ForEverQuest Server

[meeble]

I do hope I'm allowed to have a thread like this here, at least until we get our own website up. :)

As you may have noticed, I started a new server yesterday. I'm pleased to have already received comments from various people on how they're enjoying the server, which was a nice surprise! :)

My new server is called ForEverQuest (cheesy, cheesy! But I like it! 8)) , and it is hosted on my new RedHat 9 dedicated server, yay. :)

Anyway, this thread is here just to gather people's thoughts on the server, and any ideas anyone may have as to how they would like to see it improved etc. I'm willing to invest lots of time and effort into all this, so any and all suggestions are welcome. :)

We (being my boyfriend and myself!) are thinking of making this a custom, semi-legit server. We'd like players to enjoy the immersive experience of EQLive, whilst still enjoying the benefits an EQEmu server can provide. It would be really nice if we could get an active community going on this server! It would be nice to hear your thoughts on just how legit/non-legit you'd like this server to be (if you're planning on playing on it, that is, lol)

So yes, please post here with any thoughts at all you may have regarding the ForEverQuest server. :) If you've noticed any problems which need fixing, please also post here and I'll give it a shot. :D

(We'll have a website up at ForEverQuest.org (http://www.foreverquest.org), as soon as I can sort out all the DNS/Bind problems I'm having! Edit: that's actually sorted now, so the website will be up when... well, when I've made an actual website for it! :evil: )

[meeble]

Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention is that I haven't actually played on my own server yet, lol, because I stupidly patched to live yesterday, doh! :(

Also, I'm going to be implementing the #zone command for all players as soon as I can restart the server, although I don't want to do that whilst there are players on it, because that would just piss people off. ;) If only I could log on to let people know that the server needs to be restarted! *sigh*

Edit: Silly me, I just telnetted to 9000 to access the server that way, heh. The command #zone has now been implemented. :)

[Melwin2]

The fact that you seem to have something resembling a grasp of the English language goes a long way in my book.

I just hope you're prepared for spending a lot of time on this server. I speak from experience when I say that a custom server takes an incredible amount of time. That is, if you mean custom in the sense that you'll be making new mobs/items rather than just placing the old mobs in new locations.

[meeble]

The fact that you seem to have something resembling a grasp of the English language goes a long way in my book.

LOL, I do hope I have more than just "something resembling a grasp of the English language"! ;) *waves an England flag*


I just hope you're prepared for spending a lot of time on this server. I speak from experience when I say that a custom server takes an incredible amount of time. That is, if you mean custom in the sense that you'll be making new mobs/items rather than just placing the old mobs in new locations.


And yes, I am definitely prepared to spend lots of time on this server. I do indeed mean that I intend on making new mobs/items. :)

Thanks for your comments, Melwin!

[Melwin2]

Best of luck to you, then. Maybe I'll come check it out sometime when someone releases a backpatch.

[Vasker88]

The server is running nicely, there was a bug when you zone and items are deleted but i belive it is fixed now...Thanks for the Simi-Ligit server=)

FTW

[meeble]

...Thanks for the Simi-Ligit server=)

Thanks for playing on it! ;)

[MisterPink923]

hey i came in the other day and talked to you

i was i dont remember what my name was!!! i donno what my name was!!!!

are you going to add uber exp bonuses?

extra levels?

all the original items from normal EQ?

cheap items on vendors taht are nice in EQ? (jboots, kodaics robe, cocw, cof)

fun events if the community grows?


the two most important things i like to see in a server is

ORIGINAL LOOTS! (which scorpius2k doesnt have and is why i want to quit it, plus they renamed all the uber mobs to things like DRAGONDEATH2K and LORD SNARE2k!!! and retarded things that dont make any sense) original loots and mobs are SO important

the scorp server is missing items on evrey kunark velious EVNE PRE KUNARK zones items, nothing drops in ldon or luclin either, which makes it useless to lvl



OH WELL this is MisterPink for now and i hope my rant has given you ideas of waht to add to your server !!!!

thanks!! answer my questions that i asked too lol when u get the chance

[GundamGP02]

An excellent server. I've longed for one of these. I've noticed a lot of servers leaning towards legit, and although I enjoy that as well, I like to have a server I can "explore" with various equipment on, while having to earn my way to it. I enjoy being able to choose custom equip, while still having to earn my levels and scribe my spells normally. I just like experimenting with diff. armor sets and stuff like that. Seems like everyone's going legit 'cuz itz in high demand, but there are still semi-legit servers which are still great.
I very much enjoy your server, and I thank you for making it such a great one.

I was wondering if Ranger Trainers have been implemented or not. I've been to various trainer zones and have found them to be either not present, or were acting as a eqemu shopkeeper rather than a trainer. I still have my kick and dual weld to train, and since itz semi-legit, I cannot learn the skill w/o a trainer. I was wondering whether the ranger trainer is just hidden, or it has not been completed yet. A response in your convenience would be great! Thanks.

[Zkhava]

Yes, Excellent server :lol:

[meeble]

To answer your questions and queries:

MisterPink, thanks for your questions! :) I'm honestly a bit unsure of some of these, as there's lots of issues that we've yet to work out yet! :) But anyway, here's my attempt at answering.


are you going to add uber exp bonuses?

To be honest, I'm leaning towards a "no" for this one. We are semi-legit, as I said, but at the same time, we don't want to make things too easy. I believe there's quite enough available on the server at the moment to make levelling up quite fast as it is. :)

extra levels?
Quite possibly, yes. Again, this is something which is open for discussion though, and I'd like to hear what our other players think about it. As I said, we are a custom server, so it would indeed be nice to be able to expand beyond level 65 and create lots of new completely new zones and mobs for 65+. We'll see. :)

all the original items from normal EQ?
Whilst we'll be adding our own custom items, the original items will also be kept intact at the same time, yes. :)

cheap items on vendors taht are nice in EQ? (jboots, kodaics robe, cocw, cof)
Well, the #summonitem command is actually enabled for all players at the moment, so I'm not sure if there'd be much point in something like that. :) Again, everything is open for discussion, though!

fun events if the community grows?
Oh, absolutely! :) Once everything is a bit more settled, we'll most definitely be holding lots of regular fun events. :)


the two most important things i like to see in a server is

ORIGINAL LOOTS! (which scorpius2k doesnt have and is why i want to quit it, plus they renamed all the uber mobs to things like DRAGONDEATH2K and LORD SNARE2k!!! and retarded things that dont make any sense) original loots and mobs are SO important

As I said, we'll be retaining the original EverQuest items, but also adding lots of our own at the same time. ;)

Thanks for all your comments and questions!

GundamGP02, I'm glad you're enjoying the server. :) I've now fixed Ranger trainers (or at least, they should be fixed!) Thanks for pointing out that they weren't working. :)


Other Server-ish announcements
I noticed that lots of trainers were slacking in their jobs. I've given them all a good slap on the wrist, so they should all have got their arses back in gear, now. :D If you do spot any trainers which still aren't working, though, please let me know!

Also, the #save and #scribespells commands have now been enabled for all players. :)

[GundamGP02]

wow! Thx for the great short reply time. Looks like everything worked properly for the ranger trainer, thatz perfect! I would just like to inquire on another issue. I've noticed zoning is great for all other zones except for planes. Even though I meet the requirements and such, I noticed that whenever zoning in planes (regardless of it being a new plane, or PoP plane) the game does not work afterwards. It doesn't drop me off, but I need to force a termination because it will not load. I have to restart the game, and select my char before I'm able to get into the zone.

Sometimes it is worse, for instance when I tried PoFear, and PoInnovations, I had to actually wait for it to time out? I'm not sure, but I had to wait like 30 mins before trying again to actually zone through. I'm not sure why, but it only seems to be an issue with planar zones, so I'm wondering if we need to watch out for planes. I thought it might've just been 'cuz I played so long or something, but I tried on another computer, as well as loading up the game on a fresh restart and the problem persists.

Thanks in advance for your reply/actions! Have a nice day.

[Zkhava]

Meeble, im looking forward to the server once i get my damn DSL on tuesday ;)

[Vasker88]

Sorry but, The Data Base is real buggy items are getting destroyed when you zone and old items come back into your invotory...Im not sure if there is something out there you can get to fix it or not...But other than that the server is great...alot of people are 65 now and they are starting on AA or alts

65 warrior
59 monk

FTW

[Melwin2]

I think exp might be an incy wincy bit too fast if people have multiple 60+ already.

[Wiz]

Good luck. The best advice I can ever give you is to never ever ever hire a GM that you haven't observed as a player.

[Zkhava]

Best way to observe a player your looking into recruiting for a gm staff, is to make a character on a diff account or so & see what there attitude is.

So what im really saying is what " Wiz " said but in my own words...

lol :)

[GundamGP02]

could be just because since we can summon, we can fight a lot of stuff that is higher level than us. After all, it is a non-legit server so something like that is expected. I like playing on semi/non-legit servers 'cuz I can relax and do stuff I otherwise wouldn't be able to do in live.

[Zkhava]

Ok, Say the server is custom legit.... people ( as myself gm on one ) like Servers that have very few bugs & is fun...



Meaning hard time , if the gm staff is nice & awsome , the events are kool , im sure the number of players would improve :)

[meeble]

Sorry but, The Data Base is real buggy items are getting destroyed when you zone and old items come back into your invotory...Im not sure if there is something out there you can get to fix it or not...But other than that the server is great...alot of people are 65 now and they are starting on AA or alts


Hmm, thanks for letting me know, Vasker. Gah, that rather sucks. :/ I have absolutely no idea why that is happening, but I will look into it for you. :cry:


I think exp might be an incy wincy bit too fast if people have multiple 60+ already.


Hm, I haven't modified the experience at all from the original source code; as Gundam said however, it is probably because of the ability to summon items and such, meaning that levelling up is very easy. I suppose people are levelling up a teensy bit too fast however, which worries me because this can probably just lead to them getting bored and leaving. Hrm. I'll have to have a good think about this.

To everyone else: Thanks for your comments and advice etc. :) I'm definitely not going to just going around recruiting lots of random people as GM's, and indeed, at the moment, we're not really actively looking for staff as such. :)

*sigh* Now to figure out why the database is being an arse.

[meeble]

Database problems
Okay, after fishing around on the forums I've concluded that it's down to possibly corrupt items existing in the DB. As I haven't added any customised items yet I'm happy to try and source the database with the latest dumpeditems table, to see if that works. Fingers crossed! I'll let you know when it's done. :)

Other News
I was going to post a new topic asking about this, but the forums seem to be throwing up errors when starting a new topic. Hrm. Anyway, I hope someone who knows about this will drop by this thread. ;)

Right, well sorry if this is a bit of a silly question, but I was wondering if anyone could advise as to how many zoneservers I should have running for this server, considering that it's been having 10+ people trying to connect at times?

Note I said "trying" to connect, because I didn't realise until last night that I didn't have enough zoneservers running, therefore I think lots of people were getting turned away. :/ I only realised this when I myself tried to connect and kept getting 'zone not available' errors when there were 12 people online.

How many zoneservers does the more popular servers like Scorpious2k and The Grand Creation have running? :)

I was previously only running 5, but have now increased the number to 10. :) So hopefully that will alleviate some of the 'zone unavailable errors'!

[meeble]

Database problems
Okay, after fishing around on the forums I've concluded that it's down to possibly corrupt items existing in the DB. As I haven't added any customised items yet I'm happy to try and source the database with the latest dumpeditems table, to see if that works. Fingers crossed! I'll let you know when it's done. :)


Okay, new (hopefully non-corrupted!) items table has been sourced. Please let me know if this fixes the mysterious item loss problem! :)

Edit: Eep, please note that the main problem I forsee with this is that you may have found that you've lost your items when you logon, due to the fact that the old items don't seem to map to the same id's as the new ones. I'm very sorry about this. :( You will need to resummon the items you want!

[Melwin2]

Database problems
Okay, after fishing around on the forums I've concluded that it's down to possibly corrupt items existing in the DB. As I haven't added any customised items yet I'm happy to try and source the database with the latest dumpeditems table, to see if that works. Fingers crossed! I'll let you know when it's done. :)

Other News
I was going to post a new topic asking about this, but the forums seem to be throwing up errors when starting a new topic. Hrm. Anyway, I hope someone who knows about this will drop by this thread. ;)

Right, well sorry if this is a bit of a silly question, but I was wondering if anyone could advise as to how many zoneservers I should have running for this server, considering that it's been having 10+ people trying to connect at times?

Note I said "trying" to connect, because I didn't realise until last night that I didn't have enough zoneservers running, therefore I think lots of people were getting turned away. :/ I only realised this when I myself tried to connect and kept getting 'zone not available' errors when there were 12 people online.

How many zoneservers does the more popular servers like Scorpious2k and The Grand Creation have running? :)

I was previously only running 5, but have now increased the number to 10. :) So hopefully that will alleviate some of the 'zone unavailable errors'!

We're running 75 zservers or so, 55 or so of which are static. The rest are buffer zones in case a static crashes.

[meeble]

We're running 75 zservers or so, 55 or so of which are static. The rest are buffer zones in case a static crashes.

Okay, thanks Melwin! :)


Right, now for an update on the database situation. It looks like sourcing the new items table didn't do the trick, and indeed, it made matters worse as charges stopped working, and also half the items we previously had were missing. For this reason, I've reloaded the old items table, as the general consensus was that most people were happier with it. :)

I am still investigating the zoning problem however, so until it is resolved, please #save often. :)

[Deus]

meeble, I have to say this is a gr8 server, I play a 65 warrior name Papertank and I am not bored yet, :D
I hope this server becomes a great success.
Infact I was the 5th 65 on the server, hehe :twisted:

[Mit_Nos]

First off Meeb let me compliment you on a terrific server. There is just one thing that bothers me. If I zone intto a zone that nobody else is in already, sometimes the game freezes while zoning.(I could let it sit there for hours and it would never zone). So I close down eq, and restart it. Try to log back in etc. It generally takes me 4-5 restarts of EQ to get my char logged back in, and I'm not sure what causes this.

[meeble]

First off Meeb let me compliment you on a terrific server. There is just one thing that bothers me. If I zone intto a zone that nobody else is in already, sometimes the game freezes while zoning.(I could let it sit there for hours and it would never zone). So I close down eq, and restart it. Try to log back in etc. It generally takes me 4-5 restarts of EQ to get my char logged back in, and I'm not sure what causes this.

Hi there, I'm glad you're enjoying the server. Hm, I'm not sure what is causing this, but I'm wondering if it's something that can be solved by having static zoneservers, which is probably something I'll set up very soon. :)

[Melwin2]

First off Meeb let me compliment you on a terrific server. There is just one thing that bothers me. If I zone intto a zone that nobody else is in already, sometimes the game freezes while zoning.(I could let it sit there for hours and it would never zone). So I close down eq, and restart it. Try to log back in etc. It generally takes me 4-5 restarts of EQ to get my char logged back in, and I'm not sure what causes this.

Hi there, I'm glad you're enjoying the server. Hm, I'm not sure what is causing this, but I'm wondering if it's something that can be solved by having static zoneservers, which is probably something I'll set up very soon. :)

The server drops you because the zone (serverside) loads too slow. I think, anyway.

[meeble]

The server drops you because the zone (serverside) loads too slow. I think, anyway.

Ah right, so having static zservers would indeed solve this?

In other news, my entire server seems to be down at the moment. I'm not sure what's going on, because I can still ping it, but I can't connect to any websites hosted on it or indeed to my EQEmu server. I'm not sure if this is just a problem my end but various different people from different locations seem to be having the same problem.

I've emailed my provider to see what is going on, so please sit tight in the meantime. I'm very sorry about this!

[Deus]

Yes I am having problems too, I know its gone from server select now, but before, I kept selected it and keep pressing 'Play Everquest' and it doesn't do anything, I've tried different servers and they all work.

[meeble]

Yes I am having problems too, I know its gone from server select now, but before, I kept selected it and keep pressing 'Play Everquest' and it doesn't do anything, I've tried different servers and they all work.

Okay, it should be back up now. My server had indeed crashed, but my provider just rebooted it for me and things should be running fine again now!

[GundamGP02]

hi meeble!

My char got stuck in PoI yesterday, and I thought I'd maybe wait it out a day to see if it would resolve itself out. Was thinking maybe just a small server kink, and I'll just tough it out for a day. Logged in today, and the zone still does not load properly. I've tried several times (and on different comps), and I guess maybe my char is stuck within that zone. I was wondering if you could edit my char to warp me outta there to a working/available zone. Any feedback you can also give me on this problem would be great, thx!

[Melwin]

Sounds like a case of loginbug, almost. o_O

[Vasker88]

The server is really great now you just about have to group to level you just can summon a Can O' Whoop asss and a BSD and go kill stuff in potime...Its a really great server every one should give it a try... :D

FTW

[Deus]

yea too bad those got Nerfed, HAHAHA :lol:

[Deus]

Damnit, its doing it again, =( o well, meebles probably working on it :)

[Vasker88]

I hope it isnt like this all the time... :cry:

[meeble]

Hmm, the server appears to have crashed again doesn't it? :/ I've contacted the provider once again for a reboot. The servers been running absolutely fine for a few weeks, so I am not sure what is causing it to crash now. All I can think of is that I've added extra zservers, which may be listening on certain ports they shouldn't be? Hmm. Well, when the server is back up I'll investigate.

Thanks for your patience everyone, and again, I'm sorry about this!


Edit: Situation update. Again, the provider very nicely rebooted the server for me within just minutes. Ahh, it's nice when you find good service, heh. They now have someone helping me examine the logs to see if they can find what's causing the server to go down. For now, I won't start up the EQEmu server until I find what the problem is. Please sit tight! :)

Now to go to back to bed. I woke up at 4.30am to check on the server (women's intuition, or just plain sad?!) and indeed it was down, lol. It's past 5am now, and I need sleeep. /incoherent babble.

[Vasker88]

Damn that sucks, untill then ill try to find another simi-ligit server...hope you get it fixed soon :)

FTW

[sotonin]

Meeble. . just curious what is your hardware specs on the server?

We had a similar problem on our weak p3 1gig machine with 256 ram.

We finally scratched it and got a 2ghz athlon with 1gig of ram and it's been working great.

The issue we had was the machine completely locking up. Not responding to anything except for ping. They had to hardware reboot it numerous times for a few weeks before we gave up on it. I think it was the lack of ram was causing too much strain on the machine itself, causing it to overload.

[meeble]

Hm, that is something that crossed my mind, but my machine is an AMD Athlon XP 2400 with 512MB DDR RAM. I'd have thought that it should be able to handle it. :/

I mean, I've also monitored the load on the server when there's been 5-10 people playing on it, and it doesn't seem to be a problem at all, so it's rather confusing.

Hmm, there's no word from the support guy yet, I'm going to try running the server again, but not run the extra zservers which may be a possible cause of the crash.

[meeble]

Okay, ForEverQuest is now back up and running. Please continue playing on it as normal, and I will be monitoring the load very closely. :)

[Deus]

sweet killer, thanks meeble

[meeble]

hi meeble!

My char got stuck in PoI yesterday, and I thought I'd maybe wait it out a day to see if it would resolve itself out. Was thinking maybe just a small server kink, and I'll just tough it out for a day. Logged in today, and the zone still does not load properly. I've tried several times (and on different comps), and I guess maybe my char is stuck within that zone. I was wondering if you could edit my char to warp me outta there to a working/available zone. Any feedback you can also give me on this problem would be great, thx!

Hey Gundam, sorry I missed this post earlier, oops. Hmm, a friend of mine new to the server was just having this problem actually, with trying to enter Dalnir, so I set it up as a static zone for him, and then he was able to enter it. I wonder why this problem is occurring. :/

Anyway, for now, I've moved your character to PoK. I'm sorry for the problems.

[sotonin]

Ya. that sounds like it should be able to handle it... How many zones do you have static and how many regular zones do u have open?

[meeble]

Well, I've only set one or two zones as static and about 18 as regular at the moment (though I'm actually soft rebooting right now and am going to try having lots more static zones instead of non-static ones to see if that helps the problem that people are having with getting disconnected when zoning.)

Of course, this would no doubt just cause even more memory to get eaten up so I don't know if it's the right step to take. :/ I'm going to look into optimizing MySQL, and see if that helps at all.

[Kammar]

Yay thankyou for a great server Meeble hoping that all works out ok =)

[Zkhava]

lol, meeble, keep up the good work :)

[GundamGP02]

Hey Gundam, sorry I missed this post earlier, oops. Hmm, a friend of mine new to the server was just having this problem actually, with trying to enter Dalnir, so I set it up as a static zone for him, and then he was able to enter it. I wonder why this problem is occurring. :/

Anyway, for now, I've moved your character to PoK. I'm sorry for the problems.

Thanks for the quick reply. Problem seems to still occur trying to get into PoK. Could it be a planar problem? I've had previous troubles zoning into planes before (whether it'd be old/new planes) and at least before I could manage to login after a few tries. Seems like this one is an iffy one now, doesn't want to let me in at all. Does my character data look ok? Seems to load up my character fine, and then afterwards it'll just keep on the zone load screen, keep playing music, after a while go back to the server screen. Nothing has changed since I last played normally, so I'm not quite sure what it might be. I guess I mind as well take a look at what might be wrong on this side.

Anyways, appreciate the reply, and if u get a chance to find out what might be wrong, I'm sure we'd all benefit from knowing. Thanks for your time!

[meeble]

Thanks for the quick reply. Problem seems to still occur trying to get into PoK. Could it be a planar problem? I've had previous troubles zoning into planes before (whether it'd be old/new planes) and at least before I could manage to login after a few tries. Seems like this one is an iffy one now, doesn't want to let me in at all. Does my character data look ok? Seems to load up my character fine, and then afterwards it'll just keep on the zone load screen, keep playing music, after a while go back to the server screen. Nothing has changed since I last played normally, so I'm not quite sure what it might be. I guess I mind as well take a look at what might be wrong on this side.

Anyways, appreciate the reply, and if u get a chance to find out what might be wrong, I'm sure we'd all benefit from knowing. Thanks for your time!

Oh dear, how odd. ( Well, POK is set as a static zone on the server, and moving others with similar problems into there has worked before, so I'm not sure why it isn't working in this case. :/ I'll investigate for you, though.


In other news:

A little (important?!) announcement
Firstly, thank you to everyone who has given me ideas and suggestions, be it ingame, via PMs, or here in this thread. :)

However, unfortunately, there seems to be a few problems with my server on which ForEverQuest runs. I'm having lots of problems with things like server load, memory, and CPU usage, whilst the game is running.

For this reason, I'm currently making it my priority to sort out these problems, rather than continuing with implementing things in the game for the time being. As I already mentioned, the server crashed twice in the space of a few hours a couple of nights ago.

The thing is, a well as running ForEverQuest on my dedicated server, I'm also running a few websites, and CPanel/WHM. This may be the reason why so many resources are being eaten up so quickly by the server.

I initially thought my server would be able to handle running all this (It is an AMD Athlon XP 2400 with 512MB DDR RAM), but as I'm having to reboot daily to stop running out of memory, I'm going to spend a while trying to optimize things as much as I can to see if it improves things. The server load tends to be around 20-30+ when there are just 6 people in the game, and when there is someone using CPanel on the server at the same time.

I really don't want to have to scrap ForEverQuest so soon, as it really is something I'm very much wanting to run. Therefore, if optimizing things doesn't work, I'm going to look into upgrading to 1GB of RAM instead, although that would cost me an extra $15 a month on top of what I already pay, and since I'm not really the richest of people, that really is a last resort!

Please continue playing on the server as normal though, and just know that I'm currently busy with trying to ensure that everything is running smoothly, and that I have enough resources available for ForEverQuest to run for a long time to come! :)

I'll keep you guys updated. :)


Edit Ooh, ok, I have spent a couple of hours tweaking things and performance seems to be a bit better already, yay. Now to see what happens at peak time tonight though, when we get a few more people on the server :D

[Zkhava]

Hey meeble, its zekhava from server..... you have done a good job bro.... i dont care what anybody says.... your server is perfecto!


:D

[hypershadow66]

ahh dont delete the server before i get a chance to play on it! it sounds like its 1 of the best servers on eqemu so once eqemu works with 7/16 patch then i wanna play it!! lol ok goobye

[meeble]

Hey meeble, its zekhava from server..... you have done a good job bro.... i dont care what anybody says.... your server is perfecto!
:D

I'm glad you're enjoying the server, Zkhava. :) By the way, I'm not a "bro" :p Thanks for your PM as well. :)


ahh dont delete the server before i get a chance to play on it! it sounds like its 1 of the best servers on eqemu so once eqemu works with 7/16 patch then i wanna play it!! lol ok goobye


Aw, don't worry, I have no intention of getting rid of the server at this point, but I'm just trying everything I can to iron out the issues we're having with it. :)

[waternorth]

5 dollars says that the problem is with quests

[meeble]

5 dollars says that the problem is with quests

Hey waternorth, care to expound on this at all? ;)

[cooter]

Meeble, are there tons of open petitions in your database?

When a zone boots up, it loads all the petitions from the database into memory. If you have a lot of petitions, this process can take a little while, sometimes causing zoning clients to think they're disconnected.

If this is your problem, there are two ways to go about rectifying it. 1. You could log on more and answer/delete those petitions often (a pain), or 2. Modify the function to load fewer petitions into the memory (much easier).

If you want to go with (2), here's your fix. zone/petitions.cpp, line 288ish, replace the "if (RunQuery ...)" line with this:

if (RunQuery(query, MakeAnyLenString(&query, "SELECT petid, charname, accountname, lastgm, petitiontext, zone, urgency, charclass, charrace, charlevel, checkouts, unavailables, ischeckedout, senttime, gmtext FROM petitions ORDER BY senttime ASC LIMIT 0,15"), errbuf, &result))

This code will load the 15 oldest petitions at a time instead of all 4 million of them. The only real downside of doing this is you'll have to delete these old petitions to see the newer ones, but realistically you should be doing that anyways.

(note that I wrote this for a 5.6 server so it's possible, but doubtful, that this may not work if you use a different version)

Hope this helps.

[zelgar]

I created an Iksar on this server, and (finally) got it to not crash loading in the character. However, I am having a problem; I am not sitting/standing, and not not sit or stand. I am in a state of limbo, "You must be standing to forage.", and "You must be sitting to prepare your camp."

Any suggestions which I can do from my end?

[meeble]

Cooter, thanks so much for your suggestions. However, this doesn't seem to be the problem, as I only have 2 open petitions in my database. :/ I'll have to look at other solutions. Thanks for trying, though! :) It's very much appreciated!


I created an Iksar on this server, and (finally) got it to not crash loading in the character. However, I am having a problem; I am not sitting/standing, and not not sit or stand. I am in a state of limbo, "You must be standing to forage.", and "You must be sitting to prepare your camp."

Any suggestions which I can do from my end?

Hmm, that seems quite odd, and I'm not sure if anyone else has come across this problem on my server before. I'll investigate for you though, and let you know once it's fixed. :) I'm not sure if there's anything you can do your end. Thanks for letting me know about this!

[meeble]

I thought I'd mention here that I'm upgrading the amount of RAM on my server. Whilst I doubt that this alone will stop all the problems with zoning and connecting and such, I do hope that it can help the ForEverQuest server somewhat. :) I'm still looking into ways in which the LD issues and such can be resolved.

I also thought I'd mention, whilst I'm here, that I've set up a little placeholder website at ForEverQuest.org (http://www.foreverquest.org). There is also a little PayPal donation button there, in case anyone is feeling generous and wants to help out towards server costs (which are currently paid in full by just me, at the moment!). :) Thanks!

[Vasker88]

Hope to see it up soon...The server is great :D

I was wondering if there could be some type of BoTb...i think that would be great 8)

FTW

[GundamGP02]

Hi Meeble!

Looks like yur server's up and running again. I had a hunch maybe my EQ screwed up, so I tried logging on to other servers/playing to see if it would work. It has so far for every server I've tried, and yet I still can't log into yours. I can choose my character, but after that, it doesn't seem to load any farther. This would cause ppl to say that I've patched and doesn't work etc. but I can logon/play on other servers. Could it be the zone I am in (in Velks right now), or that my character information is corrupted? If you can shed any light on this, that'd be great, thx!

Edit/Add:
Well, good and bad news. Good news, is that I can log onto your server with a diff. char. I even tried zoning into velks with my new char to "open" the zone, and quickly logged off and logged back onto my main char and to still to no avail, it will not load my regular char. I was wondering if you could check my char data to see if it has been corrupted or something, or maybe something awkward is preventing me from being able to play with that char. Thanks.

[bloodgoth]

Sometimes a character can get stuck in a zone wall or soemthing and disable it from being loaded... A #movechar should work fine for that problem.

[meeble]

Hey Gundam :)

Oh dear, I'll try moving your regular character into another zone and see if that helps. As Bloodgoth said, it could be that your character is stuck and cannot be loaded. I'll let you know once the move is complete!

Edit: Okay, I've moved your character "Itsuka" into PoK. :)

[meeble]

Right, the RAM has now been upgraded. I'm wondering if this helps at all with the problems we've had with crashes whilst zoning etc. Please could those of you who have been having problems try playing on the server again at some point to see if the upgrade has helped? If not, I'll look at alternative measures. :)

I'd really like to get this zoning/logging in problem sorted as soon as possible so I can really start work on customizing the server. :)

[GundamGP02]

thx for the char move, but apparently that hasn't fixed the problem. It is just this specific char so I guess since we have done as much as we can to determine where the problem lies, could be my char data is simply corrupted. Would it be possible for me to make another one and have it modified back to the one I have now, or sumthing like that? Or do I need to start a new char from scratch? I'm not so much concerned about the gear, because that is all #si-able, but my levels had to be earned so that'll be a toughie. Please advise when you have time, thx!

[Vasker88]

Hey meeble you might wanna add the #movechar command...i have 3 chars stuck...one in the hole, arena, and oasis...It would help out alot...thanks

FTW

[userzero]

Some bugs I found were, 1) Pod lifts dont work 2) No usable skill trainers*that I could find anyway*3) Clickies that go in certain slots like ammo will show up as a combat effect and cant be used such as Bridles or drums 4) When in zones like Blackburrow or CB or any zone with lots of levels I ended up pulling things through walls and floors and ended up getting trained.

[meeble]

Some bugs I found were, 1) Pod lifts dont work 2) No usable skill trainers*that I could find anyway*3) Clickies that go in certain slots like ammo will show up as a combat effect and cant be used such as Bridles or drums 4) When in zones like Blackburrow or CB or any zone with lots of levels I ended up pulling things through walls and floors and ended up getting trained.

Thanks, userzero. :) Actually, most skill trainers are indeed working (or at least, they should be!), it's just a few in PoK which aren't. Thanks for the bug reports though :D

Right, a little announcement, now. I think this topic is getting a bit big now, so I went ahead and finally opened some forums for the ForEverQuest server. :)

http://forums.foreverquest.org

Please register if you have an interest in the server and it's development! :)

[Sithikus]

Hey just wanted to say hi,love the server so far gives me a break from WR when i dont want to raid and stuff,The reason im posting is because my rng is stuck in OOT could i plz get a Char move to oasis plz many thx's.

[Klipz]

im gonna play on this server when i get my eqemu goin, its saying an error is occuring when im clickin log in to the server select, it sounds like a pretty uber server, ill check it out
~Klipz~

[meeble]

Eep, sorry I've been a bit quiet lately, but real life and other projects have been keeping be quite busy! I'll be continuining with development of the server as soon as I can, but I just thought I'd give you a heads up to let you know that ForEverQuest isn't dead! :p

Sithikus, you can actually use the #movechar command to move any characters on your account yourself! :)

[hidetada]

Ello...I created a Dwarf Rogue to find out that Kaladim is not up and running. So I cant loggin on my rogue. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

I take that back. I can't get into any starting city right now. :shock:
Ah well. I will be okay. I will keep an eye on the forums to see how this server is progressing. Thanks!

[meeble]

Hi hidetada, thanks for checking out the server!

Oh dear, this zoning problem really is becoming a erm... real problem! What happened when you tried to connect to the starting zones, hidetada? Did you timeout, or did you get a "zone not available" mesage?

It's something that really needs to be sorted before we can progress any further, it seems. :/

(Oh, and thank you for your offer of help over on our forums, it's much appreciated! I'll get back to you about that soon. :))

[hidetada]

I could get into Qeynos2 (North Qeynos). It was the only zone I could get into. I tried to move my character to Butcherblock Mountains. Also sometimes when I tried to move my character to another zone I would be at the character selection screen and it would say unknown zone. If I tried to connect to the unknown zone EQ would crash and the next time I would loggin it would say I was in the arena. Many of the starting city zones say this zone is unavailable. I could loggin to Kaladim but I had to logg off for a while and when I came back I couldn't. I got into East Cabilis with an Iskar but he was stuck and couldn't move but I used him to move my character. I created so many characters last night. One that I greated in Greater Faydark (pardon my spelling) was looping into a falling death where pain and suffering was hitting me for 32000. I had to close it out because I couldn't do anything else. I am also having items not sticking with my character. I have made summonitem hotkeys so that I can get them back fairly quickly. So by the time it was 2 am my time I was killin gaurds in Qeynos2 (which was nice exp I might add). I like the server. Keep up the good work. I can see why there are people that are lvl 65 by now. Anyway...I will play around today. My main is going to be Stabbit (female dwarf rogue). I hope to hear from you soon. I will keep posting the weird occurances that I find.

Everything is fine now...except I was working on equiping and I am guessing the server went down. Thats great though maybe that means some more fixes to problems. Well anyway...my rogue is lvl 51 now. I will be 65 by the end of next week I hope. Thanks for the great server!

[meeble]

As I mentioned over on our forums today, the ForEverQuest server is going on a hiatus. I'm not sure how long this will be for, but I don't have much time for the next 2 weeks or so to actively work on the server, so I don't see much point in continuining with things as they are (zoning problems etc).

Indeed, I am considering not bringing ForEverQuest back up 'properly' until it's a bit nearer 'completion'. As you know, this is intended to be a heavily customised server, although there hasn't been much customisation going on lately. ;)

I am indeed continuining active development on the server, and so when we're back up, please expect to see a nice new server with lots of custom features! :)

Apologies to our regular players (if we still have any left after weeks of zoning problems!), and I hope you all find new homes until ForEverQuest is completed. :)


I will be bringing ForEverQuest up again from time to time for testing purposes, so if you notice that it's up, and unlocked, please feel free to jump on and have a sneak peek at how the server is shaping up!

(Note: to the two of you I contacted about GM positions on the server, these are still available to you when the server is completed, should you still want to accept them).

[hidetada]

I will be there when it comes back up ;). If I can will try to loggon when its only on for a short time. Good luck with it and keep us posted in the forums about it please. Thanks!