As some of you are aware, we experienced a service interruption last night to the Wizard101 live game. While we go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that our game service is always available, unfortunately we can’t always predict every operational or hardware issue. Occasionally (very rarely!) this results in a momentary interruption to the game service. When it does, it falls upon us to fix it.
Here is a timeline of events for last night’s interruption:
- Late Sunday afternoon our operations team detected an issue with the live game service. - We investigated and came to the conclusion that this issue could result in data loss if not quickly addressed. - We made the decision to shut the game servers down to make sure that the problem would not get worse. Please understand that we do not make this decision lightly. - The game was offline for about three hours. During this period, we were able to pinpoint the problem and address it. - Once brought back online, we confirmed that the issue was resolved. - The game service rebooted cleanly and has been running since without issue.
Which leaves only one problem that must still be addressed: as a result of this issue, some players may have experienced a loss of items acquired via the auction house, vendors, loot drops or crowns. We are addressing this problem now. As always, our intent is to err on the side of caution:
- Any crowns spent on consumables (henchmen, respec service, potions, etc) will, of course, be reimbursed - We keep detailed logs of all items acquired during game play. We are going to use these logs to re-grant ANY items gained by ANY player during this period -- even if the item was not lost. - We are also going to re-grant any items moved in (or out) of a Bank or House, just to be on the safe side.
We realize that a side effect of this decision will result in many players who were not affected receiving DOUBLE rewards for any items that they acquired during this period. We accept that, and we believe that giving out “double rewards” is far preferable to running the risk of some players not recovering lost items. (Yes, this includes rare drops such as Bone Dragons and Wyverns.) We are going through the logs now, and hope to have all the items granted in the next 24 to 48 hours.
Please accept our apologies for this interruption, and our assurances that we are doing everything we can to make sure that these technical issues can be avoided in the future.
Thank you again for playing, and I hope to see you in game!
Hey gang, we are still working on the reimbursements for the players who lost items. The scripts will be running all day tomorrow, so hopefully we'll have them done by end of day on Thursday.
(if it looks like it will take any longer, I'll post another update here.)
Thanks for your patience!
J Todd Coleman "Headmaster Ambrose" KingsIsle Entertainment, Inc.
Crowns reimbursements are now complete. We are still working on the item logs -- this will take longer since there are a lot more players affected, and we are updating the live game database.
