Lagmonster Anniversary
Mar. 16th, 2012 03:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
codyne posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
dragoncaversToday is the 3rd anniversary of the beginning of the dreaded Lagmonster Attack. I was reminded of it this morning when I got online and the Cave was being very laggy. I looked at the date and thought, Uh oh! It's back!
I'd been playing less than three months when the Lag occurred. I remember that some people were suggesting collecting mints for St Patrick's Day. I didn't want a mint at the time, but I picked up a CB pebble, another green dragon, on the 16th, mere hours before the lag set in. He survived the Lag and was named Padraig O'Lag to commemorate.
I didn't really notice how laggy the Cave was at first. My own internet connection at the time was so laggy, I just thought it was business as usual when I couldn't get the egg's view page to load. But soon it was clear this wasn't just an ordinary lag. Very few pages were loading, and the ones that did took minutes to finally load in. At first, we all just assumed it was temporary, and tried to carry on.
The next day was St Patrick's Day. TJ put up a special green layout for the day, but hardly anyone actually got to see it. The lag had only gotten worse. A lot of people couldn't get the Cave to load at all -- the pages just timed out. The people who could get through tried to give views, and report on people's eggs and hatchlings to those who couldn't see their scrolls at all. TJ contacted his server's host, but they said they couldn't find anything wrong. After trying to work with them for days while the lag never let up, he decided he would just change hosts and move the server.
Meanwhile, TJ disabled egg drops and then breeding to relieve the load on the server, and we all did our best to save the eggs and hatchlings still growing. It could take several minutes of repeated trying to give a single view, so it was very hard to get enough views to keep the dragons alive. Besides my new green egg, I had a red egg that I'd bred on the 14th, and black and frill hatchlings. The black was the oldest, and already had a fair number of views, so I wasn't too worried about it, but the others were growing very slowly. It was difficult even to get the eggs and hatchlings into fansites, because the Cave would time out before the fansite could call up your scroll. I remember taking up to 45 minutes to get my eggs and hatchlings into Soti-Dragon's fansite, just trying over and over again until it finally accepted them. My pathetic connection made it hard to give views, but I did the best I could.
TJ found a new home for the server, but it would have to be shipped from Oregon (I think) to Florida. Someone donated the money to cover the shipping costs, and TJ moved the Cave to a temporary server on March 21 to keep the site alive while the move was taking place. It was still laggy, but usable. I managed to nurse my eggs and hatchlings through the lag, and Padraig O'Lag, the last of them, finally grew up on March 26, a full 10 days after being stolen.
TJ re-enabled limited egg drops on March 30, and also added two days to the eggs and hatchlings that were left to give them more time to grow. By then, I'd been without any eggs or hatchlings for four whole days! We were all so desperate for eggs, we were snapping up anything that dropped. I grabbed a gray egg and a pink egg, both cave cloggers at the time, and was grateful to have them!
The server arrived at its new home and the site was copied over on April 3. After two weeks of battling the Lagmonster, Dragon Cave was back!
As it turned out, the old pink egg I'd snatched when the cave returned after the lag ended up being my one and only CB old pink. I had a couple of bred ones, but I wasn't interested in lineages at the time and I'd never bothered to pick up any others from the cave. If not for the lag, I wouldn't have Ms Pinky McPinkerson.
I'd been playing less than three months when the Lag occurred. I remember that some people were suggesting collecting mints for St Patrick's Day. I didn't want a mint at the time, but I picked up a CB pebble, another green dragon, on the 16th, mere hours before the lag set in. He survived the Lag and was named Padraig O'Lag to commemorate.
I didn't really notice how laggy the Cave was at first. My own internet connection at the time was so laggy, I just thought it was business as usual when I couldn't get the egg's view page to load. But soon it was clear this wasn't just an ordinary lag. Very few pages were loading, and the ones that did took minutes to finally load in. At first, we all just assumed it was temporary, and tried to carry on.
The next day was St Patrick's Day. TJ put up a special green layout for the day, but hardly anyone actually got to see it. The lag had only gotten worse. A lot of people couldn't get the Cave to load at all -- the pages just timed out. The people who could get through tried to give views, and report on people's eggs and hatchlings to those who couldn't see their scrolls at all. TJ contacted his server's host, but they said they couldn't find anything wrong. After trying to work with them for days while the lag never let up, he decided he would just change hosts and move the server.
Meanwhile, TJ disabled egg drops and then breeding to relieve the load on the server, and we all did our best to save the eggs and hatchlings still growing. It could take several minutes of repeated trying to give a single view, so it was very hard to get enough views to keep the dragons alive. Besides my new green egg, I had a red egg that I'd bred on the 14th, and black and frill hatchlings. The black was the oldest, and already had a fair number of views, so I wasn't too worried about it, but the others were growing very slowly. It was difficult even to get the eggs and hatchlings into fansites, because the Cave would time out before the fansite could call up your scroll. I remember taking up to 45 minutes to get my eggs and hatchlings into Soti-Dragon's fansite, just trying over and over again until it finally accepted them. My pathetic connection made it hard to give views, but I did the best I could.
TJ found a new home for the server, but it would have to be shipped from Oregon (I think) to Florida. Someone donated the money to cover the shipping costs, and TJ moved the Cave to a temporary server on March 21 to keep the site alive while the move was taking place. It was still laggy, but usable. I managed to nurse my eggs and hatchlings through the lag, and Padraig O'Lag, the last of them, finally grew up on March 26, a full 10 days after being stolen.
TJ re-enabled limited egg drops on March 30, and also added two days to the eggs and hatchlings that were left to give them more time to grow. By then, I'd been without any eggs or hatchlings for four whole days! We were all so desperate for eggs, we were snapping up anything that dropped. I grabbed a gray egg and a pink egg, both cave cloggers at the time, and was grateful to have them!
The server arrived at its new home and the site was copied over on April 3. After two weeks of battling the Lagmonster, Dragon Cave was back!
As it turned out, the old pink egg I'd snatched when the cave returned after the lag ended up being my one and only CB old pink. I had a couple of bred ones, but I wasn't interested in lineages at the time and I'd never bothered to pick up any others from the cave. If not for the lag, I wouldn't have Ms Pinky McPinkerson.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 04:41 pm (UTC)