::Holo Report from HNN::

A human female who looks to be of Nabooian descent appears on the screen. Below her name is the title, Naboo Security Analyst. She’s standing outside a cantina on Tatooine.

Cheeriah Musca reporting from Mos Espa, Tatooine. I’m following up on rumors of a group of rogue Jawas attacking Cioral, a city here on Tat. With the demise of Jabba the Hutt, a power vacuum has emerged. It appears the Jawas are being emboldened and striking out at settlements across the desert. Most later, as I get all the details. I would issue this warning to those thinking about coming to Tatooine. Don’t. It’s living up to it’s reputation of being a hive of scum and villany… and crazy Jawas.

More later as I get the details!

I’m Cheeriah Musca. *waving a hand in a circle* and this is my galaxy.

Screen fades to black

The last time EiF saw Cheeriah she was covering the events surrounding the Rorgungan invasion of Broken Bridge, the new player starter city. That EiF sponsored event was a huge success, spawning a lot of RP.  Since that time more players have joined EiF and cities popping up all across the galaxy!  Roleplayers are demanding their roleplay! PvEers want challenges! Halyn wants to spawn Krayts and Gorax and giant nunas and teensy tiny, but powerful Jawas!

The EiF admin and staff shouldn’t be the only ones to create and set up events. Fort Vigilance on Corella just sponsored Empire Day with RP and a fishing contest! If you want to hold an event for the server, a city, your guild; or a roleplay event you have planned, the EiF staff is available for support. On the forums is an Event Request form to use when you’d like help from the staff (well, Halyn) to enhance your player event.

Event Request Form

Request Guidelines:

To request a player event, create a new topic and cut and paste the form below into the new topic. We will get back to you as soon as possible and let you know if the Admin is available to help you with your event!

Forum Name:

Character Name requesting the event:

Guild (if applicable):

City (if applicable):

Event Dates (please provide a variety of dates, in order to coordinate a time that works best for our staff):

Event Time (please give a desired start time. EiF support 1-2 hours, but set up time could be extra):

Event Location(s):

If in a city does the mayor give their approval?

Will this event be requiring staff buffs, rezzes & heals?

Event Information

Please give us a brief description of your event idea. Keep in mind that we can create any in-game props that are not buildings with interiors, as well as spawn creatures that are implemented* in the game only.

Please give us a detailed timeline for your event, including set-up time:

Will your event be open to the public? If no, who will be attending?

Any other information you can give us about the event?

Are there any questions you have as to what we can do/implement for your event?

PvE/RP Guidelines:

1. For this type of event we cannot give

• badges
• item or cash rewards (unless supplied by the requester)

2. For these kind of events we cannot:

• Spawn MOB’s or NPC’s that drop loot
• Teleport participants or event host/hostess
• Stop other players or guilds from participating

3. For these kind of events we can:

• Spawn objects and non attackable NPC’s and MOB’s
• Spawn Event MOB’s/NPC’s that will not drop loot
• Send system messages
• Keep order
• If requested it can be announced on our Facebook page, or twitter
• Buff and Resurrect players

PvP Guidelines:
1. All above Event Guidelines still apply unless specifically stated by EiF.
2. For these kind of events we cannot give/spawn

• Faction deeds, bases, turrets, mines or any faction item that can purchased from recruiter or obtained by players.
• Credits unless they are supplied by the event requester
• Rewards unless they are supplied by the event requester

3. For these kinds of events we cannot:

• Award Faction to participants.
• Turn off faction loss.
• Change faction of participants to even out the odds.
• Resurrect participants. Staff heals and buffs will only be available between rounds.

Staff reserves the right to refuse support for any player event that does not follow the above guidelines, is in violation of SWGEmu Rules and Policies, EiF Rules and Policies, or is not feasible to support with the Staff tools or in-game mechanics.

Empire in Flames had a bit of a rocky start. Not because of stability issues (though we’ve experienced a few) or the like, but because of the limits of our hardware.

We had expected to take three to four months to grow to a population of 100 online concurrent characters. We exceeded that in the first week, peaking at around 150. Unfortunately, our server hardware wasn’t up to snuff.

The launch server was an old Dell PowerEdge 2950, sporting two quad-core processors, a RAID array of 136 GB 10k RPM drives, and 32 GB of RAM. At heaviest usage, the server hit around 40% utilization of processing…which quickly became an issue.

While the server had plenty of hypothetical headroom, the reality was that we were past what could provide a smooth experience.

To grossly simplify, the server needed to process updates for each player (and from each player!) on a regular basis. As the number of players grew, the server needed more time to process each and every character before it could start over at the top of the list. In the meantime, action continues to happen; the server predicts where a player will be, and if the player character is too far off from that predicted location they get rubberbanded. With the greater delay time, it’s also more likely for the server to miss something important, like a character mounting a speeder – and doesn’t catch it until the player attempts a dismount. In several instances, players could rubberband for kilometers because of that particular scenario.

This morning, we executed a migration, taking us from the very old Dell PowerEdge 2950 to a moderately old Dell PowerEdge R810 sporting four 10-core, hyperthreaded processors (for a total of 80 logical cores), 128 GB of RAM, and a RAID of 146k GB 15k RPM hard drives. Moving forward, we would like to replace the mechanical drives with solid-state drives for better read/write performance, but we’ll be patient while waiting to raise the funds necessary.

In the meantime, with the new hardware, we’ve been able to push draw distances out much further (from 192 meters to 320) while maintaining a far smoother experience. The additional processing power also means the complicated scripting necessary for the upcoming Galactic Civil War system will not be a hindrance.

Expect more news on the upcoming client patch, content additions, and the Galactic Civil War soon!