Test of Last Battle to begin Sunday!

[Tim]

UPDATE: Due to difficulties at the start of the test, start was delayed by 3 hours. All times have now been updated.

The last seal will break and the Last Battle will begin Sunday, May 27th at 12AM CDT. For those bad at time zones, that 3AM Monday using GMT if that helps. Or if you prefer, it's about 69 hours after I made this post.

Note that since the test site has been live, I obviously haven't had a chance to properly test things for the Last Battle, so it may be a little flakier than normal. Fingers crossed!

There will be four phases of the Last Battle (see the V10 Countdown posts for more details). Here's a timeline for those of you who don't want to do the math:

Phase 1:
Hordes appear at 12AM, May 27th
Hordes attack at 8PM, May 27th (20 hours after LB starts)

Phase 2:
Hordes appear at 6PM, May 28th (22 hours after Phase 1 ends; 42 hours after LB starts)
Hordes attack at 2PM, May 29th (20 hours after Phase 2 start; 62 hours after LB starts)

Phase 3:
Hordes appear at 12PM, May 30th (22 hours after Phase 2 ends; 84 hours after LB starts)
Hordes attack at 8AM, May 31st (20 hours after Phase 3 start; 104 hours after LB starts)

Phase 4:
Phase 4 start at 6AM, June 1st (22 hours after Phase 3 end; 126 hours after LB starts)
Phase 4 ends at 12AM June 3nd (42 hours after Phase 4 starts; 168 hours after LB starts)

END OF AGE (7 days after Last Battle starts).

[Tim]

Well this is fun.

Database is blowing up right now. Please stop refreshing the site til I get a chance to sort things out. Trying to figure out what went wrong...

[Tim]

Ok. Now the site's locked (probably from over use of server resources from whatever happened). Time to get in touch with the host and hopefully straighten this out.

Will update when I know more. Sorry guys!

[Tim]

Sites back for now. Feel free to log back on. Working to figure out the problem before next hour change.

[almordre]

Would prefer the first day of the Last Battle be a day I have off so I can fix whatever's going wrong.

Good call, even though I know you hate being right on things like this...

It's still not letting me back in, though...

[Tim]

That's ok. Site is locked up again. On hold with host again (though they haven't suspended us again yet).

[Tim]

Sigh. Waiting for tech support from the host still. They are apparently short staffed (Memorial Day weekend).

Will post here as soon as things are back up. Depending on the problem, Last Battle test may need delayed a bit.

[Tim]

Ok. I think all is good now. Found the true source of the problem and got it fixed. Shifted the start of everything by 3 hours to make up for the lost time.

Good luck and let me know if you guys run into any problems.

Sorry for the hassle!

[almordre]

I still can't connect to the site...


*UPDATE* still couldn't connect this morning, evidently the server was blocking me out by IP (best guess). I rebooted DSL modem in hopes of new IP, now I can connect again. WTH???

[Tim]

You might have been the unlucky one who triggered the infinite loop that that did the same query over and over again. If so, they may have blocked your IP. If it starts causing problems again, let me know and I can talk with them.

[almordre]

The last thing I did before the crash was send a message to you - a reply to your response about the credit lines... When I hit "send", the page reload never completed, and I was locked out from that point on...

That was right on top of the hour change - when the page load stalled, clock was still on 10:00 (EDT).

So far, so good - no more 214 errors, and no more connection issues - either from home after the DSL reboot, or from work, both with different IPs. I doubt there's much chance of anyone else landing that IP that plays GoS, but there's no telling what other sites are hosted on their system, so it prob wouldn't hurt if you asked after an IP blocked at that point and see if they'll unblock it. Definitely don't want them thinking I was launching a DoS attack or anything...

[Tim]

If it was at the top of the hour that might have been it. Code that caused the problem was in the code that should have kicked off the last battle would have ran for whoever the first person was to load a page after the hour change.

I'll kick off an email to the host to see if they blocked any of your IPs last night (I have a list. ).

Glad you're back in. Hopefully last night never happens again. Stressful. Like you said though, glad I did it on while I was able to be there and watch it.