Hey all,
There are a lot of courtesies we afford each other here as part of the Layonara community. As members of a community, we are overall quite supportive and generally courteous to each other. As part of a community we expect that we will be treated with the consideration and respect that we afford to others. For the most part, the community does a fantastic job of this, and really, it's a wonderful thing!
We'd like nothing more to allow uninterrupted play time to the community, but unfortunately the NWN technology is flawed, and despite our best efforts requires occasional resets to restore stability and performance. And so, during such times a GM will come on and shout to everyone that the server is going down, and he or she will request that everyone log out as soon as possible, or once a safe location can be reached. This is a rather disruptive but necessary interruption, but generally it is relatively brief.
Twice now in as many weeks, I have had to actually confront players directly who either ignored the shouts or tried to get in one last thing. These individuals caused a delay in the shutdown and restart, which in turn takes more time and ultimately causes a delay in when everyone can get back on. This is not very considerate to either the GMs or the other players.
For the vast majority of players here, this post is completely unnecessary. For those few who don't quite understand, allow me to describe some guidelines.
When a GM calls for reset, it is OK to:
* get out of a dangerous location
* quickly wrap up some RP
* give parting messages to your group
* dash for a portal/ship
It is not OK to:
* continue gathering CNR
* level
* completely ignore the shouts
I realize that some people play with their chat windows down/minimized, and perhaps they even turn off such things as shouts from appearing. We kindly request that you do not do this, as it eliminates an important communication channel between GMs and players.
We also ask that when a GM comes on and requests everyone to log out that everyone makes an effort to do so as quickly as possible. Anything you might think you have to do before a reboot you can surely take care of as soon as it's alright to log back in.
I apologize to everyone if my tone seems harsh or short, but after the server had been up for 4 days with 2 crashes, many people were calling for a reset due to extreme lag, and even posting on the forums to request one, it's not too much to expect that everyone would cooperate in vacating the server before resetting it. I would also think that people would show consideration to others in such circumstances. Individuals who do this delay the enjoyment of others waiting patiently to return to the game after a restart.
Again, as a whole, nearly everyone does very well. I'm not making this post to make demands or to single any one out. However, if one of the behaviors under the things not to do when a reset is pending, please consider not doing them.
