Recent server issues

[asommers]

I wanted to write a brief note and let you know what's going on with the servers.

Rewind to several weeks ago, with what appeared to be minor symptoms:

taking a long time for Consignment Shoppe searches to respond
taking a long to get past the 'authenticating' screen
taking a long time to host/join a game


I believe there were 3-4 instances where that would occur and a server restart was required to fix the issue. That all fine, but this shouldn't have happened in the first place (and restarts should never be required to fix problems).

After much research, we knew what the symptoms were, but could never really find a definitive problem. We believe the problem was related to the hardware setup of our database. So, two scheduled downtimes and two upgrades later, we are where we are now.

The new symptom [problem?] which happened yesterday morning and this morning appears to be the inability to login. The player can authenticate and patch fine, but the client is then told they can't connect to the server.

The programming team is alerted (paged) when crashes occur, but unfortunately, since the server didn't actually crash in these cases, we're not alerted to this until users start posting on the forums/Facebook that they can't login.

It's our goal to provide you with the best possible mobile gaming experience. Problems like this always seem to happen on weekends, but we are looking at it and please bear with us while we figure things out.

Thanks for your support!

-ALS

[Norbert]

Thanks for taking the time on your weekends to keep PL up and running!

Maybe Amazon S3? :-)

[Tree Dude]

As a sys admin, I know how frustrating these kinds of issues can be. Thanks for giving us the heads up.

[Sanatorium]

I see the problem, you guys are just too popular and your server's getting overloaded, haha :p.

[Cabero]

I thank you very much for informing us of what is going on. I hate when left in the dark about these things.

This will also hopefully stop the whinner trolls too. You should sticky this so everyone is sure to see it.

[Nightarcher]

Love ya guys. Best player/dev relationship in any game I've ever seen. Kudos for awesomeness. ;)

[Lovenus]

Yes. Definitely the best development team I have seen so far. Their on-going efforts and hard work deserve continuing encouragement and support from us. ^^

Good job devs. Yay!
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f200/Lovenus-/thumbsup.jpg

[serulean]

asommers, thanks for the update. appreciate you letting us know that you're aware of the problem and working on a fix.

[Ellyidol]

Thanks for letting us know!

Though I haven't experienced any of the logging in issues, its mainly the ping spikes that have been bothering me. Just moved back to sydney with a stronger and faster internet connection than back home, but I've been spiking like crazy. Internet download/upload speed, along with ping (used speedtest) was good. Hope this helps.

[moonpreston]

Are you actualy putting pop and smtp into the addresses, Try writing mail.yahoo.com.au into the two fields without writing the pop and smtp into the address bars.
___________

Wifi phone (http://www.chinabuye.com/cell-phone-accessories/mobile-phones/wifi-phones) | phone watch (http://www.chinabuye.com/cell-phone-accessories/mobile-phones/phone-watch)

[Physiologic]

Are you actualy putting pop and smtp into the addresses, Try writing mail.yahoo.com.au into the two fields without writing the pop and smtp into the address bars.
___________

(links removed)

Transformers, spambots in disguise!

[Apostar]

Truly appreciate this; it's been a nightmare staying connected and playing or watching the little running man do his thing and finding out u were never in; in the first place. Thanks for such needed action