Server Merges, Lucan D’Lere and Performance

I’ve finally managed to escape Charles de Gaulle airport which completely ground to a halt due to 3 inches (7cm) of snow. Meanwhile, our SAS pilot made a perfect landing in near whiteout conditions with heavy snowfall on a runway and at an airport positively blanketed with snow. Ah… Copenhagen… 😉

Anyway, ’bout those server merges…

Read My Lips: No New Hardware

So about two months ago, we received the unfortunate news that there was no room in the SOE budget for new Oracle servers to upgrade all of the EQ2 hardware. You’ll recall that Antonia Bayle and Nagafen were moved to new hardware and lag was completely eliminated, even under heavy Warfields use. While Rothgar has worked very hard with his team to remove as many lag-introducing bottlenecks as possible from the EQ2 client and server code, there’s just no substitute for a hardware upgrade.

So now that the U.S. Server Merges have concluded, we’ve been curious if we would see performance degradation. Right now, the merged servers are only running on the “target” servers. For instance, on the Kithicor -> Butcherblock server, all players are currently on Butcherblock hardware and the Kithicor hardware is idle. Rothgar has this update:

[About performance] its hard to tell right now because the old hardware hasn’t been added to the pool of servers yet. So I’d predict worse performance while we’re down a bunch of machines. That process normally takes about a day or two after we have decommissioned the old server. So hopefully you’ll notice an improvement soon.

As we’ve reported, European server merges are still expected early next year. We’ve been told that database upgrades must be performed first, and I have a feeling Rothgar may be on a plane with a suitcase full of hard drives sometime in the future to accomplish that. Copenhagen is nice in April. 😉

Lucan D’Lere

Rothgar is also considering solutions for servers such as Lucan D’Lere which is a Roleplay server, but the only other Roleplay server (Antonia Bayle) is too large to accept a merger. Actually, a player (Galibier@Lucan DLere) made some bold claims about the concurrent online population of Lucan D’Lere:

Why have people accepted my numbers? Because here and on flames when I call something a fact, it is just that a fact. My rl job requires me to cite facts and places a requirement on me for integrity. If I. Cite something as a fact and it proves not to be so, I get fired and potentially get jailed.

which Rothgar declared total bunk:

Good thing you aren’t providing these numbers as part of your real job or you’d have to have someone come bail you out!

I’m not sure where they came up with that number and why people took it as truth, but its nowhere near accurate. We will definitely look at merge possibilities for LDL early next year but don’t have any decisions made as of yet.

Anyway, it may come down to a vote or perhaps free server transfer tokens for those players who really want to transfer to Antonia Bayle, and then all other players get moved to a non-RP server. Nothing has been announced though, so some other solution may be considered.

Trickier still are the LiveGamer servers such as Bazaar and Vox.  Many of those players did not buy platinum and other items from other players using the LG market, but some did.

Looking Ahead

We are hopeful that after DC Universe Online and Planetside Next launch this spring that attention can be returned to getting new hardware for the EQ2 servers. We’re glad to see Autenil back on EQ2 now that Clone Wars Adventures has launched, and look forward to other EQ2 devs who have been diverted to other projects returning to the EQ2 fold. We need you guys!