Crash Liaising
— when things break badly
"The disc is broken!" a player exclaims to me. A worrying tell to get, certainly, although it often turns out to be not quite that bad. I goto over to him, and ask him what the problem is. Just as he tells me he is getting runtimes on most things he does, another player asks me whether I have a sec.
I tell him sure, and check the runtime trace on the first player. "*Error in loading object '/std/guilds/wizard'". Now that is worrying.
On the creator channel, a coder says "What a wonderful time for FTP to play silly buggers." and, when I ask him whether he just broke things badly, follows up by confirming he just missed a bracket in the wizard guild object, meaning everything that uses this runtimes. Which is... a lot.
I tell the first two players talking to me that wizards are bugged, for the moment, as more players come to me with questions, and people ask about runtimes on the talker. I tell the first few that something is broken but is being worked on, and tell people on the talker that they don't need to write bug reports for these runtimes, since we're aware of the problem. However, it's almost impossible to keep up, and the problem isn't immediately fixed (because of aforementioned FTP not working - that is, fixed files can't be uploaded), so I just use an emoteall:
emoteall would like you to know that we're aware that there are problems and that work is being done on fixing them! While you watch the runtimes, please enjoy this pleasant music. *hum hum hum*
Several cheers, people thanking me and giggling at me, and some joking responses on the talker, particularly about the quality of the music. Only a few more people contact me asking what's wrong (those who just logged in after the emoteall), and I assure them it's being worked on.
A player tells me he died, due to the lag. I wasn't aware of any lag, although a large number of runtimes might cause that - or it's his own server lagging at the wrong moment. He doesn't seem too concerned about the life, but worries that he now can't ask a Pishite for help, as "who pishe" just runtimes. I suggest that he can try to ask a priest to pass on the request on the channel - a plain "qwho" still shows people online! For someone already frustrated by death this seems a more friendly suggestion than telling him to wait it out until the runtimes stop!
Another player says that his friend is stuck in the departure lounge, not properly logging out but incapable of doing anything. I check who are there, and dest them all, just as the creator who claimed responsibility for it all calls out on the creator channel "Fixed!"
Everything being fixed (and indeed, "who wizard" works again), I send out a second emoteall, to inform the players that all should be good again, and that if they're experiencing more problems they should contact me! (as I am the only liaison online) General cheers, thanks, and snuggles (somehow, liaisons do seem to get the credit for fixes, even if most people know that it's usually not us doing them!), one more tell asking why someone's alt couldn't log in (I tell them to try again, as the problem was just fixed) and the hassled coder explaining how he used the in-game editor to fix the problem. No one further reports with any problems.
A busy five minutes of the evening having passed, I make a post explaining what happened and was done, and resume my normal activities. :)
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