[Rogean]

I wanted to be clear on a few things regarding the event from last night.

Originally the event was proposed by a few members of the CSR Team. At minimum for any event that will have special items given out, any special mobs spawning, or any scripts running, it would require a GM+. Depending on the amount of preparation, it could be done without Management present if the mobs, scripts, and items were prepared ahead of time, then a GM could execute it. If the preparation work wasn't done, then it would require Myself or Nilbog to spawn special mobs, run manual scripts, add special properties to live mobs, etc.

The event was discussed among Senior Guides and above, and we decided to set it for Saturday. I had also planned for this to serve a dual purpose to test the new Green hardware, which I would move Blue over to on Friday Night.

Unfortunately, real life took over for almost all of us. Nilbog got tied up with an emergency all week. I had a similar emergency and had to leave the state all weekend. Due to this, I rescheduled the event for Sunday night, thinking that I would be back in time. Llandris and Menden had plans Sunday night but both thought they would be freed up by 9 PM.

This also did not leave much time, if any, for the actual planning of the event. This would have been something we could normally do several hours in advance and then execute the event in very little time. It would also have resulted in a much better experience for everyone involved as a scripted event could introduce a lot of mechanics and ways to participate rather than just spawning a mob(s) that everyone needs to zerg down.

I had to drive 5 hours yesterday to get back home, and tried to leave early enough but due to traffic my final arrival time was 9:50 (My original ETA was 10:20. I did a lot of speeding o.O). Llandris and Menden were unable to break away from their Sunday commitments. I almost cancelled the event, but I felt bad that everyone had already congregated for it, so I figured I'd try to put something together. This is the reason I gave the disclaimer, at the beginning of the event, that due to an unfortunate circumstances, we were not prepared to run what would be deserving of a 10 year anniversary celebration..

I know there's not many that are criticizing the event but I felt it was still necessary to point out the facts regarding everything. I'd like to thank Galach, Khikik, and Medris for jumping to action and helping me throw this together last night. I'd still like to run a fully prepared event, but I'm going to talk to the staff and make sure we have a concrete plan together before committing to a date.

Regarding the stress test portion, since I had to head out of state I did not have the time to move Blue to the new hardware for testing. I did, however, reboot West Commons (After the second crash) into the new hardware, as well as North Karana. It did seem to perform much better, however there's only so much that we can do to handle 600+ players congregated into a single spot. As I've mentioned before, everyone being in one place puts an exponential amount of additional load on the zone process, as packets are duplicated to the people in a player's vicinity. There is definitely room for improvement, and I've already identified some areas where that can be done if we have time, but I do feel confident that we can handle 500+ players in a single zone if necessary, provided that they are either spread out or separated into multiple groups.

Thanks all.