Celtic Heroes

The Official Forum for Celtic Heroes, the 3D MMORPG for iOS and Android Devices

Server Status Update

#1
Hello Heroes!

Today we want to address some of the recent events and server stability in particular to give you a bit of insight beyond just ‘we are working on it’. Before we do, we want to thank all of you for your patience and understanding, which has really been extraordinary throughout the recent issues. It means alot to us and gives us even more confidence in the future of the game.

As you are most likely aware, we have been subjected to various server attacks which have resulted in a large amount of server downtime over the last few weeks. Uptime and stability is something we take very seriously and we feel awful about the amount of recent downtime. We have been working closely together with VR to mitigate the attacks and fix the underlying issues.

Before DECA began the gradual takeover of the game earlier this year, the Celtic Heroes servers had been running on the same hardware for some time, which has served the game well overall up until now. As part of our future proofing of the game, DECA wanted to move the servers to a cloud infrastructure, which is something we have been preparing for some time now.

As the attacks began, the game was still running on the existing hardware, which is controlled by VR. While DECA has been collaborating with them, it is the VR team that has been working tirelessly to mitigate the attacks and prevent extra downtimes. They have made numerous server upgrades and changes over the past two weeks, but unfortunately, there are limitations within the current infrastructure and we are still not in the spot we want to be in.

During this time DECA has been finalizing the move to a more scalable cloud platform and a part of that was the open beta we ran recently. We had great participation and it helped us feel more confident in the move. As a next step, we will use our experience and setup to help VR move the game to a cloud platform. This move will be happening very soon and we will let you know once we have a date locked down. While it is a significant step in the right direction, it is however not a silver bullet that will fix all potential server-related issues immediately. We expect and are prepared to deal with further attacks and issues after the move.

The recent server attacks and security breaches brought to light some limitations of the existing infrastructure and legacy code. DECA and VR together have been collaborating on a planned roadmap to fix the identified issues and upgrade security. We will be implementing this roadmap over the coming weeks. Both VR and DECA agree that security and server stability are the highest priorities and we are confident we will get the game to a good state so that we can then focus on building for the future. We must ensure the foundations are solid before starting to build something more.

Many of you have been asking what we might be doing compensation-wise and when you can expect both double platinum sales as well as in-game events. When it comes to compensation, we are not looking to just give everyone a fixed amount of platinum or mystery boxes. While there might be some free stuff involved, you have not been able to play the game due to the extended issues, so we would rather give you ample opportunities to catch up through various events and have the chance to enjoy the game more. Going forward you can expect to see more events than previously and we are planning to have a slightly bigger event first to kick things off soon. We will communicate the dates once they are solid, but you won’t be waiting for months for the first one. At this point, we do not have any news to share on the next double platinum sale but will give an update once we have something to share.

Due to the issues we also have a higher than usual number of support tickets coming in. Combined with downtimes and server moves impacting our support tools, the response time has been longer than normal, but both teams are in the process of clearing the backlog. If you have made a support ticket and you are still waiting, you should be receiving a reply soon.

The beginning of DECA’s journey into Celtic Heroes has not gone exactly as planned. However, we remain positive about the outlook of the game and are fully committed to it. Once our first two priorities of security and stability are in order, we will be turning our focus on various quality of life improvements, while at the same time scoping out what the first piece of new content might look like. You can expect to hear more from us on this topic a little down the line as our plans become clearer and we wrap up the game transition.

As mentioned, we don’t expect all the issues to be solved instantly with the move to the cloud, but rest assured that both teams are working hard to use all avenues available to get to a stable state. Again, a big thank you to the community and our apologies for all the issues over the last few months. The whole DECA team is looking forward to talking to you more in the future, till then, take care.

-The DECA Team

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