Hey TNT! In the plot we now have to battle, but we can't! The Battledome is slow, and for some the pages aren't even loading! What can we do? D= Please help! ~x_laura_buddie_xThis happens whenever there is battling in a plot (not that that makes it any better, but there ya go).
The number of players in the Battledome at any given time during these events is astounding, and it doubles and triples every time we start a new one. It's amazing it's even up at all! Okay, seriously though, there are several people who are constantly keeping watch on everything, even in the middle of the night, to make sure it doesn't explode completely. The fact is, no matter what we do, there are always TONS of people who hit the Battledome once fighting starts and lag is inevitable. That's the Intarwebs for you. And the whole "You should have seen this coming!" argument isn't valid.
We did see it coming! With every plot step, we're constantly battling (no pun intended) with ourselves to make sure we do something fun, but also that the site can handle the load. When it goes off without a hitch, you have no idea we were even concerned with such things in the first place. That's the way we prefer it, of course.
When it doesn't go off so well, though, understand that we did (and are doing) everything we can to keep things running as smoothly as possible. It's just that sometimes there are bottlenecks in certain places that we can't control.
Think about it this way - one of the few options we have to fix certain lag issues is to not do these plots at all. That would be lame, though, so we press on anyway and hope that everyone understands. With MILLIONS of people on this site, the Intarwebs can only take so much, even with the 400+ servers we have. *nod* 400+. That's a LOT of servers, and it still has trouble handling y'all.
So there you go. They prepared as much as they could, but there are just way, WAY too many people trying to fight all at once and we're bottlenecking things.
At least this wave is tougher (the difficulty 50 tree seems to gain 5 hp per win), so I'm hoping the lag will calm down as more and more newbies max out. I am SO glad they took the stones away, because if they hadn't, everyone would have been able to fight tons and tons of opponents and the lag would never go away.