DDO ReportsLast night was an interesting night for DDO here in the States. A hardware upgrade that was scheduled for 3 am to 5 pm (EDT), but unfortunately due to some unforeseen problems, it wasn’t finished until about 9 pm (EDT). At the same time, there was a test of the Hirelings on Risia where Tolero would ask trivia questions over a world broadcast and the first to respond with a tell that had a hireling in party would win a free 30 game card. Between these two events, Risia was flooded with players. So much so that the server completely filled up and prevented new people from joining.
Unfortunately, I was only able to participate in the tail-end of the event but it seemed like it was a success. While I was on, I did not see many people in the public instances, which indicated that most were in the quests, likely with new-found hireling pals. While the trouble with the hardware upgrade was unfortunate, it did provide the development team with loads of data on how the hireling were working on a large scale. Over-all things went pretty smoothly, as I didn’t notice any significant extra lag from it, although that does not appear to be the universal case.
After the main servers went up other problems appeared. Most noticeably on Khyber and Thelanis. Khyber’s chat problems actually required a server restart at around 12 am, although Thelanis’s problems with people being stuck on a loading screen cleared up without resorting to a restart. At last report the issue with trial accounts not being allowed to log in has not been resolved yet, but given that the team started at 3 am and Tolero was still responding at 1:23 am, it is likely that it was put off for today, and the team will be taking a late start.
As of right now, there are no details as to what exactly caused any of the issues, but in any case it was one of the most eventful event nights in DDO history.