EXCELSIOR DAILY

[+Colibri]

Grand auction this weekend!

The first auction will start on Sunday at 3AM shard time, that's *Saturday* 9PM eastern, 6PM pacific.
The second auction will start on Sunday at 9PM shard time, that's Sunday 3PM eastern and Noon pacific.

Many nice items are going to be sold, deeds, deco, and "staff zombies"
You will be able to preview the items by going through the green gate at the auction hall.

And btw, new milestone will be announced next week

[+Colibri]

Seems like almost every day now, there has been a help request regarding an item disappearing (sometimes none for weeks but sometimes more than one in a single day).

Until recently, I have investigated into every one of these issues, which could have been bugs. I haven't kept track, but the number is definitely over 100, possibly 200 or more. In none of the cases was I able to conclude that this was a server issue, usually it's one of the following:
- items not insured
- items insured, but not enough gold in the bank, or auto-renew insurance turned off
- got back to the corpse fast enough, but monsters have already looted from it
- item was not locked down
- item was misplaced (sometimes found before I started the investigation)
- item was added to the toolhouse, or trashed
- pets were not fed
- AFK in a public house and monster(s) came by
- item was there but didn't show to the player, summoning ball used right before logging out (most likely a razor issue)

Keep in mind it usually takes anywhere between 30-60 minutes, can be several hours, takes lots of concentration and so far, nothing has turned up. So these were countless hours spent to find something that's not likely to be there.
Keep in mind, all those floor and wall tiles at the town center are all regular items. And none of them has vanished since the town center has been put up i think 3 years ago. Also, there *is* the possibility of bit rot, but that would mean that items could change shape or color (very seldom) but still, in the past 4 years and 9 months since the shard was up, I haven't yet seen an item do that by itself.

Therefor, I have decided that I will no longer investigate these things.


RAZOR
This came up a few times, it seems that razor sometimes doesn't relay the data between the server and the client correctly. I've seen it myself, for example, when you drop an item somewhere, it no longer is there (usually solved by logging out and back in). Or once, the same "World save complete" message was displayed to me twice. Also, there has been a couple of times when a player claimed to have stabled their bio, but it wasn't there the next day. Looking in to the backups showed that the biopet was on the exact same location as the player, and eventually logged out. Usually it was not in range of any animal trainers, but the summoning ball was in their backpack. Most likely explanation is that there was still some data in the razor's buffer (request to summon the pet using the ball) which finally got to the server when logged out.

So, there probably is a chance that Razor will malfunction. Might be that it happens frequently but it's not at all noticeable, but I can happen when it matters. I'm not saying it's dangerous to use Razor, but that with the good it brings, it may also have a certain risk.



LOST CONNECTION
You can never know when your internet or power might go out, or the server might go down, therefor it is wise to insure your valuable items, or to leave them in your bank when you venture out into a dangerous area. You might be able to solo a particular monster, but when connection is lost, before the server realizes that and puts you to safety, it can be 30 seconds or a minute, and in that time, standing there defenseless, you surely can die.

So such a thing as "i didn't expect the server to go down" isn't going to help. Also "it wasn't my fault"... hey, it isn't my fault either. The internet is unpredictable. And if i were obligated to recover lost items every time a shard goes down, then every disconnect would mean probably a day of work or more, and there's already plenty of work to be done here.

[+Colibri]

During the event tonight (3-4 AM shard time) there has been a typo with the rewards, there should have been 10 ointments in each reward bag but there were actually 100. If it were a smaller amount this would probably be left as it is, though since it's so many ointments in total, I am announcing a recall.

This applies only to the players who have been at the event and received prizes.

If you still have the ointments
Please take 90 of them and drop them in the blue chest in front of Britain bank (next to the fire pit).

If you have already used/converted/sold all or part of your ointments
- First, if you still have 90 (or more) regular ointments in stock, then the best to avoid complication (and to make less work for us), please drop 90 in the blue chest at Britain bank.
- If you have already converted your then you can drop the regular and the converted ointments in the blue chest (to total 90). If the cost of reagents was considerable (more than 5-10k) you will be sent a check for the cost of the reagents.

- If you have already sold them, or have already applied them to a pet,
Then we can help you get them back so you will be able to submit them. What you need to do is to send a help request (Paperdoll -> Help button -> General Support Request). In the description, start with the word "OINTMENT" and then describe whether you have already sold them (where? on a vendor or exex? if vendor, where is it?) or applied them (which pet?).
After you click OK, go to your paperdoll again and click Help. You will be given 3 options (Leave, request pending, remove). Click the middle option - Request pending. That way your request will go in a special queue and it will be handled when possible.
All the claims will be confirmed by comparing details from the backups (i'm 120 in that skill hehe).


All the players who have been at the event, and submit 90 ointments to the blue chest at Britain bank won't go without a reward. A reward sash for everyone, as well as a stack of 5ED. And if the participation is good enough, three lucky (randomly picked) "contestants" will get one of the three extra rewards: Ankh Addon, House merger deed, and a House foundation sink deed.
So, this is basically a spinoff
Please do not drop ointments in the box if you have not been at the event. If you haven't been at the event, then you will just get your ointments back (and it will just take more time for us to process all the information).

Quickly, let's finish this by Wednesday evening. After that it will no longer be possible to submit the ointments (hopefully there won't be many players left that would need individual handling). The rewards will then be distributed in the next few days.


Thank you for understanding that even us "gods" are human and make mistakes, and for your assistance to undo this problem (no Undo button on the shard unfortunately. there's the revert but that's for emergencies far greater than this one).

[+Colibri]

The forums have been restored!

We lost the last 10 hours, but that's still better than losing the last 10 days. Although it would be possible to merge the last 10 hours with the restore, it would take way too long so I think it's not worth it. If anyone posted a large post and it got lost, I apologize and I hope you will be able to write it again. (not a whole lot went on last night though, there was the hot thread of how to connect to the shard for those who had issues).

[+Colibri]

The internet provider has a scheduled maintenance, there's expected to be an approx 10 minute downtime between 5AM and 6AM shard time (that's between 11PM-midnight EST). Remember, it's not a one hour downtime, but it's a 10 minute downtime sometime within that hour.

As always we advise you to insure your items and bond your pets, as the internet is unpredictable.

[+Colibri]

About the help system...
There's been some confusion lately about the "escalation" and I would like to explain all of this in more detail.

We have an upgrade of the regular help system which you might be used from other shard or OSI, regularly if you send a help request in (also known as "a page"), it can be taken by whichever staffer is online, though if nobody takes your request and you log off, the help request is lost, and nobody knows that you even sent it. All the help requests are being put into a "queue" where we can see the requests and solve them, primarily by "first come first served" but we may take someone's request ahead if it's an emergency.

The problem became when for example only counselors and GMs were online, but in came a request for a guild hue (something a Seer can do). This was either handled with a reply to the player saying "try again in a few hours, maybe someone will be online then" or a message was sent to a higher up staffer (and even though there's let's say 2 admins and a seer, somehow all of the requests ended up on my desk).

To solve this problem I have coded a "secondary queue", it doesn't really have a name but it's also called "escalated pages" (it's been in for I think about a year now). A page is put on this queue either if a staffer escalates your page (and they also need to tell you that, so that you know that the issue is written there and that someone will take care of it) or if you "request pending" yourself (more on that below). So in case of someone requesting a guild hue, and only a counselor being online, the counselor will escalate it and then whenever a Seer or Admin takes a look at the secondary queue, we'll come by and set it up. We check it several times a day.
Keep in mind that if you have a request that doesn't require immediate attention, and you have already been waiting for some time (let's say 30-60 minutes) you can also click Help on the paperdoll again, and there it will give you 3 options. Click the middle one (request pending). That will put your page right in the secondary queue, and someone will be with you when possible, and you won't be bothered by those repeating messages telling you your queue status.


A few guidelines to follow:
1. If you know that your help request has already been escalated, please do not send another. It only add confusion for us, and doesn't get your issue resolved any faster.
2. There's always some (sometimes several dozen) pages in this secondary queue so keep in mind it might take a while for us to get to you (depends on how urgent it is).
3. Regular help request queue has priority over the secondary. For example until all the pages in the primary are addressed, I don't even look at the secondary.
4. Also, requests such as "i need to talk to colibri" don't do much good.


Thank you for reading

[+Colibri]

GoC pieces and Powerscroll bag.

This was meant to be published in the changelog and also announced yesterday (after it's on the changelog) but time goes by real quick so I wanted to post this without any more delay.

The GoC pieces will now be account bound. This is something that was planned already in the summer, when just the lesser gems were changed like that, and a week later the rest of them should be too, but it got delayed every week until it's now winter. Two things I still have to add to avoid confusion, is that the bound items (any item that's bound) will show that when you hover your mouse over it, and that it won't be possible to trade them (currently not possible to trade a bound item itself, but possible if it's in a bag and you trade the bag). This was a bundle together with the 3 day timer on getting each gem (right now one can still trade the items and a bag of all the items is practically the same as the GoC itself).
This is because there were players who were able to complete the whole even almost once a day, while it was meant to be a big challenge to get even one or two items for yourself. An alternative was decreasing the spawn rate, though it's pretty low already, and making it any lower would really show the randomness effect more frequently (even if it's a 10% chance on a drop, you may be one of the unlucky ones who kill the monster 30 times and doesn't get a single drop).


Powerscroll bag now requires a blue diamond in order to perform the conversion. Also, it needs to be in your backpack when used. This is because, with even one powerscroll bag being public and having unlimited uses, basically removes the need to buy one for yourself.
So these were also basically temporary on hold (we raffled one in the summer but then they weren't in supply anymore). From now on they will be raffled and sold in auctions regularly. Also, there will be one-use powerscroll bags (probably on a monster somewhere, low spawn, but available).

Full list of changes will be announced shortly on the changelog (nothing special, just a handful of fixes with this last restart, and there's also the changelog from all of autumn that wasn't posted yet).

[+Colibri]

Grand auction this weekend!

As always, there will be two auctions at different times, both featuring the same items.

First auction on Sunday, February 6th, at 3AM shard time. That's *Saturday* 9PM EST, 6PM PST.
Second auction on Sunday, February 6th, at 9PM shard time. That's Sunday 3PM EST, Noon PST.

Keep in mind that if you buy something at the first auction, you cannot bid on it on the second one, so that others have a chance of getting that item. The items will be displayed before the auction (about an hour earlier).

[+Chaos]

Bump for Sundays Auction Info. Please read

[+Colibri]

Connecting issues.
As the ISP has informed me, they are experiencing some issues with connectivity. Of course, I presume they are working to resolve it ASAP. So if you can't connect, please be patient (i figure this can't be for very long, and if they can't fix it over night then probably tomorrow).

[+Colibri]

Recent disconnects:

Seems like every two or so days, there's a period of mass disconnects (anywhere between 10 minutes to an hour). Now, some of this has been due to ISP's trouble with international traffic, though they say they've fixed it now. Could as well be something else.
Considering the fact that some people get either uber lag or disconnects, and some play without any issue throughout these periods of instability, seems like it truly is an ISP problem.

There are a few things I intend to do that might help. But I can't do it overnight (also, stores that sell this hardware aren't open on weekends, and they usually don't keep high end equipment in stock).

Just keep in mind, this will pass. We've had rough patches in the past, about once, maybe twice a year, and then they've gone away as suddenly as they came.

[+Colibri]

There's been quite a few complaints over champ spawn camping, some waiting for others to do the work and then attacking just the champion.

For this, i plan to make a few changes, such as:
- Hiding and stealth will be disabled near champs (except probably if your last corpse is in the area, if the corpse still has items on it).
- Enchanted grove spell will only work on people you are partied with.
- Going to randomize them more (instead of like every 6-8 hours they will be every 4-10 hours to make camping less interesting) plus going to add a few more champ spawn locations.
- If already in one champ spawn, you will not be able to participate in any other one (Oaks issue).
- Pets will only bring you tokens if they are on the screen. I think there's also a message when your pet dies, that will go out too, to disable the "sensors" for which champ is active.

I don't know when exactly this will be done, probably next week, until then:
- To the hidden campers: Please don't ruin the game for the others.
- To those who do the work: Please be patient.

[+Colibri]

Regarding the exploit with tour tickets.

First of all, if you already know of the exploit and think you know how it's done, don't try it because it won't end well for the status of your account.

Second of all, if you have tickets from this "uber hackz0r", simply trash them. Even if you are reading this a few days, or even a week after it's been posted, just trash them. The important thing is not to turn them in. You don't need to send help requests reporting it.

If you have any real, valid, legal tickets that you got for doing an actual tour, you can keep them and turn them in regularly. So, you only need to trash the tickets that you got from someone you don't remember touring.
The ticket submission box will be unavailable for a while, but you can still do actual tours during this time. Once this issue is resolved, and all the bugged tickets are taken care of, I will put the submission box back in the town center.

To repeat the important part of this post:
If you have tickets from someone you didn't tour, trash them. As simple as that.

[+Colibri]

Grand auction this weekend.

It's been announced since mid week on the town criers, but here's some more info.
The auction will be at standard times with standard rules.

First auction on Sunday 3AM shard time, which is actually *Saturday* 9PM Eastern US and 6PM Pacific US.
Second auction on Sunday 9PM shard time, that's 3PM Eastern US and Noon Pacific US (Sunday).

The two auctions will have identical items, if you buy something on the first auction you may not bid on it on the second one. This is to allow more people get a chance to win the items.

There is a minimum bid increment rule for auctions. To calculate the minimum increment, you take first number from the current bid, move it one space to the right, and that is the minimum increment.
For example:
- If the current bid is 190k gold, the first number is 1, meaning the minimum increment is 10k.
- If the current bid is 620k gold, the first number is 6, and the minimum increment is 60k.
- At 3.8 million, the minimum increment is 0.3 mil, meaning that the next valid bid is 4.1 mil.

Happy bidding!

[+Colibri]

Regarding recent instability:

Last couple of days there have been some unusual disconnects, and by today they became more frequent and longer. Seemed like a harmless ISP maintenance at first, but by Wednesday afternoon it pretty much became un-playable. I was looking for the cause in the evening, and by around 8-9PM shard time I gave up on the existing configuration and re-wired the whole thing. So the shard was back online and working fine since 10PM wednesday shard time. The new configuration wasn't as solid as I'd feel comfortable with, so at around 3AM (thursday) shard time I took it down for another 30 minutes. We're now back on the same hardware, but with updated firmware (which I've also done a test of 2 hours, during which it was all good, even though I've pulled all sorts of usage scenarios thru it).

So, in a way it's good because it's the old and tested configuration, on the other hand it might be a bad idea since there could be a hardware error which will show itself again after a few days. I'll be keeping this in my mind.

As always, we remind you all to insure your valuable items if you go to a dangerous place... you never know when something will get jammed in the tubes


Just to keep it safe, TeamSpeak and Radio will be unavailable for a day or two.

On a side note, there's been an error loading chat data, so a small portion of the players lost their chat settings, such as colors, ignore/friends list, and messages. This has actually been a frequent issue for a while now but I've usually been able to get it loaded correctly with some tinkering. It's more of a nuisance but something worth looking at (definitely wouldn't take it as lightly if a few players would loose half of their house in a restart).