IDEAS FOR RYZOM

Hey everyone! I had an idea about one of Ryzom's least-loved traditions, the daily server maintenance period (or so many believe it to be) currently starting at GMT ~0220 known as PW o'clock.

Although this phenomenon occurs during the night for Europe (presumably by design), it affects the considerably large North American player base in the evening.

Assuming that PW o'clock can't be eliminated but can be shifted, I would like to suggest a short project:

1. Determine the average number of players online for each of the 24 hours in a day during the past 4 weeks.

2. Determine the hour with the lowest number of players online and shift PW o'clock to that hour.

If the least populated hour of Ryzom's day turns out to be within North America's evening, so be it. There is, however, the matter of Steam.

Being greenlit on Steam is a big step forward and I appreciate the efforts of everyone involved in making that happen. The Steam community, to the best of my knowledge, has a large proportion of North Americans and I believe that not subjecting them to PW o'clock will play a significant role in receiving all-important positive reviews from them.

Been told that since merger the backup server is running on same server ryzom runs on, and that 'daily' big backup is what give's the pw o'clocl since daily big backup is sheduled for that time I guess.

But that's what I was told might just be some connection thingy aswell between server farm running ryzom and the US of A where it causes some hickups every day?

that'd be a valid point subo but there's one catch, even players in EU, Asia, Australia, south america suffer the same PW's at the same time.

it's green-light on steam already: it might surprised you to know that many of the recent new players have found ryzom and are already playing because of this fact. these are the first from steam, and already they're noticing PW o'clock. it might be wise to change it up very quickly, because these few are likely to be the serious reviewers that will set the bar for our beloved game. get things together now or ryzom's future on steam looks grim.

there's lot's more i have to say about the future of ryzom related to steam, but i think enough people have already read my thoughts in uni, so i'll just wait and see if i get to say "i told you so" and if things don't change it's not a good thing when i say "i told you so" it'll be very bad. stagnation and refusal to grow will not work in the brave new future, the next generation of gamers will not love the things us long time ryzom players love. (and even us long timers want to see new things, the things we've asked for, and so on.)

talk

Five of five Yubos from me, for this whole topic.

Quite perfect suggestion for determing the right time of day for this, from you Rob :).

I was never online at that time of night, so I never noticed, but this is important for many (new and old) players from all over the world!

Ideally, what Ryzom needs is two or more servers (for the same shard) that can have some load balancing between them. One server doing a backup or another intensive operation would not be felt so badly as it is now.

Suspect 2 servers will be double the cost - tho for all I know owner has his server in basement - anyway, he makes a steady but very small income - so will not want to spend money

Basement? I tougth it was the old rickety coal shed next to the old tree.
He would never be able to stand the noise of the fan coming from the ryzom server in his moms basement where he lives.

Ryzom server room:

No Air conditioning? Geez! Don't computers need air conditioning?

(>.< Funniest thing i seen ever!)

This is a great plan. I'd suggest virtualizing the server. Plenty of cheap or free virtual server solutions out there, then you can siolate the backup and other maintenance programs and control the exact amount of CPU/RAM you allow them to utilize, never overburdening the primary Ryzom server.

Once virtual, it is easy as pie to make a snapshot of the server, or replicate it with something like Zerto, to another server (AWS cloud for example) and have a DR copy, all ready to spin up on a moments notice.

Don't let Steam drop a pile of bad press or the entire greenlight effort is in vain.

+1 to both OP and Pita

hmm - do you need a real programme writer for that - think he can cope with arcc - after that he is stuffed -and has not made friends with people who could help ...

I sincerely doubt that Winchgate has either the monetary resources to purchase a second physical server or the available time to configure and manage a second virtual one. The strength of my suggestion lies in the fact that it would require almost no effort to test and (ideally) only slightly more to implement. I had hoped that providing a manageably small and simple solution would help pave the way to an improved player experience and, in time, greater player retention and subscription. Sadly, no visible effort has been made so far to consider or even simply refuse this idea.