Portalus Launch Status Updates

[Fodderboy]

This is the first of a series of status posts that we’ll be putting up regularly. This particular thread will cover development status from this first post's date and time until the Portalus PotBS servers are up and players are able to login to them.

On Thursday January 31st at 10:30pm Pacific time the FLS PotBS servers will be brought down for the last time. We still appear to be on schedule for everything to start on the Portalus side and the work to start our servers up will begin immediately after the FLS servers come down.

With just under 72 hours to launch early estimates on expected down time present a fairly broad window. I’m going to make an educated guess, stressing guess, looking at the combined estimates and say the shortest time we'll be down is 12-16 hours. Longest provided estimate is currently at 72 hours. Early testing is underway. We will keep updating this status as testing provides us with more information.

Migration issue troubleshooting currently uses all resources not involved with data center work. Issues per day are dropping while migrations per day are rising. Most migration issues stem from email delivery. Many returned undeliverable mails clearly have typos in the email addresses. Hopefully these players have their codes from in game or their SOE login information. If they have either one it’s possible for us to recover accounts after Feb. 1st. The only players that are going to have issues are those that do not have their code or their SOE information. SOE can assist in recovering Station Account information so at least there is that path to retrieve accounts. After shut down on the 31st there’s no way to get the code in game.

I’ll serve as the primary information point as we move toward launch. There are some final SOE and FLS clean up items that need to be taken care of that will require my attention but for the most part until we get the Portalus servers up and running the forum is now my primary duty. It is my plan to start addressing a number of questions that have been coming up but I will do so in another thread. I want to keep this thread for only launch related status information.

Next projected status update: current post time +12 hours

[Fodderboy]

With around 57 hours to go until server shut down and launch there is no status change. We are still tracking to begin server startup on schedule. No new issues have been reported. I will update the status again after an opportunity to consult with the data center team.

Next projected status update: current post time +10 hours

[Fodderboy]

I hope this post will give an example of how I mean to respond to the questions in the associated questions thread. I’ll summarize what I see in the questions and comments thread and answer what I can.

Do you have a backup plan for people who couldn't migrate in the tiny window you've offered?

We’re pretty sure we’re going to be able to help players migrate after Feb. 1st if they missed the in game window or website migration as long as they have their account information from SOE. Where it stands now, if you got the code by any means, you should be fine. Even if the migration failed somewhere in the process with the code we can reconnect the account.

If you don’t have a code, and can’t get a code your next best option is to know your SOE account information. This should be something any player with a legitimate claim to the account can obtain. It’s your Station Account. If you can login to your Station Account at SOE then you should have access to the information you need to reconnect an account. If you can’t access your Station Account SOE support would be your next step in getting the situation resolved.

Will forum bans be lifted on feb 1? So the rest if the players can migrate...

For players unable to migrate accounts due to forum bans they will be able to migrate the accounts after Feb. 1st. Hamled has a work around for those accounts so we will not be lifting any bans specifically for this purpose.

Exactly when on/after the 1st that migration of forum banned accounts will be possible is where the launch schedule gets into dependencies. If the servers take more than 24 hours to get going then this can’t happen until the 2nd at the earliest. Hamled and crew are going to be working as non-stop as possible to get the servers up as soon as possible. Starting the forum banned account migration would be the next priority but I’ll be blunt here. The data center team is running crazy hours at this point just to get the lights on. That watch is going to need some down time as soon as it can get it that’s an X factor in this migration issue’s implementation time.

Will we get a patch upon launch??
Will the game be launched right after the migration?
The server hardware is the same?
If not can we expect less lag or there wont be any difference?

Regarding our launch hardware what we have is new hardware of the same type as the FLS's server hardware (plus some upgrades of course). We wanted to make this as trouble free as we could since we are moving the data center. We know exactly how the game runs on that hardware and frankly it’s older so it wasn’t quite as expensive as something with the latest bells and whistles for running 5 year old software. Technically the new servers have already been started and what the team is working on is all the configuration work not just for the game but for Portalus dev environments as well.

I’m not sure if you’ll see any performance differences. Technically you shouldn’t but the data center is moving from Seattle to Los Angeles so you may see some depending on your location due to geography.

As far as patching the servers after they start up there is no plan to do so for at least the first week to 10 days. We need to make sure the servers are stable, catch our breath and most of all get an assessment of what the server populations look like before we commit to anything. The most simple way I can put it is we have a general plan at this point but exactly which specifics we’re going to go with depends on what we see on the other side of transition.

Will RvR continiue as before the change with points of thursday?

Regarding the RvR state at shut down – this is going to be a lot like we tried to make time stand still so it can pick up exactly where it left off when the servers went down. The way the servers work though, we can’t guarantee we’re going to be able to preserve the RvR state perfectly (i.e. port battles are in the same slot on the same day).

Things basically work like this – if the server is off through the time the port battle was supposed to occur the port battle is supposed to be automatically rescheduled 24 hours later in the same slot. Conflicts do occur however in this type of scheduling scheme so if the slot it would move to is held then it moves to next best which could be that day at a different time (it’s supposed to be close) or perhaps yet another 24 hours into the future.

Another possibility is that during times we may bring the servers up and down for testing real time will actually start passing. Conceivably a port battle could be started during this time unless we manually move the port battle during testing. The logic of battle placement time tends to be the same whether we or the server set the time. Either possibility can wind up moving port battles so the best thing I can say is we’ll do our best to keep the port battles to be fought but we can’t guarantee they’ll stay where they are slotted at the exact moment of shut down.



I think the other questions I’ve seen so far on the Questions/Comments thread are probably better addressed in other threads. I’m trying to keep this one specific to things I think are related to the launch process only (including migration). I'll also follow up with more information regarding the launch process and migration as the questions come in.

[Fodderboy]

With under 48 hours until launch there is no change in status. No new issues. We are still on target to begin start up on schedule. Hamled and the data team are setting up our test environments needed for procedure checks and later troubleshooting. He’s also working on getting the space ready for the launcher download file that will be needed to connect the game to the new servers.

The current testing is expected to run several hours so there may be a longer gap between this status update and the next. If new news is available we’ll update here when we get it otherwise I project the next status update will come after meeting with Hamled early Wednesday evening.

Next projected status update: current post time +18 hours

[Fodderboy]

Will there be a new game launcher for the Portalus version of the game? If so, how do I get it?

There will be a new game launcher file you will have to download. We will be providing details on where you can download this file as soon as it is available.

Just curious if the Support system for the game will come back up so we can file tickets and see the status? Instead of Emails to support?

FLS’s support system will not be moving over to Portalus. We’ll continue to have the same email system we are using now until we can implement more.

Support requests that are in progress prior to the 31st shut down will resume after the servers are back up. There is the potential that support could be very busy right after the servers come up so please be patient. We can’t be certain we’ll be able to maintain a queue if we have numerous problems after the servers start up.

how soon can we get a credit card entered on our account to still get burning sea notes?

Credit card billing will most likely not be ready until the 2nd or 3rd week post launch. There will be PayPal at launch until we can add in the credit card billing for players that want to get Burning Sea Notes.

what is latest news on captians club?

The Captain’s Club as it has existed is being discontinued. We’re redesigning the subscription service and moving its price point downward. We’re going to allow all accounts that currently have an active Captain’s Club membership to remain as active Captain’s Club members until the replacement subscription service is in place.

[Fodderboy]

We’re down to about 28 hours to go until launch and there is no change in status. Everything is still on target to start the launch process on time. No new issues have been found. At this point we are for the most part just engaged in early environment testing and finishing up last minute preparation work. This testing will continue through most of the evening but we’re going to cut it off at some point and allow the data team to get a good night’s rest in preparation for the long night coming on Feb. 1st.

The new game launcher will not be available for download until sometime after the servers go down on the evening of the 31st. The new launcher will cause conflicts with the SOE launcher so we’re going to hold the new launcher back until we’re completely clear of SOE. We’ll make the download for the new launcher available when we feel confident the servers will be coming up shortly and that we’re getting the performance we expect from it.

Next projected status update: current post time +16-18 hours

[Fodderboy]

We’re just a little over 7.5 hours from starting the Portalus launch with no change in status. No new issues have been found and servers are still scheduled to go down at 10:30pm Pacific time.

The outage experienced earlier in the day was due to a piece of hardware we had in place in Seattle that’s just a stop gap component while the real piece of hardware that should have been there got an early start heading to Los Angeles. We’re pretty confident that the hardware in Seattle will be okay for the remainder of the day. That hardware only has to last another about 7.5 hours after which it will only serve as an emergency backup.

This will most likely be the last update prior to just before down time unless there is some change in status. Once the launch begins we will begin posting updates more frequently as we get a better idea of how the process is going.

Next projected status update: current post time +7 hours

[Fodderboy]

We are still on track to start our launch at 10:30pm Pacific time this evening. We wanted to issue this early update because we have new information regarding the launch process itself.

After we shut the FLS servers off and begin to disassemble that data center we will need to bring down burningsea.com for its transition to our Portalus servers. During this time the burningsea.com forums and website will not be available until the transition is complete. While the burningsea.com forums are unavailable we will make the launch status information available on our Portalus Games website (portalusgames.com). The forums should come back up before the servers do. The current estimated down time regarding burningsea.com is 4-24 hours.

[Fodderboy2]

So far there have been no official updates to change the status of having the servers come up sometime tomorrow. That said, burningsea.com came up a bit beyond the original estimates for it and I think I would expect there is the possibility that we’re running about 16-18 hours behind our original schedule. I can’t be 100% certain here. Hamled and some of the data team are currently sleeping so we (Hitch and I) most likely won’t see an update until sometime tomorrow. I just want folks to be prepared for the possibility that bringing the servers up might be pushed into Tuesday (Feb. 5th).

Beyond the hard drive issue Hamled mentioned we haven’t encountered any major issues. Most delays are simply processes taking a bit longer than expected which is good and bad. It’s bad we don’t get to play again as soon as we’d like but it’s good in that without any major issues cropping up we have every reason to believe right now we are only hours (as opposed to days) behind our expected schedule.

Oh and for the curious as to why I'm posting with a different account it is because my primary is being used for testing purposes at the moment.

Next projected status update: current post time +18 hours

[Fodderboy2]

At this post’s time we can conclude that the servers will not be available today (Feb. 4th).

Hamled is giving us a “tomorrow maybe” estimate at this time. He’s not encountering any issues the team cannot handle but they are experiencing more issues than expected. He categorized the issues as issues “encountered with running the servers on the latest and greatest version of Windows”. This was always a bit of a grey area in our schedule as we knew that by updating everything we’d experience some of this.

I’d like to thank everyone for your patience with this process. I know the launcher is of concern to many players at this point but its availability is part of the launch process. There’s some testing that still has to occur with it before we can release it to everyone. We’ll keep you updated on that status of that as well here as more information becomes available. At this point I would not expect the status of anything to change for the next 24 hours.

Next projected status update: current post time +24 hours