FAQ for Beta Testing User Shops
Below you can find the FAQ, which is also posted in the Gold Account forums, for the new User Shops Beta Testing. We will continue to add on to this as needed based on frequent questions from the original news post, the site feedback thread, and the Beta Testing thread.
Why do we even need new shops?
User shops have been bogging down the site for years. They are the single biggest resource hog that we have, often taking up 25%-40% of the database's entire server load. A big part of this is that the shops were never designed to hold as many items as they do now. The database tables are badly indexed, and badly optimized for the data they're holding, and there is simply too much in them to even try to fix those problems. Starting over from scratch allows us essentially a blank slate without those problems existing in the first place. The new database tables and code have been built with modern practices and will scale better to the amounts of information they will hold.
The reason we're doing something about it now is we believe the user shops have been causing huge bottlenecks in our database, and are a major reason for the 502s and 504s of late.
How will changing the shops help with the lag? Because of the new limits, everyone will be piling items in their vaults, so it's just displacing the problem and not solving anything.
User shops exist on a table, and when you "write" or "edit" a table, it has to "lock" so that information is preserved. If you update the price in your user shop, or an item is purchased, or any type of edit on the table, the entire table has to lock for some amount of time, which means that the next query (looking up items, also purchasing an item, etc) gets put a few milliseconds behind until the first one is done. These pileup and you end up with 5-6 seconds for a query to finish, or sometimes 30+ seconds, which is where the errors happen because the servers timeout waiting on the query to finish.
This doesn't happen with vaults, or wardrobes, because there aren't nearly that many things on the site hitting them. People aren't frequently updating the price of items in their wardrobes, frequently adding/removing items from them, or anything like that. Vaults aren't used when we release a new feature, or when quests are changed, or whatever the case is that people rush to buy things from user shops and everything starts crumbling. Vaults don't currently have a processing time of 3-4 seconds on updates that hang the entire server process, etc.
Item limits??
We've been warning these were coming for years, and they're finally here. But, as mentioned in the news post, we anticipate these initial limits will be raised quite a bit before we settle on final numbers. And even after they're "final" there's always the chance they could be raised again in the future.
We’ve started with lower numbers to start testing, because it’s a lot easier to start of small and increase as we test rather than start off with large limits and have to decrease as we go!
How do I get to the new shops?
Glad you asked! You can start making your own shops here, and the new shop search is located here. The new shop search will include results from both the new and legacy shops (until the old shops are disabled), so if you want to be sure you're getting the best prices, you should use it!
Is beta testing safe? Will I lose my items?
All of the basic functions have been fully tested by staff members, and all of your items should be perfectly safe. That said, if anything goes wrong, please post HERE to tell me what went wrong, and file a ticket. Everything is being logged and a UA will be able to help you.
Will there be a way to move all of my items from an old gallery to a new one?
We're talking about this behind the scenes, trying to come up with a solution, but right now there is no easy solution for it. For example, how to transfer an old shop to a new one that is bigger than the new item limits. Or simply how to move the items without killing the database.
We agree that it's a very important issue, and we will come up with a solution that we hope fits everyone's needs. In the meantime, access to your items in old shops and galleries will never go away, even after the shops themselves are disabled.
Do I need to move everything right away?
No! You do not have to have your transition complete by the day we expect the new shops to go live. Your items will still exist. You can move them out and to your new shops at your own pace.
If I'm reporting a bug, what information should I include?
1. The page the bug occurred on
2. What happened, to the best of your knowledge
3. Can you reproduce it (ie can you cause it to happen again by doing the same thing)?
4. Steps to reproduce, if possible
5. The browser and version that you use
Please leave all bugs you find HERE on the Beta Testing thread in the Gold Account Forums.
Okay but what’s being done about hoarding items?
Ariel and I have a few things to help discourage hoarding and give users more reasons to use their items in more ways, though you don’t have to if you don’t want to. Our immediate plans include allowing more items to become fraggable and looking into the Recycle Beast (mostly ways to make it easier for people to recycle things to him). Users have been coming up with great suggestions, like making a food day where you can feed as many foods as you can to a pet or just making pets get hungrier faster. Don’t hesitate to post your own ideas! Not all of the suggestions listed HERE are uses for items, some are for unique ways to display items (like toys your pets have played with).
FAQ
Why do we even need new shops?
User shops have been bogging down the site for years. They are the single biggest resource hog that we have, often taking up 25%-40% of the database's entire server load. A big part of this is that the shops were never designed to hold as many items as they do now. The database tables are badly indexed, and badly optimized for the data they're holding, and there is simply too much in them to even try to fix those problems. Starting over from scratch allows us essentially a blank slate without those problems existing in the first place. The new database tables and code have been built with modern practices and will scale better to the amounts of information they will hold.
The reason we're doing something about it now is we believe the user shops have been causing huge bottlenecks in our database, and are a major reason for the 502s and 504s of late.
How will changing the shops help with the lag? Because of the new limits, everyone will be piling items in their vaults, so it's just displacing the problem and not solving anything.
User shops exist on a table, and when you "write" or "edit" a table, it has to "lock" so that information is preserved. If you update the price in your user shop, or an item is purchased, or any type of edit on the table, the entire table has to lock for some amount of time, which means that the next query (looking up items, also purchasing an item, etc) gets put a few milliseconds behind until the first one is done. These pileup and you end up with 5-6 seconds for a query to finish, or sometimes 30+ seconds, which is where the errors happen because the servers timeout waiting on the query to finish.
This doesn't happen with vaults, or wardrobes, because there aren't nearly that many things on the site hitting them. People aren't frequently updating the price of items in their wardrobes, frequently adding/removing items from them, or anything like that. Vaults aren't used when we release a new feature, or when quests are changed, or whatever the case is that people rush to buy things from user shops and everything starts crumbling. Vaults don't currently have a processing time of 3-4 seconds on updates that hang the entire server process, etc.
Item limits??
We've been warning these were coming for years, and they're finally here. But, as mentioned in the news post, we anticipate these initial limits will be raised quite a bit before we settle on final numbers. And even after they're "final" there's always the chance they could be raised again in the future.
We’ve started with lower numbers to start testing, because it’s a lot easier to start of small and increase as we test rather than start off with large limits and have to decrease as we go!
How do I get to the new shops?
Glad you asked! You can start making your own shops here, and the new shop search is located here. The new shop search will include results from both the new and legacy shops (until the old shops are disabled), so if you want to be sure you're getting the best prices, you should use it!
Is beta testing safe? Will I lose my items?
All of the basic functions have been fully tested by staff members, and all of your items should be perfectly safe. That said, if anything goes wrong, please post HERE to tell me what went wrong, and file a ticket. Everything is being logged and a UA will be able to help you.
Will there be a way to move all of my items from an old gallery to a new one?
We're talking about this behind the scenes, trying to come up with a solution, but right now there is no easy solution for it. For example, how to transfer an old shop to a new one that is bigger than the new item limits. Or simply how to move the items without killing the database.
We agree that it's a very important issue, and we will come up with a solution that we hope fits everyone's needs. In the meantime, access to your items in old shops and galleries will never go away, even after the shops themselves are disabled.
Do I need to move everything right away?
No! You do not have to have your transition complete by the day we expect the new shops to go live. Your items will still exist. You can move them out and to your new shops at your own pace.
If I'm reporting a bug, what information should I include?
1. The page the bug occurred on
2. What happened, to the best of your knowledge
3. Can you reproduce it (ie can you cause it to happen again by doing the same thing)?
4. Steps to reproduce, if possible
5. The browser and version that you use
Please leave all bugs you find HERE on the Beta Testing thread in the Gold Account Forums.
Okay but what’s being done about hoarding items?
Ariel and I have a few things to help discourage hoarding and give users more reasons to use their items in more ways, though you don’t have to if you don’t want to. Our immediate plans include allowing more items to become fraggable and looking into the Recycle Beast (mostly ways to make it easier for people to recycle things to him). Users have been coming up with great suggestions, like making a food day where you can feed as many foods as you can to a pet or just making pets get hungrier faster. Don’t hesitate to post your own ideas! Not all of the suggestions listed HERE are uses for items, some are for unique ways to display items (like toys your pets have played with).
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