SillySilenia

Oh did I miss something?

 

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Over the past few days, Neopets has several times gone down for several hours for maintenance.

Working tech support as well as having been in charge or at least moderating a fair few sites tends to help in understanding the issues that sites like Neopets have from time to time.

 

As for the glitches with the prizes, 99 glitches in the code and all applies. The fact that they came up with those items in such a short span of time tho is fascinating.

 

I mean, it's not going to be like this forever. It'll just take time for the people in charge to understand the strain that we, the users, put on the site as well as finding a server that can handle it all amongst other things.

Indeed. Never been in tech support, but I've done my fair share of moderating left and right myself, so you certainly get at least a working knowledge and such.

 

Once again, very much true, though the types of glitches are remarkably different from each other this time--far more than before, anyway.

Last few bunches of glitches nearly always pointed at one major issue/several closely related issues (beyond the lag itself, that is)--most of them being related to internal-clock/timing issues and/or servers not properly being in sync with each other at my best guess--where the whole '99 glitches' applies twice as much. (You fix something, chances are that the things that break as a result are somewhat related to the thing you just fixed and all that rot. Even if it can be remarkably surprising what kind of stuff can be "related" in that a chance here impacts that over there. Still, because of that it can also be rather difficult to find out what's causing the problems and definitely means that everything I'm saying here is speculation. We're only seeing the effects, after all, and while it's possible to draw some conclusions from that, without knowing more specific info about servers, databases and such, it's difficult if not impossible to say anything with complete certainty regarding causes and solutions).

 

Ah, but we don't know what time-span they had to come up with it. They could have come up with them in the past week as the site kept getting pulled for maintenance, or they could have been quietly developing them in the background during the whole time they were keeping mum about the lag but presumably doing some silent fixes--in which case they may have actually been made months ago.

 

True, it's not going to be like this forever. Pretty happy that at least they're now somewhat communicating with users. It's still not perfect and I feel they have a bit of a tendency to put on the rose-coloured glasses when they type the after-maintenance news and overestimating the progress they've made, but still... I think they've done more communication about the issues in the past two weeks than in the time from the transition up until then, so that's definitely progress.

It got faster because people were giving up on being on the site. It also got faster because they took the site down for maintenance before. It got slower because people rushed to the site when they heard there were prizes just for putting up with the lag. It got faster at points during the day because people were giving up. Then again it got around that the site was faster for a little so people crowded.

 

Also you can't really keep the site live when you're trying to fix a server issue. It gives false reads and everything else.

That's one part of the issue, in any case--the traffic. However, if I look at the sheer number and types of glitches that soon followed (double or triple granting of prizes; not granting NC prize; double-granting NC prize; high numbers of scores well within normal ranges for both height and speed being pulled for review; pets getting disconnected from accounts; people being unable to see the site while logged in and a fair few other glitches), there definitely was more to the issue than just traffic. Since the glitches were new at that point, also more to the issue than just the traffic and the already existing server issues, most likely.

 

You're completely right that many server issues can't be fixed while the site is live. (Some can, some are harder to fix when the site is down--or at least, harder to predict if fixed when the site's down because there needs to be normal levels of traffic to test, but server migrations and other stuff like this really can't be done with the site up.)

Far as I can tell, Game Ratios haven't changed either, for the second month in a row.

No, I generally don't feel bad, but that's probably because of the guilt-trip TNT tries to send you on when you pound a pet. I so strongly detest being emotionally manipulated that any such attempts tend to either fail or give the absolute opposite result of what was attempted.

 

The cases in which I do/would feel bad are those where pets have sentimental value to me.

Not really down far as I can tell; just that the lag is back with a vengeance. Takes me several minutes to get most pages loaded, but they do load in the end.

Pages now seem to be loading again for both logged-in and guest users.

Funny...I logged on to the forums here to ask about Fashion Fever being reviewed and there was already a post about it. 2 of my 3 submissions got reviewed, but they were okayed within a few minutes. I haven't been able to play any other games today because none of the pages will load for me. I can't log out though because the link to log out doesn't appear. Weird.

The latter is a fairly new glitch that started happening roughly 30 minutes ago. Discussion about it is ongoing in the "Official Neopets down/having issues board" from this post on downward. Seems to only affect users that are logged in and I have speculated it may be connected to site themes, but as you say, the log-out link doesn't appear so it's impossible to properly log out. (There are ways around that, such as by cleaning your cache or, for the browsers that give such specific options, your active log-ins. Probably not worth the effort, though)

Same here as of about 15-20 minutes, so it looks like it's a hiccup/glitch hitting a good portion of the users.

 

Seems to be logged-in specific. I'm getting the above-mentioned issue on Firefox where I am logged in. After that, checked Chrome. No issues as I was logged out (at least, pages were loading in full, just very slow). Logged in; same thing happened.

 

Out of curiosity, is anyone using the standard theme experiencing the same issues? That's one of the main differences between (many) logged-in users and "guests"--guests are all served the standard theme. (Y'know, the yellow one with stars and such)

I'm mostly seeing reports of this glitch happening on the quick games--Fashion Fever, Catch the Petpet, Kass Basher, etc.

Makes me suspect it's not the height of the score it's picking up as suspicious, but rather, the speed it's getting overly sensitive about--one of the other things that can cause scores to get reviewed even without glitches like these. (I run into it at Spellseeker from time to time)

Glitch still occurring. Now waiting for 4 Fashion Fever scores to get reviewed (2 from yesterday, 2 from today), 3 Catch the Petpet scores (1 yesterday, 2 today) as well as 1 Kass Basher (today. Lower than either of the two scores that did get through without trouble, too).

Can confirm that I did in fact get double NC as well. Had been offline for about an hour; must have gotten in during that timespan. Time to update my ticket.

You can donate the extra NP tho, which is kinda similar I guess.

 

...Ninja'd. lol

 

I doubt you'll get double NC, but if you do you could just donate whatever you buy with the specific amount to someone else.

Yeah, in that I don't profit from it it's similar, but it's still NP that shouldn't even be in circulation. Blegh.

 

Oh well, suppose I'll be waiting first to see if the NC shows up at all. If so, going to do as has been suggested--discard duplicates, donate NP and if NC also is doubled, donate or whatever.

 

If the NC doesn't show up, ticket time after all, I guess, and in that case I'd probably better wait with dealing with the NP and items until I get a response, lest TNT suggests I do something else with it or what have you.

You likely don't need to file a ticket, just discard the extra items as they always suggest to do :)

There will be an overload of these items, as there's no way to not claim them on side accounts, so I wouldnt worry about it at all. Just discard if uncomfortable.

Problem is that it didn't happen once on main and once on side, but rather twice on main. While I can discard the items, I cannot in fact discard the NP. Am still waiting to see if I've also gotten twice the NC (hasn't arrived yet), but if so, that too is something I cannot discard.

The neocash takes a few minutes to show up... like all NC does when its rewarded lol

Not a surprise there. I'm more worried about being granted the other prizes twice. Trying to figure out what I should be filing it under as I open a ticket.

Remarkably enough, I got it on a page that took two minutes to load. Talk 'bout irony.

 

It also seems to have glitched out on me. I now have +40k, +Lag-b-Gone Serum x2, +Tales of Lag x2, but without the promised NC.

Hm, sounds like you've been lucky, Pipsy. I'm still waiting on 1089NP (2x Fashion Fever, 1x Catch the Petpet) around four hours later, so not every score is getting reviewed and accepted quite that fast.

Much rather have a few hours of downtime for maintenance (and thus fixing things) than a few hours of lag so severe it may as well count as downtime, that's for sure.

 

Also happy to see TNT is keeping us up-to-date.

Much better than when I first started playing, way back in the day. (Then again, that was more "everyone had a slow internet connection in those days by today's standards" than anything else. XD)

Still getting the occasional lagspike here, but nowhere near as frequently as before and outside those spikes, the site actually (-gasps-) runs smoothly.

Only need Awakened from this bunch, so I'm going with them, even if I'm not particularly fond of randomized boons. XD

Well some of the lag has gone away but not a lot of it. It was easy enough for me not to want to get on the site for a while because I was sleeping thru the downtime. lol

 

TNT still needs to work on its transparency tho.

(Emphasis mine)

Very true, but what they've been doing in the past week or so definitely is some sizeable progress. Let's hope that they've learnt from it so that next time it doesn't take them 3.5 months to properly acknowledge the issues.

 

As to the lag, I'm seeing improvement in some specific areas--NP is still lagging behind from time to time but less often and catching up faster and the majority of gamescores seem to get through a fair bit faster, though there still is the occasional "server issues" case and every now and then a score that takes 1-2 minutes or more to get through.

 

The lag is still hindering in playing the flashgames from time to time, however, and page loading times are still highly variable between the occasional rapid load on the one hand and loads taking upwards of three minutes on the other.

 

Certain specific pages seem to now be loading faster than before--I'm not getting nearly as many "meepits, yo" messages on the Game Room, and going from selecting a BD opponent to the battle itself has improved a bit. It's still slow, but it no longer takes me two minutes. Getting from the battle screen to actually being able to select weapons now takes a few seconds most of the battles, not a minute or more. Moves still are sent slowly, though. Using the "play again" button after a fight now gets me to that new fight in 10-35 seconds, not two minutes.

 

On the other hand, anything dealing with the shop/inventory side of things seems to be as slow as before. My shop still takes anywhere between 15s and 2m05s to load. Shop wizard searches are still slow.

 

The ratio of lag site-wide seems to have slightly moved towards the better end of the spectrum but not by much.

Still, it's some improvement. I now don't have to wait 20 minutes for my cash on hand to catch up after playing a game. I also don't have to spend five minutes to get all three "plays" of Fashion Fever done.

 

Sure, it's not exactly fixed yet, but then again, with the sheer amount of ongoing issues and the severity of the lag, I would have been really surprised if it was.

They weren't taking it offline to fix ALL of the glitches, though. Just that they hoped the back end stuff they had to do would help combat the lag. They never promised any guarantee or anything like that.

 

The old outdated code must be a pain in the behind to try and update/diagnose and I don't want to be in their shoes for ONE second.

 

But I do commend them for continually trying the best they can, even with an entire user base breathing fire down their necks for the lack of instantaneous fixes (which don't exist when it comes to these things).

True, glad they're attempting to do the best they can. Now that they're actually openly admitting to and acknowledging the issues, I know I have gained a lot more patience with it. Then again, for me it never was about instant fixes, but about the prospect of getting things fixed at all--and acknowledging the issues was a huge step in that.

 

A step that finally makes me feel that they realize how bad the problems are/were and how frustrating things become as a result. A step that shows me they are committed to resolving the issues and to keeping us at least somewhat informed in what we can expect for the time being.

 

It's a lot easier to be patient when you know that they're trying; that they are working on things no matter how slow progress may be.

Sure, they may have been working on things before, but when things merely keep getting worse and worse and they don't say a single thing about the many issues, it's a lot easier to start wondering "do they even realize how impossible this is for us? Are they even working on making things better?" than when they are upfront and basically say "this lag is bad, we know. We're working on it. We can't promise when exactly it will be done, but we're trying our best. As a result, the site will be down then-and-then for maintenance."

No significant changes in regards to lag pre- versus post-downtime for me so far. Still going back and forth between pages loading at normal-ish speed with the very occasional immediately-loading page on the one hand, and heavy to ridiculously severe lag on the other hand. Already have had a page time out on me and I've been back for less than an hour so far.

 

Average pageloading speed during light to moderate lag seems to be a few seconds. Average pageloading speed during heavy to incredibly severe lag still is well upwards of a minute.

 

EDIT:

Times of sending scores do look to be somewhat improved, though, at least a good part of the time.

 

Past six scores I sent took respectively 1m03s, 12s, 31s, 4s, 22s and 13s.

(Yes, I timed them. :P)

 

EDIT2: Next bunch: 2m02s, 19s, 7s, 8s, 6s, 12s.

Still running into the lagging-Neopoints issue from time to time. Might be my perception but seems to occur slightly less often and is caught up slightly faster now.

I just saw on TNT facebook page that they posted a tweet that said that it's going to be a few more hours. That was posted on the facebook 8 minutes ago. - SITE MAINTENANCE: We're looking at a few more hours downtime. TNT is just finishing a few last minute tech updates to the site - stay tuned!

If it's a few hours more, wouldn't last hour tech updates be more appropriate? :P

 

(Not that you have any control over what TNT does or says, of course. XD)