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PTS Server Character Rotation Problems

FizyElf
FizyElf
Soul Shriven
The PTS server characters I was told are supposed to split the month between EU and NA characters. Why is the PTS server still using EU characters?!?! Here's a timeline proving that EU server characters, compared to NA, have been given much more time so far this year on the PTS: EU 2/20/21 - 4/19/21, NA 4/19/21 - 5/3/21, EU 5/3/21 - Current. So, within 4 months, NA has gotten only about 2 weeks of PTS time while EU has gotten about 3.5 months worth of time. What's the reason for this?
Edited by FizyElf on May 24, 2021 8:12PM
  • vgabor
    vgabor
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    Characters only rotate while pts testing is ongoing for the next update. After that the last active characters stay on until next update comes to pts.
  • WrathOfInnos
    WrathOfInnos
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    It does seem biased toward EU characters this cycle, but NA usually has more time with character copies on PTS. Just unfortunate that this cycle there were zero days of overlap with Rockgrove hard modes active and NA characters.
  • Fennwitty
    Fennwitty
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    It would really help me personally to do more on PTS if my PC NA characters weren't wiped off the face of the planet partway through.

    Really not sure what could possibly go wrong by allowing PC NA and PC EU characters to be stored on the same server except for character/account names. Which really should be fine with a "add a suffix if the same name is on both servers".

    The character name isn't super important.

    Having to (re)create template characters relevant to your personal playstyle is a barrier to participation.

    Of course maybe the user name is ultra critical to the infrastructure of you logging in at all but the PTS client is entirely different than the live game and server. Should be ways to account for it, or even prompt users to create new names when a conflict is detected.
    Edited by Fennwitty on May 25, 2021 7:23PM
    PC NA
  • SirAndy
    SirAndy
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    Fennwitty wrote: »
    Really not sure what could possibly go wrong by allowing PC NA and PC EU characters to be stored on the same server except for character/account names. Which really should be fine with a "add a suffix if the same name is on both servers".

    The character name isn't super important.
    That's not how databases work.

    There's two separate databases, one for each mega-server, and if you combined those two all numeric IDs would conflict with each other, overwriting/deleting/corrupting everything.
    shades.gif

  • Fennwitty
    Fennwitty
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    If your argument is 'it's not worth their time' fine. But it would take exceptional levels of incompetent design to make mapping impossible.

    Not a technical impossibility in the least to set up new keys and supporting scripts.

    PC NA
  • Dagoth_Rac
    Dagoth_Rac
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    Fennwitty wrote: »
    It would really help me personally to do more on PTS if my PC NA characters weren't wiped off the face of the planet partway through.

    Really not sure what could possibly go wrong by allowing PC NA and PC EU characters to be stored on the same server except for character/account names. Which really should be fine with a "add a suffix if the same name is on both servers".

    The character name isn't super important.

    It is not about the names. It is about database keys. Your account and each of your characters has some giant number associated with them, like 869567253689. Now, that 869567253689 goes on everything in database related to you. What quests you have completed, what step you are on in partially completed quests, what achievements you have, what guilds you belong to, what gear you own, what motifs you know, what mounts you have collected, etc., etc. There are probably hundreds, if not thousands of database tables involved. And probably tens of thousands of individual records involved. This is why you can already change your name. Because if you change your name from John Doe to Joe Schmo, that underlying 869567253689 key is unchanged, so everything linked to John Doe is now linked to Joe Schmo.

    But somebody on the other megaserver also has key 869567253689. And now you have a conflict. Somebody's key needs to be changed. Otherwise, all your NA gear will be linked to an EU character, or vice versa, or both, or neither. It can be unpredictable and dependent on what kind of data relationships and conditions are built into database. For example, Emperor of a campaign may be a one-to-one relationship. But if 869567253689 is emperor of Gray Host campaign, and there are two characters with key 869567253689, that could cause serious database-level errors.

    But you cannot just change the key in one place. It likely needs to be changed in thousands and thousands of places. Multiply that by millions of characters. And do all this without making any mistakes or overlooking anything. Because corrupted data is incredibly hard to un-corrupt. It is kind of like how putting milk into black coffee is really easy. Taking the milk out after the fact and going back to black coffee is really hard.

    The merging of databases and the potential for key conflicts and data corruption is one of the scariest undertakings in information management. It is easy to mess up and difficult to put right without starting over.
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