UO Second Age

Server saves suck. No, really they SUCK. What should we do?

-new event
-new hardware
-delete sh-stuff

IDK I just live here. I want to be a part of the solution. I am willing to donate more!

Do events even really work? Or encourage more sh-stuff to be hoarded?

I forget, is the server save more or less hourly? And takes about 20 seconds?

Sure it's annoying. But not as annoying as having to revert back a long time.

Maybe if we had a spring clean up. All you hoarders smelt/delete/consume your extra/unwanted/useless/needless stuff. Or better yet leave it strewn all around the Brit bank so cheap bastards like me can scavenge items and sell them.

It would be very nice if they weren't so long and frequent. One can practically use the restroom during without worry, so it has that going for it, which is nice.

@Budner, given how seldom the server crashes, us players actually lose more playtime due to the saves! But yeah, I'd rather find a solution that doesn't involve saving less.

Budner wrote:I forget, is the server save more or less hourly? And takes about 20 seconds?

Sure it's annoying. But not as annoying as having to revert back a long time.

Maybe if we had a spring clean up. All you hoarders smelt/delete/consume your extra/unwanted/useless/needless stuff. Or better yet leave it strewn all around the Brit bank so cheap bastards like me can scavenge items and sell them.

I like the clean up idea but yeah it is like 20-30 secs it feels like. Lowers the quality of the game.

Avg: 42.3sec/hr

Capitalist wrote:Avg: 42.3sec/hr

That doesn't look bad at all on paper. In real time it feels like an eternity. I don't know. Maybe I'm beating a dead horse. It is an extremely annoying wait.

No one likes world saves. We have ongoing jokes in ventrilo about world saves and how they're the bane of all UO existence.

Kublai Khan wrote: Do events even really work? Or encourage more sh-stuff to be hoarded?

My museums are works of art.

Please tell me the rant of this thread is a joke?

I don't have an idea of how RunUO currently saves the world state, but this is how I think it should work:
Lock
Clone the World object(s) and spawn a new thread that only works off that cloned World for saving
Unlock

If the cloning happens fast then people can still continue playing without them knowing that the world is busy saving

I'd be curious to see how long saves took a few years ago. I started here in early 2010 and remember saves seemed to take maybe 10-15 seconds. Now seem longer.

The server is already using a pretty damn good CPU and SSD, so the hardware can't really help any further.

I have some ideas for things that may help with server times, but it takes some R&D and ultimately is a very delicate process.

At the end of the day, we are a well established server at this point with many, many items and characters to save.

We are about as stable as UO shards come, but I'd be wary of extending the time between server saves past an hour as we are a shard still in development and I'd hate for any one to lose a lot of effort at any point.

Anarcho wrote:The server is already using a pretty damn good CPU and SSD, so the hardware can't really help any further.

I have some ideas for things that may help with server times, but it takes some R&D and ultimately is a very delicate process.

At the end of the day, we are a well established server at this point with many, many items and characters to save.

We are about as stable as UO shards come, but I'd be wary of extending the time between server saves past an hour as we are a shard still in development and I'd hate for any one to lose a lot of effort at any point.

Anarcho, thanks for all you do and for joining in on this discussion. I agree with you 100%, but it seems as though changes to policies will need to be made, or server saves are going to continue to be longer and longer?

I could see making saves maybe every two hours instead of hourly, but wouldn't want to extend it beyond that.

Don't seem to have many crashes here.

I just accept the saves as part of the environment.

I remember back in the day UO would do server reverts that went back WEEKS as I recall. Remember when they introduced Trammel and there was a huge land grab. Placed one of those sweet marble houses and lost it due to a revert.

I've never had a material revert or save issue here in four years so cheers to the staff and the structure that's in place!

Budner wrote:I could see making saves maybe every two hours instead of hourly, but wouldn't want to extend it beyond that.

I would personally be against it as there is much in development planned in the near future, I will do my best to make it as stable as it is but it would be unprofessional to assume so and extend save delays