14JUL11 - Background Patch

We don't normally announce patches and upgrades that you don't actually see, but here's a first.

Today we changed a great chunk of some of the way Illyriad works at a fundamental level.

For the technically-minded, it was a change to the whole methodology of the session-handling system and the way the database connection pooling systems work between webserver and db.

For the non-technically minded, it means that Illy will work fast and better, and you should see instant improvements in the speed/lag of all areas, and it should be especially visible in areas such as Global Chat.

We needed to make this change because it increases the general smoothness of the way we do everything at the back-end of Illyriad - and it was a pre-requisite to pave the way for some of the future game enhancements such as 'private chat'.

It didn't go entirely smoothly.  

People who were already logged in, plus new logins were generally unaffected; but those who had old browser sessions still open during the transition period found themselves kicked-out and unable to log-in to Illyriad for a period of about an hour spread over 2 periods today.  

We apologise profusely for those affected, of course - and if anyone still has any issue with logging in, closing all the windows of your web browser and restarting it should fix the issue.  If you still can't log in, try a reboot.  If you still can't log in, please let us know!

So, whilst it was intended to be an "invisible" change, it wasn't quite that - but it was certainly a major change to some underlying systems that only mean good things for the future.

Regards,

SC