As our regular users will have noticed, since the end of last week, Board Game Arena has been handling a very heavy load. More and more users are connecting and playing, from every part of the world.
This exceptional situation is putting online services under pressure. Because of Covid-19, many people are locked at home. We cannot visit friends. We cannot have parties. We cannot have game nights. So we are moving much of our lives online, and for people who love to play board games, that means playing online.
Of course, nobody could expect this situation. We were not prepared for this.
All the weekend, we have been monitoring the situation and working to find ways to handle the load better. Before last week, our highest load was about 4000 players connected at the same time. On Thursday, we hit 5000 and it was still ok. On Friday, we hit 7000 and the service crashed. We were able to restore it 40 minutes later, then found and solved the problem. We also set up some possibilities to disable non essential functionalities to prioritize welcoming people to play. On Saturday night, with those changes we managed to welcome up to 9000 players connected at the same time, with some lagging but without a major crash. That's a little crazy if you ask us 🙂
Then on Sunday, we were examining the situation and what we could do and realized that there were just too many issues and that we needed to limit the load in order to be able to work on the problems without being blocked by managing crashes all the time. So we put in place a limit to the number of connected users (premium excepted), that matches what the service can currently handle without major slowdowns.
Now, we will be working on increasing the server capacity to raise this limit progressively to be able to welcome more and more players with a correct service level. Maybe some people would think that "it's just a matter of setting up some some more servers", but it's more complicated than that. Some of the load can be distributed, some can not. What's causing problems is what cannot be distributed, the "bottlenecks". For example, in order to get into the games, you must all get in the same place to join games, in the game lobby. So among other things we are working on making the lobby able to hold more people at the same time.
To sum it up to our old users, please be patient! We are working on making things better. And to our new users, you are discovering the service at a very special moment, so you may encounter some unexpected issues. Sorry about that, but in any case, welcome! We are happy and proud to be able to provide a service that is appreciated in this stressful time.
Please take good care of you and of the communities around you in real life and online!
The BGA team.
BGA心跳:醫生,怎麼啦?
相信大部分用戶都能感受到,自上週末以來, Board Game Arena一直承受著沉重的負載 。
越來越多來自世界各地的用戶正在連線和遊玩。
這種特殊情況使線上服務面臨壓力。
由於COVID-19(武漢肺炎) ,許多人被迫待在家中。
我們不能拜訪朋友。
我們不能參加聚會。
我們沒有遊戲之夜。
因此, 人們將大部分時間轉移到網路上 ,對於喜歡打桌遊的人來說,這意味著得在線遊玩 。
當然,沒有人能預料這種情況。
我們並未為此做好準備 。
整個週末,我們一直在監視情況,並努力尋找更好地處理負載的方法。
在上週之前, 我們的最高負載是約4000名玩家同時連線。
在星期四,遊玩人數達到5000人,負載依然穩定。
在星期五,遊玩人數達至7000人,服務崩潰了。
我們在四十分鐘後將其還原,找到並解決問題。
我們設置了一些禁用「非必要功能」的可能性,以優先迎接人們玩桌遊。
經過這些更改,在周六晚間,我們設法同時容納高達9000名玩家。即使有些延遲,但沒有發生重大事故。
對於我們來說,那實在有點瘋狂
然後在星期日,我們檢查了情況、研討我們可以做什麼,並且意識到有太多問題。因此,我們需要限制負載以處理問題,避免一直被崩潰的服務絆住。
因此,我們對連線的用戶數量進行了限制 (不包括尊榮用戶 ),以讓在線用戶數符合服務能夠處理,且不會延遲的數量。
現在,我們將致力於提高伺服器容量,以逐步提高此限制 ,從而以良好的服務水準迎接越來越多的玩家。
也許有些人會認為「這只是設置更多伺服器的問題」 ,但這比你的想像複雜得多 。
有些負載可以分配,有些則不能。
造成問題的是無法分配的「瓶頸」。
例如,為了進入遊戲,你必須在同一個地方加入遊戲大廳的遊戲。
因此,我們正在努力使大廳能同時容納更多的人。
總而言之,請我們的老用戶耐心等待!
我們正在努力使事情變得更好 。
對於我們的新用戶來說,您是在一個非常特殊的時刻發現這項服務的,所以您可能會遇到一些意想不到的問題。
我們對此十分抱歉,但無論如何,歡迎您來到BGA !
能夠在這充滿壓力的時期提供獲得認可的服務,我們為之歡喜而自豪。
請在現實和網路照顧好你自己以及身邊的人!
BGA團隊敬上。