Pirate The World - Online Adventure Game

the only time the game lagged for me today was when I had an active blue dot in the grid.
this happened 4 times and all but one time I got hit...this is rediculous. This cannot be a coincidence. I've read posts saying its the internet..I don't think so since I am able to go to any site and not have lag...for me it only happens here..it doesnt matter if there are 5 players or 20 online..it happens.
CSStriker Success 12249 Lost Oct 13 19:12:37
ratpatrol Success 23958 Lost Oct 13 19:10:40
Freckled_Pirate Success 45968 Lost Oct 13 19:03:48

The game hangs, pages turn white or black and then when you try to get back into the game, it won't load until you've tried at least 2 times.

There is no way to get ahead, with gold being stollen when you attack and other pirates taking half your gold cause fame resets are hard to find. The only way to get gold and not lose an arm and a leg is to attack only Islands which are too cheap when it comes to collecting gold. In my books, if I can find $15000 a day, thats a good day, but that means attacking other pirates - mostly greenies --islands and towns. But why bother since you accumulate fame which determines what you lose.... you usually lose more in one attack from a blue pirate than what you can earn in a day, sometimes 2 or more days.

By going after only islands, you are lucky to get $5000 a day but quite often that is less than what gets plundered from you while you are away from the game..
At this rate I will never be a map subscriber, it's bad enough that I usually have to pay for a fame reset at the end of my moves...I have paid more money into this game than any other game. If I got paid for my frustration alone, I'd be rich.

Clapping my hands... I agree with you. The lag, and only getting a few pieces of gold for searching islands is a joke. We need to be able to either find more fame resets or as my other post stated save up a few that we find.

fame isnt the problem...

holy crap the lag is terrible today...it took 5 minutes just for the forum to open so I could make a post. I can't even get the attack log to open..after a minute of waiting, a white page opens which says "internet explorer cannot open this page". I just tried 3 other websites and they all loaded immediately so its not the internet.

every second click is hanging, sometimes its click after click...I've had the white out page 3 times and I havent finished half my moves yet.
I got attacked once again because of this lag...but can't get the info to paste here cause the damn attacks log page won't open.
I have been online almost all day without any issues from any site but this one. I've played poker and other games much bigger than this one...no problems

recently I sunk a player that had been here from the beginning
wwsucks says he sunk an old timer too
it looks like you are losing players who have given up due to this lag & plunder issue

ARGGG THIS SUCKS

This is an email I got from our colocation provider (where our server is located and connected):

Dear ********* Customer,
At 12:10 PM PST we had a network incident where a software bug in our
latest router firmware caused about half of our edge routers to crash.
This resulted in the other half exceeding their capacity and also
crashing. The issue was brought to our attention and resolved at 12:30 PM
PST.

We apologize for the incident. We have taken steps to prevent future
such occurrences.

Sincerely,
Matt M.
*****************

yep, Smiller got me right around that time. It would also explain why after I made the post and rebooted the game was faster.

Darn, and here I thought staying home today was a good thing

smiller Success 22174 Lost Oct 15 15:09:12

He the lag was bad for me this morning around 6:30 am to 6:45 am est.

I could not move, the chat did not work, and the radar stopped working. DarkMyst9 was on at the time. He saw this happen.

Several times at home, on my brand new computer, I have had the white page or a lag so bad I just gave up trying to fight against it.

At work I have an old cheap compaq that is slow as molasses but I never have a problem here at PTW. Weirdest thing. I can move as fast as I can click.
BTW~ both are cable connections

Boss had me order a new system here at work but I am tempted to leave this one plugged in just for plundering.

Hey Sweetyhyde....I love the smileys, the cartoon cat with the big eyes....but your avatar just knocks me off my computor chair...every time I see it. I need a good laugh every now and then and that cat is just adorable. A little bullet happy, but adorablee. Ha Ha lol!

The lag this morning was terrible, up to 30 seconds for a move to occur. And it's only mostly better this afternoon. But something I've seen others report about and seems to be getting worse is the lag that happens when somone else is on the screen. I'm chugging along farming and Larry pops on screen, he hasn't seen me move and seems to be deciding whether or not to attack. I change ships and try to run, but can only go one move! Then nothing happens for 15 seconds! During those 15 seconds Larry attacks and of course seconds after that ptrdanno attacks.

I can't fault them for playing that way, it's a pirate game! But I can complain about my lack of choices to adapt to their playing style. The lag has to stop! I can't make any suggestions about how to get it done, but please do something.

the chat is crap as well...

I am getting timed out quicker than a ptrdanno hit after larry

I am so sick of the BS of the lag on this game. I was moving slow cause of the lag and my page turned black...next thing I know, i've lost half my gold to Larry. It looks like Chuckles had a similar issue with Larry.

I know it's not my computer, I know its not my internet provider - I know it's this site
I am getting friggin fed up losing 40000 here and there, every friggin day due to the lag.
I am not investing in this game any more. I might reconsider if this issue ever gets resolved but I don't think that will ever happen. It's been going on for way too long and nothings been done so far.

You should change the game name to something like "Sludge of the Sea", or "Sea lag"...It seems more appropriate.

I managed to sink 3 ships today. Does this tell you something? People are quitting and probably because of the lag. It doesn't help when you get half your gold taken in one hit. I have been forced to attack the weaker players cause I'm not strong enough to get the lump sums that smiller and Larry get out of me..How the hell are we supposed to get ahead? If the game didnt lag all the time, we just might be able to run away but with the way the game is now, that is impossible.

3 days ago I had over 130000 gold...today I have less than 45000 after playing all my moves..Almost everything I've lost is because of the lag...This is not fair to us. We pay into this game and get nothing but frustration in return.
This issue needs to be resolved

I imagine this issue is even more frustrating for the captain, seeing as how it looks as though this is something that really can't be resolved from his standpoint...

he is probably checking into it though

When I was playing at the school a couple days ago, the lag was horrible...I couldnt move at all...but I came home, fired up the PTW, and was sailing fast...

I think there are some things that everyone here needs to understand. I'm not yelling at anyone, as I know where you all are coming from, having complained to the previous admins tons last year.

-----

First, bcp19 and I do not work on Pirate The World 24/7. The game just doesn't bring in enough money. We have jobs and lives just like everyone else, and have a limited amount of time to dedicate to developing and improving things here. If I were to charge PTW the price that I charge my other design clients, PTW would be in the red big-time. You don't want to know how many hours I spend. Now, that being said, we don't do this for the money. I work on Pirate The World because I really enjoyed it as a player and I really enjoy seeing other people get something out of it, whether that's a prize, some cash, game satisfaction, having fun, or whatever. I also like the challenge of developing something new and coming up with solutions to code problems that arise.

Second, we know that the game as-it-is is flawed. We inherited an old design (style and function), and we're kinda stuck in some ways with what we have. I have tried very hard to keep within what you, the players, are comfortable with while still adding functionality. I've tried several interfaces that were attempts to clean up the code and make the game run faster...to little result. Everyone complained about them and said they were slower than the old way. Well, from what I hear, the old way is pretty damn slow. Look back in the forums and you'll see that the even-older way was even slower. Some parts of the game were up to 400x slower (though most people would have only noticed a small difference because it was in microseconds).

Third, just because I don't answer every single forum post doesn't mean I'm not here. I've said this before and I'll say it again--I read every single post on this board. If you look at my posting number, though, it's obvious that I don't respond to all of them. If I don't have something meaningful to say, I won't necessarily respond. I read all of the suggestions and all of the complaints, and I take them into consideration in my development and my planning. If you PM me and I don't respond, then there probably wasn't a question that you needed an answer to...or I forgot about it. But I read it nonetheless.

Fourth, we have LOTS of things planned to do. There are a ton of suggestions on the forum and we have tons of ideas of our own. Just because we don't announce them doesn't mean they aren't in the works. However, the problem with the lags and the interface has been my primary concern for some time. Why would I want to work on new features and functionality when I would just have to rewrite them all over again? Unless other small projects arose that I thought were more important, nearly of my work for the last several months (maybe longer) has been focused on solving the exact problems that you're complaining about. I don't know how to fix it in the current code architecture, so I've been trying to redesign it...again...and again... What I am working on right now is radically different from what I've tried before, and theoretically should operate much, much faster. We'll all see how that goes when I finally have it ready to launch. I'm not promising anything, but if everything goes as planned the possibilities for Pirate The World are nearly endless. No more "static" pages where you get hit and don't know about it until you refresh... I can't say much more, but it has the possibility of being truly awesome compared to what we had before.

Fifth, changing Pirate The World too much will basically just make a new game. This isn't altogether a bad option, but if we're going to do that then why not kill Pirate The World now and start over? This is something that I'd rather not do, because as much as I hate certain parts of the code and the way things run, this is what we've been dealing with for the last two years and radical changes to things will do more harm than good. If I had the time I would love to spend all day working on new games, and I'd finally be able to get all of the ideas out of my head.

Hmm, so where do I start. I will not say anything that is considered a flame. Just one question, could you say how many active players there are in the game? (Active means made a move in say a week)