(Feb 5 and 9) Server problem

Edit: Same thing happened again today. We're still working on it.

This was indeed the same issue. We have restarted the realm and we'll try to get the issue fixed as soon as possible.

More details on this problem:

Occasionally it seems one of our instance spawner servers is stalling. We haven't worked out the reason for the stall yet, though we are investigating it.

Unfortunately as an unintended consequence this is actually causing the entire realm to stop spawning instances.

The reason for this is because our instance manager balances instances onto the machines that have the least instances on them. If one instance server loses communication and all the instances timed out, then this would mean that the instance manager would choose start all new instances on that machine until it has reached parity with the rest of the realm. Because instances started on that machine never come up (due to the stall) that server will *never* reach parity with the other servers.

In 0.9.6b I added a check so that if one server continuously fails to start instances, then that server will be removed from rotation pending manual review.

This means that the realm will continue to function just fine (albeit down a server).

Now that this is done, I can start checking into why the original problem is happening.

Could those of you having the problem where the debug info shows 0 ping please confirm, does this only happen in town instances? Or has it happened in other areas? And where are you connecting from? (Country/ISP)