I've seen many posts from others in the IT industry that feel like we're dropping the ball. I understand how you might make that assumption from the outside, but it's impossible to understand the situation without knowing everything else that is going on behind the scenes.
We've been working on a database upgrade for almost a year. We've had the new database in our QA environment for quite awhile making sure all the kinks are worked out. It takes a big effort to migrate our live servers to a new database. It requires a decent amount of downtime and there is always a chance for problems to crop up. So this is not something we take lightly.
Our DB group has been working on a large infrastructure upgrade elsewhere in the company which was due to be completed one week before the Nagafen merge. Because of this, the option to upgrade the database hardware was not possible for our planned merge date.
At the time we decided to do the merge, there were lag issues on Nagafen, but nothing as bad as what we experienced a few weeks ago. We worked with our database group to optimize queries and troubleshoot the problems. For the most part, we've fixed the big lag issues on Nagafen, but they could always return, especially if we significantly increase the load.
Our plan was to combat the lag issue by aggressively purging data on both servers prior to the merge. However, this is still no guarantee that the lag wouldn't return.
Last week, our DB group completed the infrastructure upgrade that they've been working on for months. They came to us with the option of taking the QA database environment where we've been testing the new hardware and software, and using it for the new Nagafen database. This option was never made available to us on the game team before the end of last week. Since our DB group committed to making this happen in less than 30 days, it gave us the option to delay the merge and end up with a much-needed database upgrade that we've been wanting to do for a long time.
On top of that, having one live server on the new database means the others can follow much more easily. We knew that many of you would be disappointed with delaying the merger again, but hoped the promise of a new database backend and less lag would make it worth the 30-days wait. It's very difficult to make everyone happy, but we think this course of action will give us the best outcome in the long run.
We understand that Venekor is suffering from a low population, but we also have to think about the large Nagafen population as well. We could continue with the merge and risk a reintroduction of the lag, but that problem would not only impact the Venekor players, but the Nagafen players as well.
Our intention is not to string you along by moving dates back, but this is the risk we take when we communicate openly about our plans in advance. This also happened recently with the Shader 3.0 project when we announced that we needed a little more time. The only way to make sure we don't extend our deadlines is to not communicate our deadlines until we know they can be met.
We like to think that you prefer the open communication with the risk of change later on. But if this is a problem we can always go back to holding onto these updates until we are more confident of their launch dates. Personally, I prefer the open communication so you can at least plan further in advance. But in return we have to ask for your patience when dates and plans can change.
Even if we don't say it much, we really do appreciate those of you that have hung in there when you've had other options for your time and your money. Please hang in there a little longer.
LINK
(Rothgar) Re:Venekor/Nagafen Merge
Re: (Rothgar) Re:Venekor/Nagafen Merge
