're very sorry about the delayed start to the league for most users. We will make sure that this never happens again.We will update this thread a... Read more

Extremely Slow Queue Processing

When the Ultimatum league started this morning, it was immediately apparent that the login queue was moving quite slowly. We are investigating this, and so far it appears that the reason is that this league's character migrations (which are a process that runs when a character logs in, to convert it to the new internal version) are much slower than normal.Users are getting in and the game is stable once they are through the queue, but it's going to take a while for the queue to clear and we're very sorry about that. We're acutely aware that a similar problem occurred last league launch and we thought we had resolved it.Queue processing should speed up as more characters are converted, and we are trying to find other solutions that will help in the meantime.Once again, we're very sorry about the delayed start to the league for most users. We will make sure that this never happens again.We will update this thread a... Read more

What's going on with the Servers?

For the last six or so hours, we've been having some quite bad server issues. This manifests in several ways: some players getting disconnected from time to time, various actions serverside timing out, and rarely, items being duplicated or destroyed. This news post explains what we know about the situation and our timelines for fixing it.

This release has seen 11% higher peak player numbers than any previous Path of Exile release, and that would likely be even higher without the server issues. While this would normally be something to celebrate, right now it's causing some big server problems.

Path of Exile's server architecture consists of a central set of database servers and an arbitrarily large pool of game servers. We can add more game servers easily (and have to vary that number constantly to take into account player numbers), but the database servers are much harder to ch... Read more

What's going on with the Servers?

For the last six or so hours, we've been having some quite bad server issues. This manifests in several ways: some players getting disconnected from time to time, various actions serverside timing out, and rarely, items being duplicated or destroyed. This news post explains what we know about the situation and our timelines for fixing it.

This release has seen 11% higher peak player numbers than any previous Path of Exile release, and that would likely be even higher without the server issues. While this would normally be something to celebrate, right now it's causing some big server problems.

Path of Exile's server architecture consists of a central set of database servers and an arbitrarily large pool of game servers. We can add more game servers easily (and have to vary that number constantly to take into account player numbers), but the database servers are much harder to ch... Read more

What's going on with the Servers?

For the last six or so hours, we've been having some quite bad server issues. This manifests in several ways: some players getting disconnected from time to time, various actions serverside timing out, and rarely, items being duplicated or destroyed. This news post explains what we know about the situation and our timelines for fixing it.

This release has seen 11% higher peak player numbers than any previous Path of Exile release, and that would likely be even higher without the server issues. While this would normally be something to celebrate, right now it's causing some big server problems.

Path of Exile's server architecture consists of a central set of database servers and an arbitrarily large pool of game servers. We can add more game servers easily (and have to vary that number constantly to take into account player numbers), but the database servers are much harder to ch... Read more

What's going on with the Servers?

For the last six or so hours, we've been having some quite bad server issues. This manifests in several ways: some players getting disconnected from time to time, various actions serverside timing out, and rarely, items being duplicated or destroyed. This news post explains what we know about the situation and our timelines for fixing it.

This release has seen 11% higher peak player numbers than any previous Path of Exile release, and that would likely be even higher without the server issues. While this would normally be something to celebrate, right now it's causing some big server problems.

Path of Exile's server architecture consists of a central set of database servers and an arbitrarily large pool of game servers. We can add more game servers easily (and have to vary that number constantly to take into account player numbers), but the database servers are much harder to ch... Read more

What's going on with the Servers?

For the last six or so hours, we've been having some quite bad server issues. This manifests in several ways: some players getting disconnected from time to time, various actions serverside timing out, and rarely, items being duplicated or destroyed. This news post explains what we know about the situation and our timelines for fixing it.

This release has seen 11% higher peak player numbers than any previous Path of Exile release, and that would likely be even higher without the server issues. While this would normally be something to celebrate, right now it's causing some big server problems.

Path of Exile's server architecture consists of a central set of database servers and an arbitrarily large pool of game servers. We can add more game servers easily (and have to vary that number constantly to take into account player numbers), but the database servers are much harder to ch... Read more

Before we launch Echoes of the Atlas tomorrow

Hey everyone,

As you know, tomorrow we will release the Echoes of the Atlas expansion. At the moment we're putting the finishing touches on our preparations for the launch.

As you know, 2020 was a difficult year for our team and for the world at large. Echoes of the Atlas is the first expansion we've developed under our new development principles. Our team has worked really hard in an effort to make this expansion one of our best yet.

It has been very helpful t... Read more

Before we launch Echoes of the Atlas tomorrow

Hey everyone,

As you know, tomorrow we will release the Echoes of the Atlas expansion. At the moment we're putting the finishing touches on our preparations for the launch.

As you know, 2020 was a difficult year for our team and for the world at large. Echoes of the Atlas is the first expansion we've developed under our new development principles. Our team has worked really hard in an effort to make this expansion one of our best yet.

It has been very helpful t... Read more

Before we launch Echoes of the Atlas tomorrow

Hey everyone,

As you know, tomorrow we will release the Echoes of the Atlas expansion. At the moment we're putting the finishing touches on our preparations for the launch.

As you know, 2020 was a difficult year for our team and for the world at large. Echoes of the Atlas is the first expansion we've developed under our new development principles. Our team has worked really hard in an effort to make this expansion one of our best yet.

It has been very helpful t... Read more

Before we launch Echoes of the Atlas tomorrow

Hey everyone,

As you know, tomorrow we will release the Echoes of the Atlas expansion. At the moment we're putting the finishing touches on our preparations for the launch.

As you know, 2020 was a difficult year for our team and for the world at large. Echoes of the Atlas is the first expansion we've developed under our new development principles. Our team has worked really hard in an effort to make this expansion one of our best yet.

It has been very helpful t... Read more

Before we launch Echoes of the Atlas tomorrow

Hey everyone,

As you know, tomorrow we will release the Echoes of the Atlas expansion. At the moment we're putting the finishing touches on our preparations for the launch.

As you know, 2020 was a difficult year for our team and for the world at large. Echoes of the Atlas is the first expansion we've developed under our new development principles. Our team has worked really hard in an effort to make this expansion one of our best yet.

It has been very helpful t... Read more

I'm keen for feedback on how we presented the Echoes of the Atlas announcement stream that we did today. It was a massive amount of work for us to put together compared to the way we usually do announcements, but it appears to have gone really well. What did you think about how we presented it? What was good, what was bad? What should we do more of, or try to do differently? We're not so much looking for feedback on the actual expansion/content, but on the livestream itself.

We have to decide whether to do similar livestreams for future announcements. We're worried that smaller releases that are just a challenge league (see Delirium for example) might look underwhelming in comparison and could be disappointing if people turned up expecting an amount of content equivalent to today's announcement. But if it's the right format for revealing information then we'll certainly consider whether the large amount of extra work is worth it.

Thanks again for checking out ... Read more

I'm keen for feedback on how we presented the Echoes of the Atlas announcement stream that we did today. It was a massive amount of work for us to put together compared to the way we usually do announcements, but it appears to have gone really well. What did you think about how we presented it? What was good, what was bad? What should we do more of, or try to do differently? We're not so much looking for feedback on the actual expansion/content, but on the livestream itself.

We have to decide whether to do similar livestreams for future announcements. We're worried that smaller releases that are just a challenge league (see Delirium for example) might look underwhelming in comparison and could be disappointing if people turned up expecting an amount of content equivalent to today's announcement. But if it's the right format for revealing information then we'll certainly consider whether the large amount of extra work is worth it.

Thanks again for checking out ... Read more

Thanks for your feedback, i'll look into adding some more!

hehe

Don't worry, this has been passed along to the people in charge of organizing the prizes. They'll be in contact with you shortly.

While I try to write candidly, I don't normally talk about every motivation that we have when making decisions. I feel that this is a case where it's important that we lift the curtain a bit and explain all the factors that influenced this.

Action RPGs are all about finding items, levelling up characters and accomplishing difficult challenges, all while comparing your progress to your friends and feeling that you found better stuff earlier than they did. The most exciting time for this is right after the launch of a new league, because it comes with a fresh economy to play in. Players arrange time off work, queue to log in right as the league opens, and then push really hard to get established in the league before other people can. The first days or weeks of a new league are by far the most exciting time for ... Read more

While I try to write candidly, I don't normally talk about every motivation that we have when making decisions. I feel that this is a case where it's important that we lift the curtain a bit and explain all the factors that influenced this.

Action RPGs are all about finding items, levelling up characters and accomplishing difficult challenges, all while comparing your progress to your friends and feeling that you found better stuff earlier than they did. The most exciting time for this is right after the launch of a new league, because it comes with a fresh economy to play in. Players arrange time off work, queue to log in right as the league opens, and then push really hard to get established in the league before other people can. The first days or weeks of a new league are by far the most exciting time for ... Read more