[MUD-Dev] Server stability (was: Player statistics)

[Koster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu 
> [mailto:mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu]On Behalf Of
> Bruce
> Sent: Friday, January 12, 2001 6:43 PM
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Server stability (was: Player statistics)

> David Kennerly wrote:

>> By 1998, Doomvas was remarkably stable.  When I operated Dark Ages,
>> I set a personal record of 3 or 4 months operation without a single
>> server crash.  I'm guessing this is remarkable.  I don't know what
>> other game server engines average.  Players tell me the EQ, UO,
>> etc. have a game server crash about once a week.  I'm skeptical of
>> many things I'm told.

No, it's accurate.

> Or the reverse ... are there people who feel that a server that
> crashes once/week is fine, that the customers will still be happy
> and life will go on, and so the invested effort (since time is
> money) is overkill and doesn't pay off from a business perspective?
> Maybe server stability really doesn't matter that much, so long as
> data isn't lost often and the players can be kept happy.

The goal is always to get to 100% uptime and the servers just aren't
there, but it's also true that these services make a habit of bringing
down the servers frequently (weekly or more) anyway to do things like
add content, do patches, etc. So there's a valid "why bother?" 
argument to be made, as long as the uptime exceeds the periodic
downtime schedule.

Now, if it doesn't, customers get very unhappy. Especially in the case
of something like UO, which like a MOO/MUSH, saves full world state
for *everything* in the game. That comes out at (last I recall) 17
million objects per server, or in real time terms, a 3 hour boot time
to read it off of disk. :)

-Raph
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