Lag Issues

Although people have always been complaining about lag that originates in their connections, we've started experiencing server-side lag issues in the game in the last few months. While connection-related lag is something you all can feasibly fix (by changing ISPs, fiddling with their wireless connections, upgrading in-home wiring, et cetera), mitigating server-side lag is something beyond your control; it will happen no matter how good your connection is. Fortunately, server-side lag affects all players equally, and you won't find your character dead if a server-side lag spike happens while you're in a fight.

For the sake of appeasing any fears related to this increase in lag, here is some useful information:

• If you come out of the lag spike and a bunch of text (eg battle spam) dumps out on your screen all at once, the lag is due to your connection. If you come out of the lag spike and only one more round of battle spam happens though, it was a server-side problem.
• Server-side lag locks up the whole game, including battle, mobs, pk, and everything else. If you're in PK and there is some server-side lag, your opponent feels it just as bad as you do--the tables will not be turned on you. Connection-related lag, though, can be fatal.
  
• Similarly, you aren't going to die if you're fighting the hydra and the server locks up momentarily. The fight itself locks up, so the hydra isn't hitting you while your screen is frozen; the hydra is frozen up too. While it can be unnerving to have your screen freeze up mid-fight, if the problem is on the server side, the fight will resume as normal when everything unfreezes. There will be no catching up on battle as there would've been if the lag was due to your connection.

Thus, if your connection is usually good and you notice your screen freezing up momentarily, for the most part you don't have to worry about anything bad happening to your character.

For those of you who are interested in the technical details, this server-side lag is due to the server on which we run being momentarily overloaded, an effect similar to when you run too many programs on your computer and you get the hourglass icon for a few seconds. Dark Risings runs on the same server as a number of other muds, and if one of them reboots, experiences some nasty bug which causes them to go rogue, or does anything which momentarily strains the server as a whole, we can feel the effects of that in the form of a lag spike.

Unfortunately, these server-side lag issues are something we will all have to just put up with for the time being. Dedicated hosting solutions cost between 3x and 4x as much as our current hosting, and our current costs are already about as much as we can afford without relying on some sort of revenue (donations, fees, et cetera). However, there is light at the end of the tunnel--our server is due to receive a hardware upgrade in the coming months. If this upgrade will include moving to a SMP (multicore) platform, the server-side lag spikes should go away almost completely.

Trouble Logging In?

If you're having trouble logging into darkrisings.com 1313, redirect your client to titan.mudmagic.com 1313, or 70.85.106.90 1313. All three are the same thing, but the last two should work for everyone. Sorry for the inconvenience! Hopefully we can resolve these technical difficulties soon.
<3
S

PS All technical difficulties are cleared up now, thanks your patience :)

Operation Sacred Spork

Phase six of Operation Sacred Spork has finally been concluded, and we're pleased to announce the templar class is finally live! We've been thoroughly testing it for the last couple of weeks and as Parviane said in his last change, we're skipping any "testing" stages as we're fully confident the class is nicely balanced, and will perform great. In terms of player kill, I've had a lot of fun testing this class out and am really interested to see what kind of combos start to turn up; I found that while heavy HP is tempting with them (as they are a fighter variety) the speed of their spells and costs really make heavy mana a necessity. They respond really well to turn around situations which is in the same vein of strategy as a cleric, but with a wildmage touch of chance. Inquisition you can fire off enough to really make the best of a bad situation, but the hp it eats just makes it that much scarier; I'm curious how people will use these... lots of noexits? Less? I'll be watching you guys spar and PK so make sure you aren't slacking >:D

It isn't in the help class tables JUST yet, so just to make it accessible to ever one the stat bonuses are +2 to con, and +1 to wis.

TEMPLARS AREN'T PALADINS! I've already heard this tossed around a lot and I can see how it's easy to think that with the similarities in RP, but this is a class unique to DR that has been constructed to operate very differently (not to mention that we have three different types of Templars, that aren't necessarily "good" "evil" or "neutral"). Warrior-Wildmage-Cleric is what we've described them as in a pinch, like I said... unique class, unique way to operate >:). Really I guess... you just have to try them out to see!

EDIT-

By the way everyone, great work on the voting! We've secured and maintained our number ten position and finally made our way back to the top ten muds. I can't say how impressed I am with the dedication of our pbase, and I really hope you all keep up the great work, this is sure to bring in some new faces. I've had some staff mention to me recently that they're really interested in what the players have been thinking about the changes to the game, so I'd love to see some new reviews on TMC if anyone has time or desire too.