Vendor search and the state of UO address

[BrianFreud]

Let me quote the entire answer as to what is going on with vendor search:

"What is the status of vendor search?"

Stephen: "That would be me... ummm... so my main focus for the past two weeks has been solely to focus on the main issues of that we're seeing with vendor search. Once they have gone through QA we'll see a noticable increase in performance than what you're currently seeing right now on production."

"When do you expect that might happen Stephen?"

Stephen: "Right now we're trying to get it through QA next week, and we will see what happens after the testing."

Vendor search was a HUGE announcement. It has been hoped for, and waited for, for a very long time. It worked on test, and it worked on Izumo and Origin, but clearly something went wrong when it went live. Either it completely died, or couldn't handle Atlantic, or... we've speculated endlessly. We've still had no answers as to what actually broke. The above was the entirety of what was said in the state of UO address about this, and is the *only* word we've had since that 10 am Saturday promise.

I'm sorry, but I need something more. On the day search went live to all shards, if I waited 20 or 30 minutes, I'd get some results. Ever since then, no amount of waiting will give any results. It isn't slow; it's not working at all. "An increase in performance" implies that it currently is actually working, which it simply isn't. So devs, can we please get some basic info on what is going on, and something more clear than that very vague answer as to what is going on to get it working, and when it might be expected to start working?

 

[Lady Storm]

Bloody Hell your an impatient person.... Bugs happen in all programming,and you might have hit the nail on the head with the over abundance of players who amped into the search engine all at once...load might have been the one factor unable to be tested and nether had on test or both production shards... Atlantic and the whole of the shards with big enough populations might have been the trouble...
Give the man his due, it worked... but ajustments for load might be inorder but give him time to look into the issue.

 

[Promathia]

Give the man his due, it worked

No offense to anyone, but no it plain as day did not work. I have faith they will get it fixed, but communication really could have been better. We got a pretty fast response, but the response promised its fix in date and time. When that date and time passed, we got silence for 2 weeks. We should have atleast been updated to reassure players.

 

[Spiritless]

Yeah, heaven forbid people actually expect a feature that has been in development for a year, on test for months then finally rolled out to live in a completely broken state to actually work. It's been weeks since it went live, broken, and no dev has said anything at all. How long should we wait before it's not considered "impatient" in your eyes to ask? Another year?

 

[BrianFreud]

Bloody Hell your an impatient person....

Did I demand it work right now? I'm simply asking for more detail on what the issue is and what's being done to rectify it. This was the most recent "big" publish, and it simply did not work. The last official word was that it was supposed to be working nearly 2 weeks ago. Then all went silent. Today's comment was... unenlightening to say the least.

I am a programmer. I have also worked developing public databases far larger, more complex, and quickly changing than that which would be needed to hold the items on every vendor on every shard. I understand the difficulties. Yes, it worked, on test, Origin, and Izumo. On the other shards? No, it never did work, and we've had a total blackout of information since that Saturday promise. Considering half a month has now passed, I think it's fair to ask for more detail and a more specific eta than "we're trying to get it through QA next week, and we will see what happens after the testing". Later in, if I heard correctly, Bonnie mentioned that vendor search would be part of the *next* publish. Given the other answer, that means minimally 3 to 4 months from now.

Brian

 

[Lady Storm]

I see you all didnt look beyond the opening...

I said the person might have hit on the trouble.... Load of the server the search engine is on... might not have been able to take the vast amount of players accessing it. Load refers to the stress level a programe can take without a failure.

 

[DJAd]

I wanna know what was so funny about it. During the video Stephen looks like hes having a right old chuckle when asked about the vendor search. (About 6 minutes into the video).

 

[nextwindow]

I think the "chuckle" come form an "inside joke" between the team....

 

[BrianFreud]

I see you all didnt look beyond the opening...

I said the person might have hit on the trouble.... Load of the server the search engine is on... might not have been able to take the vast amount of players accessing it. Load refers to the stress level a programe can take without a failure.

You may have been the one running the "state of UO" thing, but as far as I know, you aren't a part of the dev team, so this is just your guess. We've had lots of unofficial guesses. The consistent request, by myself and others, has been for clear and official communication confirming that there is a problem, summarizing the problem, and giving an eta. The last eta we had was missed a full two weeks ago, and there has been no communication since that eta was promised.

 

[kRUXCg7]

I think the "chuckle" come form an "inside joke" between the team....

I think it is a sign of blatant despondency. I feel with this guy. I think for the next two weeks mods should close every single thread about Vendor Search to show sympathy. Give him time to breath.

 

[kRUXCg7]

The last eta we had was missed a full two weeks ago, and there has been no communication since that eta was promised.

You are right on the one side. On the other side... watching the video... felt like watching puppets in a dog shelter. I think those who watched it or read about it now know all we need to know. A public comment on uo.com should follow suit, but that's up to Mesanna if that ever happens. I really think we should leave the topic for the next two weeks.

 

[The Zog historian]

Yeah, heaven forbid people actually expect a feature that has been in development for a year, on test for months then finally rolled out to live in a completely broken state to actually work. It's been weeks since it went live, broken, and no dev has said anything at all. How long should we wait before it's not considered "impatient" in your eyes to ask? Another year?

I had been patient about it, almost uncharacteristically so. But now, sheesh, they should either say something or just pull the code entirely. Some of us have had more than a little experience with database development and would be happy to offer advice for free, if only we'd know a little of how it actually works.

 

[Winter]

I just want to know how Stephen keeps his teeth so white! Any real programmer lives on coffee and Mountain Dew, bad for the teeth.

 

[Tazar]

I really would not be expecting any detail on the coding system. Every time they discuss details, someone's going to use it against them to hack/script/cheat the system. Somethings are better left unknown.

 

[kRUXCg7]

I really would not be expecting any detail on the coding system. Every time they discuss details, someone's going to use it against them to hack/script/cheat the system. Somethings are better left unknown.

Let me explain it to you. They had more enough ingredients and materials and everything on Test Center. Ingots, essences, even runic hammers. But once they arrived on Atlantic they had to realize the amount of blank scrolls needed to draw all those grey maps is just... overwhelming. Everyone wanted dozens of maps. And then even more. That's all that is behind the performance issue. They are chopping wood for bark fragments as fast as they can, but they can't keep up with the demand. Once they hit 90ish lumberjacking we will see a good increase in supply.

 

[Picus at the office]

Well if the faction fix shortly follow up by V&V is any indication on the desire of the team to get stuff done I think 2018 is a fair time live to expect this bloated and wasteful search to be finished.

All this effort could have been directed at a small expansion which could increase revenue or a search which also sold codes which increased revenue either of which would help to provide further shelf life for the game but this comical process just reminds people of the failure of the current management people.

 

[The Zog historian]

Those of us who could help would not need very specific details on coding, just general ideas of where things are stuck. It's also such an innocuous part of the game that any hacks or cheats wouldn't have much of an impact.

 

[Lefty]

I bet it is designed wrong. There are 2 ways to put a SQL database in the cloud. 1 as a contemporary single database serving multiple requests which drag down the performance, or more along the line of Microsoft Azure where the database is mirrored to thousands of sub databases.

Throwing a os or server software in the cloud does not guarantee a performance boost. To take advantage of the cloud for performance it has to take advantage of the technology. Porting over UO to a cloud did not improve performance and it was more a kin to swapping servers.

 

[The Zog historian]

Not knowing whether they use SQL, Oracle or whatever, it's hard to say. What I've talked about isn't so much "in the cloud" (realize though that all of UO is really "in the cloud" as far as players are concerned) as it is a separate database for vendor items only. It's only a guess, but I wonder if their current technique is to search the main shard item database with a very inefficient algorithm.

Moving the UO servers to "the cloud" was a matter of money, not performance, with the hope that performance wouldn't be impacted too much by having someone else host the servers.

 

[Gunsmoke]

ok on a honest note... even with the vendor search in uo who is going bother using it when the other website that do search has faster, easier skin setup and u dont have to be in your house to use it. the only thing the uo vendor search has is that it searches all uo land, but i think uo is like 4 yrs to late.

also vendor search was on test for like what 2 months... and on the first day it messing up... yes i know the programming for uo is big but ... it just doesnt make sense.

 

[BrianFreud]

The UO search has 4 advantages... 1) it's current - no "last seen 18 hours ago". 2) it's comprehensive - it'll find that vendor hidden at the house on the tunnels heading to Wind. 3) Teleport directly to the vendor. 4) HUGE advantage: "open containing container", no more sitting there searching for that thing search claimed was here... somewhere.

 

[Promathia]

I just want to say, if they get this thing working, there is no saying that it wont/cant be improved even more in the future.

Right now, lets let them get the framework setup, and hopefully it becomes even better moving forward

 

[Theron]

I'm hoping this will help bring some competition regarding prices and the economy gets a bit back in shape.