Server unstable do quests at own risk... (client .3.19)

[pk@planeshift]

My problems with the server are two fold.
I have been playing PS during the last week and continually lose my connection to the server...not only when the server is reset. I am located in Australia, so I asked some friends in Europe and they said they weren't experiencing the same server crashes. I did not experience this amount of lost server connections prior to the .19 upgrade.
My second problem is quest related. Because I needed PPs and the AI was down I decided to pass the time doing some quests. Bad Move. I have almost completed a certain quest from a female NPC in BD. I am at the stage where I give a certain number of items to a certain craftsman NPC that specifically requests these items to make an item for the first NPC in BD. The craftsman NPC won't accept the items when I attempt to give them. This is all I have to do. I have completed all prerequisite tasks. The NPC craftsman's last words are in my log file. I checked with two other players, and I am sure I have correctly completed everything. I believe the game server has lost my last NPC transaction. My quests list still shows this one as active and is the only one I have. I do not have many options available now, I probably wont be able to get this quest again, however I can warn other players from doing any important quests during this upgrade time. From personal experience.

[CagedFey]

I think your quest suggestion is a good one for newer players.  Example: NPC Jane gives you an item to give to NPC John.  You give said item to NPC John, who then tells you how to proceed in the quest.  Server goes down, NPCs John and Jane have no idea what you're talking about, and you can't get the item again with your character to trigger the quest to continue.  Solution: Make another character to get the "missing" item you need.

Also, please have patience.  The server is going to be up and down while the remaining kinks are getting ironed out.

[wither]

Im not sure what your mates in europe are saying, but everyone i know are experiencing the same constant crashes of the server, Im in Oz too.   

As for your quest, try going back a step and repeating what you said to the last npc, this might trigger it off from there again.

[Outrageous fortune]

European suffering sever crashes as well.

[Karyuu]

Everyone experiences server crashes now and then, especially after a new client release - it's not a location/time zone issue.

[pk@planeshift]

Thanks everyone for your replies.

I have created a second character in order to do that particular quest, but more importantly to carry my extra loot. In the meantime I have borrowed the quest item from a generous friend who had one extra.

try going back a step and repeating what you said to the last npc, this might trigger it off from there again.

I already tried backtracking, right back to the source, however that didn't work either...

I'm still wary about doing any quests during this .19 upgrade...and believe it would be wiser to wait until the server is a bit more reliable/stable before resuming any important quests. (Even though waiting is almost impossible to do as I find myself furiously trying to reconnect, before the suggested 5mins, after any server crash)

Despite of this a PS fan.

[wither]

I'm still wary about doing any quests during this .19 upgrade...and believe it would be wiser to wait until the server is a bit more reliable/stable before resuming any important quests.

A wise suggestion indeed

[Tecafo]

Yeah I agree with this guy, try not to do any quests because the server is heavily unstable at this point. Now unless you know what to do if the quest doesn't continue normally then try not to even start the quest.

[Aiken]

Im not sure what your mates in europe are saying, but everyone i know are experiencing the same constant crashes of the server, Im in Oz too.   

Might not be common but there has been one case recently where some people could not get in while others could.

Recently there was a routing issue a couple of hops before the server and for awhile whether you could connect to the server depended on the route your packets took. 2 days ago for nearly 2 hours I was unable to connect to the server from Australia while people in other countries could.

Doing a traceroute, Laanx is hop 13 from me. During the troublesome time a traceroute was stopping at hop 11 and all I was getting was Failed or very high pings with high packet loss. Getting a traceroute from someone you was playing fine there was nothing in common with the path.

[Raleigh]

      Unless you are interested in supporting the game by testing and reporting bugs in the quest system, I wouldn't advise using it, currently doesn't match with the goals of a player(someone seeking fun), because for doing quests, the "testers first, players second" is the most appropriate statement.

[wither]

@Aiken:  Strange mate, Im in Australia, and if i cant get on, no one is on, but then my traceroute appears to be different to you as well.  I have 15 hops in my traceroute, always with a very good ping though, 148ms, well, when server is up, hehe.

[Nairan]

i have 16 from europe and average of 450 ms

[Unnamed_Source]

Do we have any Korean players? I would love to know what their latency is.

[Aiken]

@Aiken:  Strange mate, Im in Australia, and if i cant get on, no one is on, but then my traceroute appears to be different to you as well.  I have 15 hops in my traceroute, always with a very good ping though, 148ms, well, when server is up, hehe.

I wonder if there is any chance you are around now. It is 1:45pm in cloudy Queensland and there is no path from me to laanx while people on the irc channel are claiming to be playing.

[LlubNek]

Why doesn't the server backup NPC status in the database?  At least then when the server goes down the NPCs won't forget everything (unless you rebuild the database...).

It wouldn't need to constantly query the database whenever someone talks to an NPC:  just load the status info once on startup, then use a background thread to post updates to mysql.