The server move is complete with almost no problems at all. A huge
thanks to IRE's CTO, Chris Kohnert, for an incredibly efficient and
seamless transfer over to the new machine. We were down for less than 20
minutes! Things have been running really well, and our database save
times are down from 15-20 seconds to 2-3 seconds. See below for a note
on lag.

I've also started the artifact auction. To view the items, go to any
auction house, and do WARES ARTIFACT. More information about the auction
process can be found in HELP AUCTION. The auctions will all run for
about 7 days from now, with possible extensions due to last minute
bidding activity.

A note on lag:

There are two types of "lag" that you can experience while playing
Imperian: network lag and system lag. The first is when your connection
to Imperian is slow or temporarily gets blocked. You can usually tell if
it's bad network lag if you're bashing, Imperian freezes, and you see
that things have kept you hitting when it comes back.

System lag is when Imperian's server is processing something and can
cause Imperian to completely freeze up. You can usually tell if it's bad
system lag if you're bashing, Imperian freezes, and things have not hit
you when it unfreezes. Imperian is pretty much guaranteed to freeze up
for 2-3 seconds several times each hour when we do a full backup of
pretty much everything about Imperian. This is why, when Imperian
crashes and we get a "timewarp", you rarely lose more than 20 minutes of
activity.

Both network and system lag can manifest themselves as a general
slowdown in each command that you've entered. There's really no way to
distinguish which can be the culprit. However, we have internal
monitoring tools that allow us to see how responsive the system is in
terms of system lag. When we see a problem, we generally work to fix it
as soon as possible. Imperian almost always runs with a command latency
of less than 50 milliseconds. We investigate anything over 100.

While we're committed to providing as fast a connection to you as
possible, network lag is usually something we have no control over. A
blockage/slowdown can occur anywhere between you and the server.


Penned by my hand on the 12th of Naturalis, in the year 534 AD.