BGA heartbeat: what's up doc?

[Gabelfleisch]

I second the suggestion of cloning the site.
Separate everything, server and database. The new server starts empty. Players have to register there again.
Create a parent site reporting the number of players inside each server and its capacity. People will decide where to go to play and load balance themselves.
It won't be a problem for people that want to play with friends: all of them will login into the same server.
Maybe it's a problem for players that want to play with anybody online because two smaller servers are worse than a big one. At least they can play instead of reloading the page and hope to get in.

Good point.
still some questions will remain on the sync across servers: management of account credentials and friends lists, rankings and reputation, etc. what to start from scratch for the user, what needs import at first/each entry into a server, what/when to synchronise databases...

[VsechPetPloutvi]

Good job with handling this situation which we are all stuck in.

[Loonarfoot]

This site is very usefull this days. Thnks for this. The least we can do is to be premium members.... 4 euros are more or less one coffe. we must support them as they support us. Thnks again.

[PaoloMon]

I second the suggestion of cloning the site.
Separate everything, server and database. The new server starts empty. Players have to register there again.
Create a parent site reporting the number of players inside each server and its capacity. People will decide where to go to play and load balance themselves.
It won't be a problem for people that want to play with friends: all of them will login into the same server.
Maybe it's a problem for players that want to play with anybody online because two smaller servers are worse than a big one. At least they can play instead of reloading the page and hope to get in.

Good point.
still some questions will remain on the sync across servers: management of account credentials and friends lists, rankings and reputation, etc. what to start from scratch for the user, what needs import at first/each entry into a server, what/when to synchronise databases...

I suggest to sync only the information related to payments: maybe it's only if the user is premium or not but it's never as simple as that

Friends lists, rankings, etc, everything is per server. This is far from ideal but the system will keep running. Furthermore the effect could be that old users stick on the original server and new users go to the new one. It should be enough to ease the load on the server.

Another suggestion: create servers and name them per geographical areas. The original server could be Global. Then create Americas, Europe, Asia etc (you know who your players are). People playing with friends should gravitate on the server for their area even if everybody can register to any server. Social engineering, no coding.

Anyway, you're doing a good job. It's not easy to scale a service under this pressure especially if some component turns out to be hard to scale. Thanks again.

[LaszloK]

Sorry if this has been suggested before. Between double posting and leeching resources by sifting through 16 pages of replies, I'm preferring the former.

The limitation of 20k users makes practical sense, but wouldn't it be MUCH fairer to limit the time non-premium players can spend on the site, either at once, or in total during the day? E.g. by dropping off those that have been on for the longest period of time when the limit is reached?

To illustrate - it took me 5 minutes of retries to get in just to be able to post this suggestion, even though I've only spent about 20 mins on the site today (all off peak). I was quite frustrated by that initially. Whereas if I had played for 2 hours I wouldn't be too frustrated, I'd just shrug and say "ok, someone else's turn now".

Good luck with keeping up with all the crazy changes, and thanks for all your hard work, though. Not trying to whine - just giving honest, transparent feedback.

[Clok Wizend]

I just joined because our regular games (ITRW) are suspended. I am very impressed with the quality of this site, and wish I had found it sooner. Good job of accommodating the heavier traffic, and thanks for keeping it free.

[Jacques21]

You're doing a great job, and we appreciate it!

Stay sane/stay safe!

[hup40]

Thank you for all your efforts - you make the stay in place period much more bearable, since here are real humans playing against each other, interacting and communicating which each other, while it is otherwise not possible or advisable. In doing so, you really help a lot of people to keep entertained and thus sane.

So: Thank you for your service on this frontline of the corona-war of 2020!

[RiverWanderer]

Expect another bump up in users.... BBC News “click” programme name-checked BGA today on a “things to do in lockdown” feature.

[vinoddas]

Thank you, this site is amazing.