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Asking for a friend.
But seriously, I'm also eagerly anticipating the last installment of War for the Crown and really hope they release this to pdf PRIOR to the 2E kick off.
Hope they balance their releases in anticipation of some heavy traffic days following 2E (because I'm gonna be right there, trying to download it with half a zillion other folks).
Does anyone know what time the playtest will be posted?
Considering that a Humble Bundle once made it impossible to download anything off of this site for 2 days, I don't expect to be able to download the play test PDF until it's been out for a week or two.
I find it hard to believe that it'll be as bad as the Humble Bundle. People downloading the playtest are getting AT MOST 3 pdfs. The Humble Bundle was a LOT more than that. Also, they've said that the infrastructure for handling personalized pdfs has been moved into the cloud (AWS, I think), which should allow it to scale up more easily to handle this sort of load.
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The website has also gone through at least one major overhaul since the Humble Bundle.
Also, wasn't there a second Humble Bundle with many fewer problems? Either that, or I've spent way more on Pathfinder stuff than I previously suspected.
I'd say there's about a 100% chance that the website crashes for at least several hours when the playtest PDF drops.
So you're offering odds of infinity to one? I'll take a piece of that action.
I have my army men and my magnifying glass ready. August always starts sunny where I am.
>:^)
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Didn’t they say something about PDF personalization being moved to a cloud service? I figure that will substantially improve the site’s chances.
Do they even need to personalize a free playtest file?
It would seem to me they could just stick it up on sendspace or something...
Yep. They want the participation numbers.
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i fully expect the website to die repeatedly and for long periods. This place chugs just bringing up the forums or front blog page, and very few websites I visit have that trouble, let alone on multiple devices.
I think they need a countdown timer. XD
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Here's hoping they improved their system in anticipation of the spike. I may postpone thinking about downloading it but I'd like to have something to read on the train.
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I'm looking forward to laughing smugly at Gorbacz.
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I'm looking forward to laughing smugly at Gorbacz.
Why would you need to wait for the release, or any special time really, to do that?
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A good point. I probably should have said "...continuing to laugh..."
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On behalf of myself and all the pugwampis, gremlins, electronic bug-a-boos, and Steve the Rogue Backhoe, I'd like to reassure everyone here that we Agents of Chaos are staffed up almost 350% percent and well-prepared. While no plan completely survives contact with the enemy (ie, you all), you can relax and rest assured we AoC will be diligent and tenacious in crashing the servers and keeping them down for as long as possible.
{walkie talkie crackles} Wha-!? Already? How can they- Oh no. {is sneak attacked by a Paizo falling anvil}
Ow.
I'm looking forward to rubbing my PDFs in your faces if the download goes live at midnight Pacific Time, which means that a solid share of you will be asleep, while that hour is 9 AM in Central Yurpeen Time.
I can only hope, that's when I probably get out of bed. Would be a great way to start the day.
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On behalf of myself and all the pugwampis, gremlins, electronic bug-a-boos, and Steve the Rogue Backhoe, I'd like to reassure everyone here that we Agents of Chaos are staffed up almost 350% percent and well-prepared. While no plan completely survives contact with the enemy (ie, you all), you can relax and rest assured we AoC will be diligent and tenacious in crashing the servers and keeping them down for as long as possible.
{walkie talkie crackles} Wha-!? Already? How can they- Oh no. {is sneak attacked by a Paizo falling anvil}
Ow.
The Backhoe is really the bane of the internet.
We will make them available shortly after the Gen Con floor opens for early access to VIGs—9 AM Eastern, 6 AM Pacific.
6AM Pacific is 11AM NZ, on August the 1st! I get them a day earlier than most of you mwahahahaaa. :-D
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I think they need a countdown timer. XD
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NO! Dang it guys, AUGUST 2ND! THE 2ND! We're taking the site down on the 2nd, not the 1st.
{glares angrily at gathered gremlins} How many of you can even read a calendar? {much muttering and confused looks, but no raised hands} Augh, good evil help is so hard to find.
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Site crashes: Mad Max-style apocalyptic scenario.
Site doesn't crash: Seventh Seal is broken, armageddon commences.
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I'm really hoping the various outages over the past 24 hours or so were actually tied to spiffy upgrades that will make the site stable and usable during high traffic, and not a harbinger of things to come.
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NO! Dang it guys, AUGUST 2ND! THE 2ND! We're taking the site down on the 2nd, not the 1st.
{glares angrily at gathered gremlins} How many of you can even read a calendar? {much muttering and confused looks, but no raised hands} Augh, good evil help is so hard to find.
Good work boys - one day BEFORE going live with 2E we've got some new and hilarious issues with the Forums (formatting looks borked AND when I try to create a new thread - get shunted to an error page).
You can continue your work tomorrow...thanks for the free preview of tomorrow's website carnage...
(seriously though, doesn't Paizo have a TEST and PROD environment? How do these things make it into PROD? No QA/QC testing? No TEST environment at all?)
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I'm really hoping the various outages over the past 24 hours or so were actually tied to spiffy upgrades that will make the site stable and usable during high traffic, and not a harbinger of things to come.
So is the Paizo technical team hoping too IMO
"People, do we even know why the site is working ?"
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I'd be concerned if there weren't problems downloading it; that would mean not enough people are trying it out.
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(seriously though, doesn't Paizo have a TEST and PROD environment? How do these things make it into PROD? No QA/QC testing? No TEST environment at all?)
These are likely issues of scale. Without knowing what their backend looks like, they are probably pretty tight on system resources. Tabletop publishing isn't exactly flushed with money.
So, even if they are on AWS and it is technically true that they could scale up their system resources indefinitely, they may not have a budget for what that costs relative to the gains it buys them. As someone who works in AWS daily, the costs add up fast. Same is true in a traditional datacenter.
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(seriously though, doesn't Paizo have a TEST and PROD environment? How do these things make it into PROD? No QA/QC testing? No TEST environment at all?)These are likely issues of scale. Without knowing what their backend looks like, they are probably pretty tight on system resources. Tabletop publishing isn't exactly flushed with money.
So, even if they are on AWS and it is technically true that they could scale up their system resources indefinitely, they may not have a budget for what that costs relative to the gains it buys them. As someone who works in AWS daily, the costs add up fast. Same is true in a traditional datacenter.
I get that. But Paizo is a multi-million dollar company, not something running out of someone's garage - some due diligence and planning these things should not be out of the question. This latest iteration is yet another mess - sloppy formatting, things not working, etc. And, it's implemented one day before the big 2E release? The time you are hoping to rope in the faithful for your shiny new 2nd Edition AND maybe new blood, curious about it?
Seriously. Bad. Timing.
This is the precise time you want to showcase a solid website. Right now, it's anything but.
I'd give it a 5/3 odds. However, unfortunately cannot take bets as gambling is illegal where I'm at right now.
:P
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some due diligence and planning these things should not be out of the question.
They've got a sys admin job opening. You could show them how it's done.
I think it is now safe to say that this site won't go into a meltdown when the Playtest PDFs become available. The only possibilities are that the current meltdown will either continue or cease. I am placing my bet on "continue".
It depends on what you mean by "meltdown." The site stayed up during Starfinder's launch, but my downloads didn't complete until hours after I started and many failed attempts.
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(seriously though, doesn't Paizo have a TEST and PROD environment? How do these things make it into PROD? No QA/QC testing? No TEST environment at all?)These are likely issues of scale. Without knowing what their backend looks like, they are probably pretty tight on system resources. Tabletop publishing isn't exactly flushed with money.
So, even if they are on AWS and it is technically true that they could scale up their system resources indefinitely, they may not have a budget for what that costs relative to the gains it buys them. As someone who works in AWS daily, the costs add up fast. Same is true in a traditional datacenter.
I get that. But Paizo is a multi-million dollar company, not something running out of someone's garage - some due diligence and planning these things should not be out of the question. This latest iteration is yet another mess - sloppy formatting, things not working, etc. And, it's implemented one day before the big 2E release? The time you are hoping to rope in the faithful for your shiny new 2nd Edition AND maybe new blood, curious about it?
Seriously. Bad. Timing.
This is the precise time you want to showcase a solid website. Right now, it's anything but.
The issue is that this isn't their shiny new edition. This is a very early and likely rough approximation of what the final new system may look like. Additionally, they are providing it to the community at $0. Are there going to be people who come to Paizo's site who wouldn't otherwise? Probably, but they wouldn't generate enough revenue for a non-standard infrastructure scale.
Consider this (fake numbers)... It costs $100 to run the site. To run the site with no reduced user experience during the launch would cost $1000. If the increased revenue from the release doesn't exceed what they expect to lose from downtime, in addition to not making up the cost of the increased scale, that isn't a real good business decision.
Having said that, Vic said they've been working on hardening their system. So, rather than "no experience" or "full experience", they are probably trying to meet somewhere in the middle. That's a much better business proposition.
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According to Vic, AWS is handling watermarking and downloads, so the over/under will likely be ZERO.
Looking forward to a smooth download, most likely.
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If Amazon Web Services is more reliable than Amazon Fulfillment Services, anyway. :P
If Amazon Web Services is more reliable than Amazon Fulfillment Services, anyway. :P
Considering the current situation with AFS...
LOL...
well now that Amazon crapped the bed, I say the odds of a server meltdown have just improved.
Not sure what you’re referring to...?
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some due diligence and planning these things should not be out of the question.They've got a sys admin job opening. You could show them how it's done.
Except what they need isn't a sysadmin; it's load balancing and scalability...both of which are readily available via AWS. Failing that, there is something like Akamai.
This isn't a difficult problem to solve; it's an expensive one.
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well now that Amazon crapped the bed, I say the odds of a server meltdown have just improved.Not sure what you’re referring to...?
This. Amazon seems to have really dropped the ball with the shipping of physical copies, so anyone who ordered directly through Paizo is probably going to get theirs late. Orders from Amazon or other retailers are fine though. The whole reason Paizo had Amazon handle their shipping was basically to avoid this kind of thing happening, but here it is.
This. Amazon seems to have really dropped the ball with the shipping of physical copies, so anyone who ordered directly through Paizo is probably going to get theirs late. Orders from Amazon or other retailers are fine though. The whole reason Paizo had Amazon handle their shipping was basically to avoid this kind of thing happening, but here it is.well now that Amazon crapped the bed, I say the odds of a server meltdown have just improved.Not sure what you’re referring to...?
Yeah, that's disappointing. Clearly someone at Amazon screwed the pooch.