Resets are irritating, time-consuming for players and damaging to immersion, but I believe that there is a better way to handle them more seamlessly in a way that will be transparent to both DMs and players. An idle nwserver instance consumes very few resources. Therefore:
- EFU runs two instances of nwserver simultaneously, sharing the same vault and sharing the same server vault directory, making only some minor adaptations to ensure server idempotency against the database.
- When a DM triggers a reset, players are given a brief 1-minute warning of an upcoming instance switch, following which their locations are stored on their tokens and they are transferred to their corresponding positions on the sister server. New players logging into the now-empty server are transferred over to the sister server.
- The emptied server is reset with the updated module.
- When the process is complete and the new module is running, players are given a 1-minute warning again and are then transferred back over to the other server.
Downtime due to resets is eliminated, however there are a few considerations to be made:
- What is done with people who are mid-quest? Complicated issue, possibly best to introduce an update mechanism that triggers automatically when everyone has left quest areas.
- What is a PC's starting position on the updated server? Is it the position he or she was at previously, or does the PC return to their spawn point?
Possible implementation alternative:
1. Two servers are up at all times
2. One server is marked active, and the other server automatically redirects to its active counterpart.
3. Reset occurs on the inactive server first, and only when complete is the active server marked inactive and players are transferred over to the newly-reset active server.
4. To reduce the annoyance of being server-jumped immediately on login, the EFU launcher would be equipped to determine which of the two servers is active and immediately log into the correct one.
Downtime due to resets is again eliminated, idempotency requirements are relaxed and quest-related complications are eliminated.
This simply is not worth it, nor worth the resource usage and upkeep of two bases that will keep synced up constantly, and for what is needed for it to be smooth and trustworthy, it would increase upkeep costs, and it requires more money.
Truly, it's an old game, and the resets, they are not that serious. This is not an MMO, and even big million dollar systems will have to reset at times.
This is an absolute thing, it will not happen. This is a matter everyone will have to deal with.
It really is a neat idea, and I hate to poopoo over neat suggestions. But like Paha says, sounds like way too much effort when update resets take, like, at max 10 minutes.