Feldon Client Crashes FIX!
If you have had your fill of “EverQuest2.com has stopped responding” errors, Rothgar seems to have finally gotten to the bottom of this one:
We think we’ve finally tracked down a bug that has been happening for awhile and leading to client crashes and the “EQ2 has stopped responding” problem. I can’t guarantee that this fixes EVERY problem out there, but it certainly fixes the most common crash we’ve been seeing lately.
This should get pushed out with next week’s hotfix along with some performance improvements to public quests!
EQ2 Still Runs Oracle
An inquisitive (or is it snarky) player picked up on an SOE press release regarding the switch from Oracle to EnterpriseDB as the server hardware of choice to power their MMOs. It was suggested that the use of this cheaper hardware explained EQ2’s performance issues. It seems in our search for any news about new hardware upgrades, we’ll grasp at any announcement. Alas, Zoltaroth and Rothgar have nipped the idea in the bud that EQ2’s servers have been upgraded to EDB just yet:
I hate to kill all the cool conspiracy theories, but all EQ2 DBs are still Oracle. The only EQ2 DB changes we have made since launch are hardware upgrades and performance tuning. The article referenced above is likely talking about new / other projects.
Obviously we’ll provide you an update as soon as we hear when existing EQ2 worlds get moved onto brand spanking new Oracle hardware.
Chairspotting
Observant players noticed a much-requested feature had slipped into Wednesday’s update (and thus disappeared in Thursday’s fix). We’re talking about the /sitchair emote. Alas, it was not ready yet. Rothgar gives us the scoop:
Unfortunately the feature wasn’t ready yet and it snuck in on accident. We’re really sorry to have teased you and taken it away, but our ultimate plans for releasing this bit-of-awesome just aren’t complete.
Sitting in chairs is something that has been requested in every developer chat (wow, when’s the last time we had one of those?) and Fan Faire panel. Players have been asking for it a long time.
Why wasn’t it added before? I am going to go out on a limb and guess that developers initially wanted to do it the 100% “right” way which means redesigning every chair to have a center point, a ‘seat height’ value, and adding a proper “sit down” animation to each race. This way everything would line up perfectly. However, players have long since been willing to accept something a lot less polished and putting the onus on us to find the right race/chair combo and positioning that looks “right”. In short: it doesn’t have to be perfect, just do a knee-bend to 50% and we’ll find chairs that we can sit in that don’t look silly. We may also get /sleeping, /faint, and other emotes as ttobey asked for up to 5 emotes players would like to see added for Roleplay purposes.
My understanding is, an emote to “sit” is what’s being added, and it will be up to players to find situations where it works. Just as players have already found ways to make existing emotes do things that no person should ever do to another. 😉 Hey, it makes for interesting screenshots, right?
ok, can you imagine an ogre sitting on a gnome sized chair or a gnome sitting on an ogre one? I imagine some major work will have to be done to get /sitchair working right.
Oracle is a DB backend, not hardware. EnterpriseDB is also a DB backend, which uses the opensource postgreSQL. Many people consider postgreSQL > Oracle (which is also a form of SQL.)
Oracle is also hardware/OS since they purchased Sun Microsystems. I would love to know whats hardware/OS they run…
Kruzzen,
They’re not spending months and months making all chairs and races “work”. It will be up to the player to sidle up to a chair of a suitable size that won’t look ridiculous. 🙂
By Oracle Hardware, do you guys mean Sun servers running Oracle RDBMS software?
Oracle…no wonder SOE perpetually nurse and tune their servers. After 10 years of PL/SQL I seldom look back. 🙂
Those guys have my sympathy, especially on old hardware.
If they do go the route you think they’ll be going with /sitchair, Feldon, I’m hoping they’ll take the time to adjust collision on all chairs with arms and backs to that of stools, so that the arms and backs don’t prevent the player from getting in the seat properly. Even if they don’t edit all existing chairs, I hope they have the foresight to design chairs and sofas this way from this point forward.
It’s so aggravating to have all these wonderful chairs and sofas that are awkward to attempt to use because they’re surrounded by invisible forcefields that prevent us from getting in them!