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Development Update 5/19 Bugs I'm Tracking - still this darn CDN issue in the Philippines. I received feedback from many, many users and have sent it to the appropriate people. Hotfixes and Patches We generally push out minor bug fixes and whatnot on Tuesdays and Thursdays in what we call a patch. Every Monday and Wednesday morning we collect all the minor bug fixes that the different developers have done, put them into a test build, and then give the build to Quality Assurance (QA). QA then checks it out, runs an acceptance test against it to try and make sure that we haven't broken anything serious, and then we push out the new build the day after. This is why it sometimes seems to take so long to fix even a simple bug: let's say something is found on Wednesday, then it won't get into the patch build until Monday, which means that it won't get out until Tuesday. Unless it is serious enough to merit a hotfix. Certain issues are instant hotfixes: security/inventory exploits, inventory problems, and cash problems, among others. In such cases we get a fix together and then patch it out as quickly as possible. Just for the record, pushing a patch is very easy but also scary. You see, even though we audit fixes, and it goes through QA, you just never know when you push it out if everything is going to be okay. So, you run this script that takes your code and starts deploying it to the hundreds of web servers, and in the back of your mind you're always wondering if the site will be crashing in the next fifteen minutes. Metered Releases We don't always announce a feature -- in fact, we often don't announce it. Generally we want to just let a small percentage of the people run into it, see how the databases hold up, and then, when we're pretty sure that everything will work, we make an announcement and let everyone hit it at once. There are a couple of ways we can control it: we can let in a percentage of users, we can just let in beta users, we can let in those people that hit it randomly, so on and so forth. While the users are trickling in we are adjusting stuff on the backend to take care of problems as we see 'em. Definitely, we learned a lot of lessons from prom, especially relating to the right way to structure the protocol so that it doesn't overload pieces of our architecture. On the whole prom went well, but the first day was "interesting" while we were dealing with the load issues. If you thought prom was cool, wait until the summer event! Bugs Fixed This Week I mentioned that a much requested feature was going to be in the header, and true to form, since I said it would happen last week, it didn't. I believe this is the Law of Perversity, a fundamental rule of the universe that holds sway over typical tricks of the universe, such as a) it raining the day after you wash your car, or b) the great sales that come the day after you buy something, or especially c) when you date a girl for three months and finally tell all your friends that "this girl is special" and then find out that she has a fiance. Anyway, we rolled out profile comments today; fixed some inventory whitescreening issues; cleaned up the inventory display, so you don't see all those awful URLs when you first load the screen; added CAPTCHAs to arenas; and fixed one last bug in the arranger that prevented you from selling back to the store. By "we," incidentally, I mean "lots of people did work, but I'm just writing about this, so your thanks should go to omgwhat and fieryange1 and cdf and the other devs who fixed bugs this week." (And that holds true in general: while by virtue of a number of circumstances I am able to spend more time writing about stuff that is happening in the dev team, in fact we have a rockin' dev and UI and art crew that makes this magic happen). The profile comments and arena CAPTCHAs were both features that the users had been asking for, so it was great to finally push those features out. I was tempted to start a thread in SF and declare a day this week "Unofficial Comment On A Friend's Profile and Submit Art Day," but I decided that it would confuse more than it would help, and truly, my sense of humor would get me arrested in some countries and defenestrated in others. But: definitely put a comment on a friend's profile and submit a piece of art. The arenas are very cool, and I'm hoping that the new non-bot atmosphere will encourage people to participate more. Other Stuff Rolling Out - item norm goes to beta this week - arenas next month, I hope. See Law of Perversity, above. - cool way to communicate with your friends

Posted by: Panagrammic Wed May 21, 2008 @ 06:24am

Read my journal!

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dBEf-GAEc-18E-BBAf
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Commented on: Wed May 21, 2008 @ 06:33am


	Thanks for the update! I know what you're saying about patching code O.O;; Doesn't everyone? As a small developer, it's more like expecting my computer to explode when I hit compile though razz I thought prom was neat. I'm happy that Christian got involved. Quote: By "we," incidentally, I mean "lots of people did work, but I'm just writing about this, so your thanks should go to omgwhat and fieryange1 and cdf and the other devs who fixed bugs this week." (And that holds true in general: while by virtue of a number of circumstances I am able to spend more time writing about stuff that is happening in the dev team, in fact we have a rockin' dev and UI and art crew that makes this magic happen). QFE. Sorry. Quote: - item norm goes to beta this week Only a few months left until it finally goes RC .8.9.302.1, right? : D Give DARKNRGY my props solid

Commented on: Wed May 21, 2008 @ 07:03am


	OMG Lots of awesome and love goes to those that added CAPTCHA to the arenas. <3 It's one of the reason I never bothered with them. ;o; They were so spamy with those awful bot avatars. ._.; And lol I now know when I get comments. xd ; Har. It would usually take me a day or two before I would notice. \|D [/lame]

Infamous
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heylookabunny
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Commented on: Wed May 21, 2008 @ 07:09am


	awesome-o. here's a problem i would love to see fixed: i forgot my password on my main account. i tried to reset it with the forgot login feature, however the email never arrives in my inbox. my email is through comcast and i do not have a spam filter that would prevent the email from coming through. i know i'm not the only person having this problem... maybe you could nudge whoever is in charge of that for us please? i miss my main account...

Commented on: Wed May 21, 2008 @ 07:46am


	the fact you used the word defenestrated made this post epic win.

Arli
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Insanity_Is_Freedom
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Commented on: Wed May 21, 2008 @ 08:02am


	<Incoming Transmission....Sender: Unknown...> <Please wait while we connect you...> When will item normalization be up and running entirely? I have been reading your entries, but have not seen anything regarding item normaliaztion anywhere else.. <The transmission has been disconnected...>

Commented on: Wed May 21, 2008 @ 08:12am


	Wow, you said "defenestrated"! You are now officially eleventybillion times cooler than had previously been known. blaugh I sent a bunch of CDN-fail experiencing users your way, so good luck to the team handling all that! 4laugh Thanks for the hard work tweaking the inventory system and adding CAPTCHA to the arenas. I might even consider voting for some people now. 3nodding And thanks for letting "average Gaians" know what your team's up to, Panagrammic; I always enjoy learning about it.

Chocobo Princess
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Azurae Skye
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Commented on: Wed May 21, 2008 @ 08:30am


	Hello Panagramic dear, Thank you very much for fixing all those things and working so hard for us! I'm very, very happy to know there are now captchas in the arenas...as all the bots had stopped me from entering! However, I'm a little confused. I tried to sell something back to the store from my inventory arranger tonight and it still isn't working...did you mean it was fixed now? Or that you worked on it and it should be working soon? Thank you for all the time you put it for us! And I always enjoy reading your journal...always interesting wink . ~Azurae Skye

Commented on: Wed May 21, 2008 @ 08:31am


	Rock on, Pana. cool

Arcadian
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Makoto_Gin
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Commented on: Wed May 21, 2008 @ 08:37am


	As per usual,thanks for the update,most appreciated.Nice to see the new features and fixes being put through,one in particular for me the captcha getting added to the arena,I've already been seeing a decrease in bot comments already.Now I would love to see something done about them in fishing.Also inventory loads abit better,still kinda slow but not like it was with the urls everywhere.As you said,I think thanks is due to those who worked on those things.Now we just need for item normalization to kick in,I want to use all of my inventory darn it >_<. On the topic of patches and priority and whatnot,as far as I knew that was common knowledge.Normally when something major comes up,that has top priority over any other patch,so that's to be expected.Not to mention when I new feature or patch is made,there is the chance of something crashing but I haven't seen anything like that happened in awhile,and if it does I doubt it would be as bad as the site being down for a week like in the old days xDD.

Commented on: Wed May 21, 2008 @ 12:05pm


	You would have been thrown out of a window?! eek

Darien S.
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DarkUmbera
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Commented on: Wed May 21, 2008 @ 12:09pm


	Wait?!?!! You deploy this across webseravers?!???? you dont just use a prosser array thats homosidle!

Commented on: Wed May 21, 2008 @ 12:13pm


	Don't worry Pan, I've had the Law of Perversity happen to me too (and boy does it suck). And just fyi: whenever you say "this week" I know that means 2-4 weeks from now XD I used to code. You ever seen this?Gaia's actually pretty good a the "next week" idea. Now this cool way to chat with friends... I hope it's not another Facebook or wherever widget. Some sort of IM app I guess could be cool but who doesn't already have one somewhere (even if they don't know they do)? If it's IRC, well that kinda cool but I could see people having issues trying to remember commands (I still do) so I'd heavily recommend a full GUI. The last thing I have to say is hasn't it been a long time since you first announced the arenas upgrade? What's taking so long? I didn't think you guys were revamping that much. Or is the code being built from scratch? That's all I've got. Thanks for the update, Pan smile EDIT: what's up with the broken formatting tags?

France Hopper
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Cleocatra
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Commented on: Wed May 21, 2008 @ 12:55pm


	Aha! So this is the reason why I got notification on a comment XD! Awesome!

Commented on: Wed May 21, 2008 @ 05:03pm


	Looking forward to all the new fixes / features, but a big thanks for the current stuff you guys implimented. The Comment announcements are awesome! Makes me so happy you guys got chance to do that for us! heart

Jiang Ryudo
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Kunai Jones
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Commented on: Wed May 21, 2008 @ 06:17pm


	@ Insanity - Jakobo has also been writing a bit about item normalization. Check his journal for the details. I think DARKNRGY has also mentioned it a few times. It's a seemingly dull but actually very exciting project when you consider the avenues it opens up. @ Azurae - I'm guessing when he said that patches get pushed on Tuesday and Thursdays it happens sometime during the actual workday, but may take some time. Or that particular fix may be in Thursday's patch. @ Cleocatra - That was annoying. biggrin And lastly, for Pan, pass on the thanks to your team from all of the Arena enthusiasts. Ever since that went live things are just so much better. Way to go. Oh man, the inventory page loads buttery smooth. That ugly-URL fix is ace. And now I'm going to go empty all my storage items back into my inventory and see if I can break your whitescreen fixes. xd Well, really just to see if I can use all my stuff again. This is the second time I've seen mention of this new communication feature. I'm imagining something like Facebook or Gmail chat, with persistent little IM windows as you traverse the site. I could be way off, but that would be pretty cool. Oh, and since features are now getting persistent URLs across the board, a Warp To button in such a feature would be really cool, so you could join your friend in Pinball or Cinemas or whatever you like. Thanks again for all your hard work! You guys rock!

Commented on: Wed May 21, 2008 @ 10:17pm


	I was so thrilled to see the inventory urls gone <3 That was so annoying and being able to once again sellback in the arranger is so exciting. :3 I thought the prom was pretty fantastic personally. The only flaw was being forced to start over when you missed once. D'; Oh well, what's done is officially done. I hope you update the game and keep it. <3

Ginger Flare
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Eudaemon
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Commented on: Wed May 21, 2008 @ 11:25pm


	The Prom event was amazing. I was addicted to the DDR-esque game. I think the song, "Hypnotize" was really inappropriate. That was the only flaw. Item normalization = YEA! And thank you for making the arenas more fair for all of us. Now I can finally enjoy them without fear of those downvoting bots! You should listen to the sound versions of the CAPTCHAs. They are...creepy...

Commented on: Thu May 22, 2008 @ 01:51am


	Very creepy indeed. But yes I do have a real question. Seeing as the Battle BETA is taking in more people again, how many people do you guys let in on average? Just totally out of curiosity. I applied but admittedly chances are slim.

France Hopper
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vix diesel
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Commented on: Thu May 22, 2008 @ 03:12am


	the selling items back from the inventory arranger still doesn't work for me. sad

Commented on: Thu May 22, 2008 @ 04:08am


	I push patches like I rip off band aids: quickly and with my eyes closed. Scary indeed, but the worst moment is when you push a fix, you run something, and thousands of error codes explode before your very eyes. Enough to make a grown man cry. Huzzah for CAPTCHAs. Law of Perversity? I thought that was just Murphy's Law. Hence why I always just tell people I can have things done for them within the hour. They always know it's a bold-faced lie. Talk quickly, as though sapient. It confuses people.

AlexDitto
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Smaddy
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Commented on: Thu May 22, 2008 @ 04:35am


	I really like the new Profile comment alert, the improved Inventory screens, and love the fact that there are now CAPTCHAs in Arenas. (Watch as commenting drastically decreases, lol.) I think it's very smart that features are secretly released, tested sitewide, then announced. I can remember in the past, the joke was -- the new thing would be released, a bazillion people would go try it, it would overload/break/exploit would be found, and 2 hours later it would be taken down. Then I'd return from work, see the announcement, go OH YAY!, then when I went to try it, it would be down. sweatdrop I think this way is much smarter. Some people will always complain that stuff isn't fixed fast enough, but for the most part I think stuff is fixed in a reasonable amount of time. In the past, stuff would glitch up, it would take months for it to be taken down (and in the meantime people would be so confused and/or be losing items/gold/wasting time)... and then it would be down for a very, very long time. The Prom was Ok.... I just was really disappointed that I got 3 games away from the Prom Crown, and the game decided to glitch and reset on me for no apparent reason. The only reason I played was to get the Crown. Go figure. sad I'll just buy one when the market drops on them. PS: Sellback from the Inventory Arranger worked very briefly for me, and now it's giving me errors again.

Commented on: Thu May 22, 2008 @ 08:59am


	Thank you for continuing to work on the whitescreen issues. And thank you for teaching me a new word. EDIT: OH! I just saw that there is a notifier for my profile comments. That was something I'd hoped for, that's wonderful. Now I see what you meant with that, I was still under the whole CAPTCHA thing.

Edible Substance
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France Hopper
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Commented on: Thu May 22, 2008 @ 11:29am


	I just noticed an inventory improvement (I think). When selling in the marketplace, the stuff you really aren't only shows up now as opposed to everything just in there anyway. Still would be awesome if equipped car parts didn't show up there either.

Commented on: Thu May 22, 2008 @ 03:11pm


	So to check on the inventory whitescreen issues, I moved my stuff back to my main inventory from storage and alas, I'm back to a white screen. mad It didn't work for me, but I hope someone benefited from your changes! I really hope this has become a priority issue, as I know many, many people are having issues with it. Also, I could sell some stuff back in the arranger, but not one of those tetris blocks that plagues my inventory. Thanks for your hard work Pan & team! smile

Sizzla
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Lady Kayura
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Commented on: Thu May 22, 2008 @ 03:30pm


	So glad to see those horrible links gone! ^____^ Also great to hear inventories were being worked on. It's so frustrating when you want to wear something and you can't because your inventory won't load.

Commented on: Thu May 22, 2008 @ 03:55pm


	Dude, did you have like, a REALLY bad relationship? neutral Because you're making me feel better about my ex-fiance who turned me into a submissive emotional wreck/alcoholic for 4 years. rofl Anyways, you guys definitely ROCK. I'd rather have a patch that DOESN'T make Gaia go boom rather than a simple problem or exploit get fixed immediately.

Coyotecom
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Inti Castro
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Commented on: Thu May 22, 2008 @ 05:27pm


	Thank you once again for your updates. They are very educational. razz

Commented on: Thu May 22, 2008 @ 06:44pm


	ღThe bug not allowing people to sell clothing back to the stores via the Inventory Arranger is still not working for me. I tried to sell back my Grey Peasant Booties but I get a "Error -102.2009".

Digital Puppetry
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[K]iba [I]nuzuka
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Commented on: Thu May 22, 2008 @ 06:51pm


	That last sentence interests me..

Commented on: Fri May 23, 2008 @ 12:42am


	I think I've said this before but I'll say it again. Who ever writes the updates has an awesome sense of humor. "Pinballs are no longer made from depleted uranium." Kudos to who ever came up with that one.

France Hopper
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the shine inside you
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Commented on: Fri May 23, 2008 @ 12:57am


	When you say "fixed some inventory whitescreening issues" I'm guessing that you don't mean on the Equip screen, because I continue to stare in vexation at the blank space in my browser that should be where I dress my avatar. ;-;

Commented on: Fri May 23, 2008 @ 10:28pm


	Hey Pan! Thank you for your hard work! Like Sizzla I am getting Inventory Whitescreening issues. I have to move items into my storage if I want to be able to equip/unequip new items. I started having this issue today after the EI report. sweatdrop

Legend
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Jiang Ryudo
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Commented on: Fri May 23, 2008 @ 11:44pm


	Like Legend and the others that flagged the issue up with you, I'm having to keep over 500 items in storage because my dress up page won't load if I have them all in my inventory. Is the fix for this possible? :3 I'm hoping it's simple and can be addressed soon! heart

Commented on: Sun May 25, 2008 @ 04:34pm


	holy cow there's a lot of bugs...and bugs fixed, of course. surprised h.h.1 Total Value: 172,686 Gold

heavenlyheart1
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Kai-Shan Valandria
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Commented on: Mon May 26, 2008 @ 10:20pm


	Thanks so very much for the new fixes! I do love the captchas and fiercely hope they'll cut down on Gaia's serious botting problem, and I hope something will be done about the bots plaguing games next (especially fishing and cards! gonk ). The comment announcements are fun too! As for the summer event, I'm very excited for it. I must mention, however, that I hope more than anything that there will be alternative options availible with it, unlike the prom event. Though I was finally able to earn my items from the dance game on Monday (thanks for extending the event, BTW), there were many more who weren't able to play the game at all, for one reason or another. I hope that with the summer event, there will be a forum-based alternative or something of that nature so that users who cannot use Gaia's flash-based applications will be able to participate and gain the same items. We would really appreciate it! Anyway, keep up the great work! heart

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