NationStates Jolt Archive

The NationStates web site is currently running very slowly at peak times, i.e. during the American daytime. Many people have complained about this or suggested possible improvements.

The real problem is this: NationStates is a game written by Max Barry in the hope that it might eventually attract a few thousand players, and instead after six weeks we have thirty thousand.

It's great to be so popular, but it has produced huge technical challenges. Since we opened, we've made a host of software and hardware improvements, and the game is running much faster than it was--but we have many, many more players. We have made all the obvious improvements (e.g. building our own Apache with mod_perl and mod_php). But we've now reached the point where the site really needs multiple servers and a Linux/Apache guru--not someone with a little technical knowledge and some spare time. Those things don't come cheap. So what do we do? We're not sure yet.

In the meantime, please bear with us. I'm sorry for the slowness of the site, and trust me, we are working on it very hard. ;)

Thank you for all of your efforts. This is such a cool site, and I'd hate to see it go. Perhaps we could persuade Max's book publisher to kick in some cash, or even, in an extreme circumstance, use the purchase of the book through this site as a prerequisite for membership. Of course, if the latter path is taken, I want no part of the blame for it!

You could always put a banner of each page, though im no fan of advertising i dont mind a little ad here and there (no pop ups tho, pls..) Im sure there are companies willing to put a bit of money forward for an ad in game which has 30,000 members after just 6 weeks, and is still growing fast.

One thing that we members can do to help is to try to arrange our visits to the site at "off" hours. I've found the site is significantly faster when there are fewer than 1000 nations logged in.

Another useful thing I've found is that if you're patient and let the pages completely finish loading, you get fewer server errors when you click the next link.

You could:

-stop new users from joining (as much as I hate to say that).
-limit the number of countries a person can have to one. I've seen people create several countries until they had the "perfect" one.
-allow people to delete their countries.
-shorten the erase limit from 21 days.

We could bring in a lot of money if players were given certian bonuses if they visit an advirtised web site.

You could:
-allow people to delete their countries.
-shorten the erase limit from 21 days.

I agree people should be able to delete there own countries. Just let people know if they accidentally do so noone will recover anything for them. Also a "are you sure you want to delete" message can help prevent accidents.
But I don't agree the automatic erase time should be shortened. I'd be likely to forget to check up on things for awhile and lose alot of work.

Another idea is those who are willing to pay a small amount of money could be allowed a faster connection then nonpayers. Say 50 cents a nation per year. When logged into a nation you've payed for you will get less lag then everyone else. You say 50 cents a year isn't anything at all? When your talking about 30,000 players it can potentially be alot of money.

You could always accept donations through a service like Paypal.com or even Amazon.com has the donate to a site program.

In a thread devoted to the slowness of the site banner advertising is being suggested....

Yes, really smart.... let's slow the place down even more.

:roll:

In a thread devoted to the slowness of the site banner advertising is being suggested....

Yes, really smart.... let's slow the place down even more.

:roll:

Maybe have a "premium member" service of something like $2 per month. Nothing that offers advangtages in the game, but things that make it more fun or aesthetically pleasing.

Such as ability to upload a MIDI to play on your nation's page as the national anthem, private forums for regions, upload a picture of your leader(s), etc.

Just some thoughts that I've seen work very well on other text based roleplaying games.

Here is some food for thought for the author. If this site has been up for arond 6 weeks and 30000 people are already playing, we may have stumbled onto one of those phenonemons like six degrees of bacon etc.

Now I am no economist, but I would say that a small percentage of people who play this will buy your book. I know I intend too. Now say it costs $1000 to upgrade it. If this rate of exponential groth continues you're gonna be getting some big numbers coming in.

Big numbers means the site is likely to get featured in magazines, newspapers etc. This means big publicity for your book. This means profits that will cover the modest grand you invested quite significantly. Hell you might even get a spot on Letterman :lol:

Ben Szymkow

Might I suggest that members be allowed to donate towards the purchase/rental of a new server or two if they so desire? I mean, if everyone donates a dollar then you have 30,000 dollars right there. Obviously some won't donate, but perhaps some will donate more. I'm sure the costs for bandwidth and such could easily be covered this way.

I'm sure people would be glad to donate a few bucks, I know I would.

Some incentives can't hurt, though. :wink:

If you are getting 30,000 after only a few weeks then you have the potential of earning quite a bit. Put together an advertising strategy. I am sure you will get companies who would invest in this site.

I think it is a great game and I look forward to many hours of game play. :D

The growth on the site sound like what happened to seti@home when it first cranked up. I have noticed that since the article on abcnews.com it seems like a lot of new people are joining up.

Allowing people to delete a 'failed' configuration would be a quick way to free up disk space and perhaps improve performance because all those nations will not have have list when browsing.

nice site - interesting discussions - and so far pretty civilized.

J. Highstate
Sec. of State

The growth on the site sound like what happened to seti@home when it first cranked up. I have noticed that since the article on abcnews.com it seems like a lot of new people are joining up.

Allowing people to delete a 'failed' configuration would be a quick way to free up disk space and perhaps improve performance because all those nations will not have have list when browsing.

nice site - interesting discussions - and so far pretty civilized.

J. Highstate
Sec. of State

I think a lot of players would be willing to pay a dollar or two to receive a few extra features, like maybe some cooler graphics. I know I would.

The Kingdom of Mervatron would like to extend our support to the continued success of NationStates as long as it remains a free, functional, and fun forum.

:D
Please keep it going! This is the first role play site i have joined and am hooked!
A friend recommended it and now I just want to see what happens
The Boss :)

:D
Please keep it going! This is the first role play site i have joined and am hooked!
A friend recommended it and now I just want to see what happens
The Boss :)

:D
Please keep it going! This is the first role play site i have joined and am hooked!
A friend recommended it and now I just want to see what happens
The Boss :)

The abundance of new players, including myself, has been quite amazing. One thing you could do is separate NationStates into different parts.

http://www.nationstates.net/images/flags/uploads/konania.jpg
Konania

I'm a new player and I will say it is a bit of a hassle with things taking so long to upload and such. I understand it's because there's so many playing at the same time, so you just do the best you can. I agree that allowing a delete feature would help free up server space as well as shortening the auto delete time with the only excuse being if the nation's on vacation mode.

Having a donation link would be better than making this a pay for play site. I'm in a money crunch at the moment but would donate something when I have some to spend.

If you do decide to go with offering advertising space, please try to avoid popups. Too many other sites have those and it's ridiculous having to close a mess of them when you're trying to get to the site proper.

On money: I think donations (maybe through PayPal and similar) is the best way to go. Enough players here are both enthusiastic about the game, and are reasonable enough to accept that costs need to be balanced. Give that a try.

Advertising... you can try that, but I don't think it's an good idea for this site. I got a bunch of sites myself, some with and some without advertising. The rates for normal ads are still very low, so it won't help much; and pop-up ads are so obnoxious that one half of the players would block them, while most part of the other half would go away: even worse.
So much for ad networks/brokers.

As for special advertising deals/direct ad customers, that's easy for sites which are topical - a site about computer games may partner with a games retailer, etc. - but what else than two certain books would fit this site? I don't see much chances there. Maybe one of you got an great idea who would like to advertise DIRECTLY here?

On technical matters: right now I can give you only about three dozen GB worth of spare bandwidth per month for free, with access on the machine etc. In case you are interested, admin can contact me.

Yeah I know that's not much. Getting money from donations and paying for professional help at your location is probably an better idea.

On the other hand, programs (or even browsers) which prevent pop-ups from appearing are getting more and more popular, so they might bring in money without slowing down loading time for most users.

I agree that the possibility to delete nations and donate money via Paypal are must-haves.

It might be good to place the game itself and the forum on different servers. Most players probably spend much more time in the forum than actually doing something in the game, so at least the game would speed up.

I started only two days ago, but I already love this game. :) But I only have a 56k connection, and especially accessing the forum is *hell*. :(

One thing you could do is separate NationStates into different parts.

Sounds like a good idea to me. Since there is no direct interaction between states as of yet, split the game on several servers. Regions can be administered on a separate region-and-UN-server, or if you are ambitious, you can split according to regions and implement nation transfers between servers.
The forums should have separate servers in any case, as for the images and flags.

These proposals are pretty easy to implement, and won't take wizardry I think.

I agree with the "Donation through PayPal/other" idea, and would throw in some cash myself. A subscription site would certainly free up a lot of server space, and you may end up with just the few thousand players you envisioned in the first place.

I really enjoy this online game, and would hate to see it go under. I would be more than happy to make a small donation to keep it going, maybe even a small yearly fee to play (or pay to become a gold class member - limit non gold class members to one nation each, with say 5 for members).
I also think small advertising banners would be acceptable. The option to more rapidly delete inactive nations would help a lot too.
And I will certainly be buying a copy of the book after playing this game, thats for sure.

I suggest people use proxy servers while playing this game...

and to you who said that advertising would slow the game down:
it wont. the images and stuff is the things that take up the most bandwidth. let's say that in exchange for having the banner here (maybe even just in the top-frame so it won't load so awfully lots of times + the banner will be stored at the companys server), nationstates receive a small sum ($0.001 per view 8) ) + the ability to host the images (flags mainly) at that companys server. This would decrease the bandwidth use and increase the speed DRAMATICALLY.

by the way... that website of his... maxbarry.com... doesn't it have the ability to host the flags without being too slow? I assume that maxbarry.com is hosted on another server(??) if not, then just take a poop at this last paragraph.

On the other hand, programs (or even browsers) which prevent pop-ups from appearing are getting more and more popular, so they might bring in money without slowing down loading time for most users.

would make the game worse for the other players.
advertisers, or rather, advertising networks, aren't that stupid. Pop-Up campaigns are increasingly CPC campaigns.
I got a few years experience with ad networks... if you block the ads, the site gets less revenue, in the long run. That may be fine on sites where you don't care what revenue the site makes, but we are currently here brain-storming for fundraising, so your suggestion seems kind of counterproductive to me.

I agree that the possibility to delete nations and donate money via Paypal are must-haves.

I agree with you here.

I suggest people use proxy servers while playing this game...

and to you who said that advertising would slow the game down:
it wont. the images and stuff is the things that take up the most bandwidth.

Sorry, that is not true for this site/game. Check your proxy statistics.
The images are the least part. The most part of traffic are the forum pages, and I think this is true for almost everybody. [violet] will know the overall values best, I think.

I suspect the main problem is not technical bandwidth, because the hoster/provider is really good in that regard. It's either the server power (rather: lack thereof), and/or the bandwidth is intentionally limited because of the contract with the ISP - more money would remedy that.

And/or splitting on several servers.


let's say that in exchange for having the banner here (maybe even just in the top-frame so it won't load so awfully lots of times + the banner will be stored at the companys server), nationstates receive a small sum ($0.001 per view 8) ) + the ability to host the images (flags mainly) at that companys server. This would decrease the bandwidth use and increase the speed DRAMATICALLY.


Flags aren't the problem.
Advertising companies don't host your stuff.
Pay-per-view campaigns get increasingly rare.
even if both parts were OK, it wouldn't help much, because the bottleneck lies elsewhere.

I don't think bandwidth is such an issue since this is mostly just text. I do, however, believe the issues lies with the servers themselves. Throw some SCSI RAID 0+1 servers and we're good. A couple GB of DDR would help as well.

You could always accept donations through a service like Paypal.com or even Amazon.com has the donate to a site program.

You could just hype the book a lot. And hope the movie goes well. But paypal is a good idea too. I was toying around with the idea of giving bonuses to people that buy the book (proof of purchase type of thing). Something like... the ability to vote proposals to the floor if you're not a delegate or receiving more than two issues a day (for us bored no-life people) or make the ability to start a region dependent on buying the book. I can't think of any others.. but that could work.

Or a whole bunch of people will try to axe murder me after that suggestion... which ever comes first. :D

Having a donation link would be better than making this a pay for play site. I'm in a money crunch at the moment but would donate something when I have some to spend.

I much agree. Pay for play is what has killed many an initially free game. I'm sure everyone would be willing to give at least a dollar (hell, even I have that; I'm jobless and broke, to boot).

]
But we've now reached the point where the site really needs multiple servers and a Linux/Apache guru--not someone with a little technical knowledge and some spare time. Those things don't come cheap. So what do we do? We're not sure yet.


Two of my favourite web sites have had the same problem. One is Sluggy Freelance (http://www.sluggy.com), who have chosen to use banner advertising, but if you pay a few bucks, you get an ad-free Sluggy. That way, everyone gets to pay up - either by seeing the ads or by paying to not see the ads, so to speak.

Another is Pyramid (http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/). They've closed most of the site against non-subscribers. If you do subscribe, you not only get access to the contents of the site itself, but you also get access to their discussion boards, both via the web site and via a newsreader.

It would seem to me that by using an NNTP server as a backend for the discussion boards, you'd take at least some load off the webserver. It'd be easy to set the server up to require authentication with the nationstate user-ID. The articles would then be stored on the news server, freeing up space on the web server. You could still have a web frontend as well, of course, but by allowing NNTP access one would hope that at least some users would use it and reduce load on the web server.

The bulletin board I usually frequent seems to be ticking over nicely on a donation basis- obviously, many people don't donate, but there's a fair few who do, and this looks like it's got about fifteen times as many people as that does. Personally I think a game like this is worth it.

And yes, the slowness is annoying, but it hasn't put me off yet, and I can't really whinge, what with the game being so cool anyway.

(Incidentally, I do intend to buy the book. But I'd hate it if NationStates stopped running after the book launch... you wouldn't do that to us, would you? Please say you wouldn't.)

I'm lucky enough to live in a foreign countries, meaning that I can enjoy the game rather fast around those hours here.

One thing I wouldn't like is the game being not free. I think the reason why so many people joined is because it's free and good, so I would favor the idea of having a donation system of sort (sites like 8-bit theater and Penny Arcade have it), a form of advertising, eventually, and other rentable things that would allow you to have a second server.

Maybe limiting the number of nations per people, allowing them to delete "failed" nations, perhaps shortening the auto delete thing... I'm sure this would save some space.

Is this driven by an SQL engine or a Flat File system? I realized that when the PHP scripts says that there is a problem writing to a file. Maybe upgrading to a faster SQL system would help a lot.

Flags aren't the problem.
well if 1500 users request 10 flags at the same time , that would be extremely heavy for the servers capabilities...
Advertising companies don't host your stuff.
no they don't, but I'm not thinking the way you do. I was talking about a DEAL with the advertising folks that the images are hosted on their server in exchange for advertising..
Pay-per-view campaigns get increasingly rare.
Just an example...
even if both parts were OK, it wouldn't help much, because the bottleneck lies elsewhere.
I think it would help, because like I mentioned earlier; 1500 users requesting 10 flags on 6kbs each at the same time is a [#####] load on the line. And I think the problem actually lies in the bandwidth, because a server with 256mb ram(in minimum) and a processor speed of more than 1ghz should be able to handle users a lot faster. and I think it does, just people are "queuing" because the images also needs to load.

If you are using a database to store your info, you should seperate your database from your web servers. You obviously have a lot of hits and database transactions happening. If they are on the same box, you are probably bottlenecking your transaction qeue pretty bad.

Have you considered some dynamic content management software with caching capabilities?

Check out Coldfusion or better yet, Vignette. http://www.vignette.com

A caching strategy would greatly enhance the website cause it will reduce many of your database hits.

I live in the Uk and so I am able to get onto the site with ease at about 9 am (UK time). However I have not been able to get onto the site at say 4 pm (again UK time) for about 2 weeks now because of the huge amount of countries. When I joined this site there were just over 7,000 nations now there is nearly 30,000!!! Perhaps you should put a limit on the amount of nations say 30,000 and also bring the erase time down to say 1 week (unless they put it on vacation mode). This site is very good and I would hate to see it go but I do think that something needs to be done about the huge "congestion" that I face when getting onto the site at any time past 11 am.

open the donations and i'll donate $10. I've been on for a week and have gotten $10 worth of entertainment out of it already. Read about the site on ABCnews.com, maybe you could sue them for clogging up your servers! :wink: But seriously, fantastic site, thank you.

I'd be a bit worried about reducing the auto delete period to anthing less than two weeks. One week is short because right now, a player might try unsuccessfully to log in every day for a week.

I agree with deleting stale countries but if a country is stale because the server is slow then the player will be upset to have to start again.

Get the donations thing set up right away though. That can't hurt. And it's easy.

Consider to put this Ad on each page: Marketscore, they work with Commision Junction and will give you some important money, we use it on our site www.abcdatos.com (is a Spanish site but this Ad work better with English sites as your), we have more than 1.500.000 pages view at month, and we are obtaining enough money from them for paying our servers.
And CJ is extremely sure with payments.

http://www.marketscore.com/uk_a/affiliate.asp

Good luck!, you have a really very good site!
Lilian
:roll:

I agree with the banner ads idea. You could have lots of those, and it wouldn't bug most players. A few pop ups would be okay too, as long as its not too many. Anyway, keep up the good work! This is a great site! :wink:

I must concur with my fellow Pyramid subscriber. The on-line magazine by SJGames costs $15 per year, though they are about to increase that a bit. The combination of the weekly articles, as well as access to the discussion boards, makes that a great bargain.
In fact, I first heard about this site on those boards.
I would gladly pay $5 per year to participate in this game. Add in a conflict resolution algorithm -- ideally modeled on the abstract system in the game, "Diplomacy" -- and I'd pay $10 per year. Toss in a similarly abstract international trade algorithm and I'd pay $15 or $20 per year without even blinking.

-TSH

Just to point out: I like the two versions idea (one free, the other payed for). There are many of us who are kids and would be unable to pay to access the site.

edit: it says "Page 4 of 3" at the bottom...

Okay... things I think might help...

1. Ablity to delete countries you no longer want
2. Limit number of countries per player - Max of 3?
3. Limit the number of countries by ISP to stop people using multiple ID's.

Things that I think won't help...

1. Advertising. Nothing makes me stop visiting a site quicker than being bombarded with adverts and popups.

I would definitely donate a few bucks. I can't afford to do something like a yearly subscription rate, though.. I'm on disability and on a really limited budget.

I'm sure if you opened this up to paypal donations and/or check or money order donations, you'd find a lot of people will donate money. Even if say.. half the people here only donate a dollar, that's $15K. A lot of people would donate more than a dollar. I'd probably donate five or ten, meself.

I honestly think that donation is your best bet. Also, if you do donations, I think you should definitely get a PO Box, also, 'cuz I'm sure there's some people out there who don't have a credit card and can't sign up for Paypal, but they would love to donate.

Please, please, please don't do banner ads or popups. They're just annoying as farkityfark.

In a thread devoted to the slowness of the site banner advertising is being suggested....

Yes, really smart.... let's slow the place down even more.

:roll:

unlikely the ads could be run off a completely different server, the issue at the moment is they awfulness of the server not the lack of user bandwidth :)

a proper marketing and revenue strategy would bring in quite a bit of money to Nationstates choffers there is scope for recommended books from Amazon or where ever you could even link this to your chosen political path :D I know donations by certain

That said I do think that the site will reach some kind of peak some time soon due to the lack of options available to the player if you are going to spend money upgrading the hardware you must also upgrade the software as many will become uninterested in the game. You should manage the UN a little more get less pointless resolutions in the arena and more political ones such as the Living Wage Proposal which inspired real debate.

If you did this just using your present manpower it would be very time consuming but I'm sure you will a variety of people who wish to take a more active role in Nationstates, you might even find some programmers if you're lucky :)

If you did this just using your present manpower it would be very time consuming but I'm sure you will a variety of people who wish to take a more active role in Nationstates, you might even find some programmers if you're lucky :)

Try www.qb45.com. This site was made orginally for people who used quickbasic as a hobby, but now many have graduated to Java, PHP, C++, etc. You can tell how good they are just by the layout of the site. I suggest posting in the forum, which was also programmed completly by them.

Edit to fix quote :roll:

(If we are already at that point, I could offer the services of my software company... admin contact me directly if interested.)

Apart from that, I don't think offers such as this help much without [violet] asking for it.

The site admin will know best what (s)hee needs, and can ask for it, and then we can make offers... I think that would be better.

I would pay a small fee for this quite fun game. Hell, I payed £5 for Planetarion!

Okay... things I think might help...
1. Ablity to delete countries you no longer want


I think that's good.

2. Limit number of countries per player - Max of 3?

And how to enforce this, if somebody really wants to? Sorry, this is more work than benefit.

3. Limit the number of countries by ISP to stop people using multiple ID's.
:evil: Oh great, that will be a lot of fun for those people using big ISPs, especially if there are still forced proxies...

besides, ISP-lookup via reverse DNS, finding the appropriate NIC, get the NIC entry for the ISP, get the ISPs network range, get the ISPs *other* networks, then create a blocking table based upon that - this will cost a LOT of work, bandwidth, and cycles.

I thought we were talking about how to lower these numbers in order to increase game speed, not to rise them?



Things that I think won't help...

1. Advertising. Nothing makes me stop visiting a site quicker than being bombarded with adverts and popups.
Ah, GOOD idea! :evil: every player less makes the game faster...

No, really, I think amount of advertising would work with most players, but not suit the sites topic. I still recommend allowing for donations first.

Okay... things I think might help...
1. Ablity to delete countries you no longer want


I think that's good.

2. Limit number of countries per player - Max of 3?

And how to enforce this, if somebody really wants to? Sorry, this is more work than benefit.

3. Limit the number of countries by ISP to stop people using multiple ID's.
:evil: Oh great, that will be a lot of fun for those people using big ISPs, especially if there are still forced proxies...

besides, ISP-lookup via reverse DNS, finding the appropriate NIC, get the NIC entry for the ISP, get the ISPs network range, get the ISPs *other* networks, then create a blocking table based upon that - this will cost a LOT of work, bandwidth, and cycles.

I thought we were talking about how to lower these numbers in order to increase game speed, not to rise them?



Things that I think won't help...

1. Advertising. Nothing makes me stop visiting a site quicker than being bombarded with adverts and popups.
Ah, GOOD idea! :evil: every player less makes the game faster...

No, really, I think amount of advertising would work with most players, but not suit the sites topic. I still recommend allowing for donations first.

Hi there, I probably shouldn't be taking up space with this post, but I just wanted to say that I LOVE THIS SITE!!! This is the funnest game ever!!! We know you're working hard to fix the speed and I'm sure everything will work out!

You really need to follow in the foot steps of other online games. I know of no other game in which you are allowed to have multiple accounts. Of course, that is due to the increased interaction (such as transfer of money) but it's also to cut down on server stress.

Multying should be decreased, or not allowed at all. Measures to crack down could be:
IP Tracking (Doesn't help with dynamic IPs, but it would cut down)
Logon time consistencies in relation to each other

Of course, you would never be able to remove it completely, but it could cut down huge amounts of server usage.


The hugely easiest way is to simply upgrade your server; cash required must come from somewhere, and has been stated many times, donations are a simple way to go. Also, advertising must be used to get that little bit of extra revenue. They may use up server space, but its a step which may be necessary.

On the admin side, you need full-time people, or semi-full-time. I suggest increasing the amount of admin to resolve some issues as they pop-up.

The ability to donate should come in now, and not any later. I'm sure the huge fanbase could dig into their pockets for a little bit.

You really need to follow in the foot steps of other online games. I know of no other game in which you are allowed to have multiple accounts. Of course, that is due to the increased interaction (such as transfer of money) but it's also to cut down on server stress.

Multying should be decreased, or not allowed at all. Measures to crack down could be:
IP Tracking (Doesn't help with dynamic IPs, but it would cut down)
Logon time consistencies in relation to each other

Of course, you would never be able to remove it completely, but it could cut down huge amounts of server usage.


The hugely easiest way is to simply upgrade your server; cash required must come from somewhere, and has been stated many times, donations are a simple way to go. Also, advertising must be used to get that little bit of extra revenue. They may use up server space, but its a step which may be necessary.

On the admin side, you need full-time people, or semi-full-time. I suggest increasing the amount of admin to resolve some issues as they pop-up.

The ability to donate should come in now, and not any later. I'm sure the huge fanbase could dig into their pockets for a little bit.

You should at least state in the FAQ that multiplaying is not allowed. People who are determined to multiplay will find a way to do so, but other people (who read the FAQ, anyway) would think twice.

As for technical problems, it would be helpful to know what type of hardware you're running and approximately how much traffic you have. Not too much information, of course.

Ads sound OK, although I don't think it would bring in nearly enough money. Maybe if you had ads for U.S. political parties you could charge more :P

If you need advice about the server or software, I play around with PHP and run a very low-traffic Linux web server for a club. I don't have the time or experience to do any significant admin stuff though.

You really need to follow in the foot steps of other online games.
Why? So it becomes yet another online game? I hope not.

I know of no other game in which you are allowed to have multiple accounts. Of course, that is due to the increased interaction (such as transfer of money) but it's also to cut down on server stress.


In most other games multiple accounts are prohibited because they would give the player an unfair advantage over other players; this is not the case here.
Instead, it makes a lot of sense to allow playing multiple nations, so one can try several courses of action, act out different ideas, play different characters.

Server stress, I repeat, is most likely from the forums, not inside the game itself.


Multying should be decreased, or not allowed at all. Measures to crack down could be:
IP Tracking (Doesn't help with dynamic IPs, but it would cut down)
Logon time consistencies in relation to each other


There is no simple technical measure against playing multiple accounts, just ask the creators and admins of other online games. There is always a considerable amount of human work involved, and it is never completely safe from multies.

Before anybody undertakes such efforts, (s)he should consider whether it is worth the effort. What for?

Of course, you would never be able to remove it completely, but it could cut down huge amounts of server usage.

Server stress, I repeat, is most likely from the forums, not inside the game itself.


The hugely easiest way is to simply upgrade your server; cash required must come from somewhere, and has been stated many times, donations are a simple way to go.

I agree.


Also, advertising must be used to get that little bit of extra revenue. They may use up server space, but its a step which may be necessary.

I disagree, and have stated the reasoning before. Try donations first, and let's see what the donations amount to. I think there is a good chance people here will donate much more than in other games - simply because in leading a nation, you decide on spending money for purposes you deem necessary, too.


On the admin side, you need full-time people, or semi-full-time. I suggest increasing the amount of admin to resolve some issues as they pop-up.


Whoa... don't you think you are overdoing it a bit? Let the site creators decide on issues that large. this wasn't intended as an commercial online game; it was intended as a promo for the book.

The ability to donate should come in now, and not any later. I'm sure the huge fanbase could dig into their pockets for a little bit.

I agree again. If there is any help needed with that, admins can just send me a message.

Okay, first I must admit, I am guilty of having 2 nations. (I checked the rules first, and it said you could only have one in the UN at a time, it didn't say you couldn't have more than one, period.) And, no, I am not trying to have a "perfect" nation, I just thought it would be interesting to play from two different angles.

Second, I have absolutely no technical knowledge, but definitely would go for the donation system. I could spend $25 or more, and enjoy it a lot more than if I spent the money on beer. (Yes, I hear the collective gasp of shock and disgust.)

Third, I am a 5 year veteran of the world's largest bookseller, and have a pretty good feeling about the impending popularity of the book, and yes, I do plan to both buy it and promote it to the best of my ability. Have you considered looking to B&N and/or Amazon for advertising or sponsorship? Regardless, having been around for the whole Harry Potter phenomenon, word of mouth truly is where the power lies. Who knows, you might get on the Oprah show, and then, believe me, no more worries.

I made two nations just because I assumed I could delete the first. Right now, it is 3:00am Eastern Standard Time here in the Eastern part of the US, and each page takes about 45 -60 seconds to load... on a cable modem. This game has the potential to be great, and I would be willing to pay decent money to play it (5 bucks a month or something like that) provided you guys get the server speeded up a bit.

To do that, I can't really offer any suggestions beyond getting donations and getting more servers. Heck, with 30k people, you can forget about the book and just make a living off of this game! Concentrate on this game, adding more nation interactions and such, and good things can happen.

i don't think it should be limited to one account per person.
i would go for two accounts per person, but not one. (of course, i have two nations so.. :))

Maybe crazy idea but what the hell. Could it be beneficial to make an additional option to receive issues / nation updates and send resolutions by email ? I believe that many people log in mostly just to care for their nation, not to browse the forums and check the other nations (well at least I do...) so shifting part of the load from the web server to mail server can decrease the web server load and the database load too, because the mail can be processed asynchronously (i.e. you can postpone the processing of the messages to update the nations database with the users' resolutions, until the server load will drop)

I wouldn't mind banner ads, but pop-ups annoy me. Although I suppose if you started putting pop-ups and takeover ads in the site, some people would leave... :roll:

You could:

-stop new users from joining (as much as I hate to say that).
-limit the number of countries a person can have to one. I've seen people create several countries until they had the "perfect" one.
-allow people to delete their countries.
-shorten the erase limit from 21 days.

That'd be totally pointless, as it'd all, except for stopping new users from joining, only reduce disc space and such, and have no effect upon site speed and such. And stopping new users from joining would really suck, as well as not make site speed any better, though maybe halt it from declining further for now.

You could:

-stop new users from joining (as much as I hate to say that).
-limit the number of countries a person can have to one. I've seen people create several countries until they had the "perfect" one.
-allow people to delete their countries.
-shorten the erase limit from 21 days.

That'd be totally pointless, as it'd all, except for stopping new users from joining, only reduce disc space and such, and have no effect upon site speed and such. And stopping new users from joining would really suck, as well as not make site speed any better, though maybe halt it from declining further for now.

You could:

-stop new users from joining (as much as I hate to say that).
-limit the number of countries a person can have to one. I've seen people create several countries until they had the "perfect" one.
-allow people to delete their countries.
-shorten the erase limit from 21 days.

That'd be totally pointless, as it'd all, except for stopping new users from joining, only reduce disc space and such, and have no effect upon site speed and such. And stopping new users from joining would really suck, as well as not make site speed any better, though maybe halt it from declining further for now.

You could:

-stop new users from joining (as much as I hate to say that).
-limit the number of countries a person can have to one. I've seen people create several countries until they had the "perfect" one.
-allow people to delete their countries.
-shorten the erase limit from 21 days.

That'd be totally pointless, as it'd all, except for stopping new users from joining, only reduce disc space and such, and have no effect upon site speed and such. And stopping new users from joining would really suck, as well as not make site speed any better, though maybe halt it from declining further for now.

Nice to see all those rich capitalist swine advocating 'a small payment'; what about us poor people? US$5 a month is a *LOT* of beer! Bastards.

*grins*

A fitting level of irony when it takes a post about slow server speed 5 minutes to load. ;) Anyone out there on a 56k has my sympathies - I had to put up with it for a while, and made the game nigh-on unplayable.

I'm not sure, though, that making money is the solution to the problem. The problem isn't that Max Barry is skint. Well, obviously it would help if he were a millionaire, but even if the money was around for [violet] to throw around, it wouldn't necessarily help matters.

NationStates is being run in [violet]'s spare time. I don't think it was intended to be like the other popular multiplayer online games, who are out to make profit. It was intended as a promotional venture - its money coming in from additional publicity and sales, not from raking in adverts, etc. At least, that's how I see it.

Even if the money is around for another, better, server, that server has to be ordered and set up in someone's spare time. Someone who isn't experienced with the server type, who'll most likely spend hours with a screwdriver cursing the moment anything goes wrong. Plus, that server has to go somewhere. I have this wonderful vision of Max Barry's house with the rooms overflowing with servers and bits of wire.


Of course, if NationStates pulled in the money, a full-time Admin could be hired, someone who really knows what they're doing...but that's a fairly large financial step, and commits the game to continuing for some time. That alone would take a substantial initial investment, as the server and new version of the game would have to be online before people started paying their $5 per month, or they'd complain that they were paying for what was free before, with only the promise of improvement...That most likely means continual updates, and turning the game into a standalone revenue maker, not a novel promotional idea.

By the time you get to that stage, the poor guy will be almost schizophrenic from having to be both a novelist and a game designer, programmer and manager of Max Barry Inc., purveyors of amusing digital entertainment and comedic literary fiction. ;)

If the slow speed is from the forum taking up too much space, I would suggest deleting any forum topic that hasn't been active for at least 3 days. There are lots of topics in the general topics section that aren't even being responded to anymore. They're just taking up server space.
I would be willing to make voluntary contributions but I don't think people should be limited to just one country.

If the slow speed is from the forum taking up too much space, I would suggest deleting any forum topic that hasn't been active for at least 3 days. There are lots of topics in the general topics section that aren't even being responded to anymore. They're just taking up server space.

Maybe, but that is probably not helpful - the problem lies elsewhere, not in storage limitations.

Thank you for all the hard work you guys have done so far. Its faster than it has been the last couple of days. I just checked and there was about 1100 players on at the same time, and the only time it has been this fast for me is when there was only 700 players on at a time thankyou.

as PMing is disabled, i'll post this here.. i administer the server behind rumandmonkey.com, and we use the apache module mod_gzip to compress all textual output. it cuts down our textual bandwidth usage to about 20%-30% of what it otherwise would be. (images can't be compressed further, but that shouldn't be a problem here by the looks of it :)
It's slightly more "expensive" computationally of course, so if that's a more pressing problem than bandwidth it's probably something for later on.. :)

mod_gzip - http://www.schroepl.net/projekte/mod_gzip/

Yes, I've noticed much improved performance too. It's a good thing, of course.

And the site is working damn well as a promo, as least for me - when the book's going to be available, I'm snagging a copy as soon as I can. 8)

If you are getting 30,000 after only a few weeks then you have the potential of earning quite a bit. Put together an advertising strategy. I am sure you will get companies who would invest in this site.

I think it is a great game and I look forward to many hours of game play. :D

It would be a shame to see NationStates turn into a full cost site. That would make it inaccessible to those who can't pay online for what is otherwise a fantastic setup and game.

My two Magonian cents.

First, I'd like to second all of the people applauding your effort at keeping this game running. It's very cool that you've put in the time and effort to set up the game and keep it running despite the server starting to melt.

Second, here are a few suggestions re. approaches to speeding things up:

- Put the forums on a separate machine than the game. These are loads that are easily disentangled; all you need to share between them as far as I can tell is authentication information (nation status and forum status do not need to be in the same database, as long as there's an up-to-date user list accessible by both machines).

- Generate static pages for infrequently-changing information (like nation profiles, the top-n-whatever lists, and so forth). As long as changes to a given page are less frequent than views, you save processing power (which I'm assuming is the bottleneck). With a bit of chicken-waving, even things like the lists of nations in the region can be mostly cached (assign nations to a page based on the first three letters of their name or some other hash function that preserves sorting but makes lots of little groups; any given group is unlikely to have new nations added, and it makes the lists easier to navigate as a bonus).

- Look for O(n^2) and other ugly code. You may already have done this, or it may be a non-issue with your code, but it's possible that there's an algorithmic problem that's making certain types of game operation take a lot longer than they should. A profiler will help if you have one handy, and failing that you can just tweak the code to track how frequently operations are performed and get a rough idea of what's happening.

- Keep silly amounts of RAM in any machine that's accessing large amounts of data in a semi-random manner. Most of this will end up cached if you're lucky, and the set of active users is probably small enough to make the working set size quite small. Disk seeks will slow the system to a crawl.

I hope this helps. Thanks again for hosting the game and putting up with all of our user babblings :).

Just a question - why has this been made into an announcement?

Well it does answer the questions of people who post asking about the server speed. But I'm wondering why [violet] didn't just make a new sticky, as this one is...a year old. I think she may have edited her post, but still. That's one very old topic.

This should be archived!

One of the first technical posts.

This should be archived!

One of the first technical posts.

Yeah all the first few posters have died :cry:

I have to agree, the sight of so many ex-nations is somewhat humbling. It’s also kind of funny to see the “Anonymous” poster, which was possible until people started abusing the power.

This should be archived!

One of the first technical posts.

Yeah all the first few posters have died :cry:
This is a grave-yard thread. It deserves some recognition!

I have to agree, the sight of so many ex-nations is somewhat humbling. It’s also kind of funny to see the “Anonymous” poster, which was possible until people started abusing the power.

Actually, originally, when a nation died it sometimes changed to Anonymous.

Thanks for tryin iv just started and i fink dis is gd nice work keep it up and hope it goes well

Frankly I'd like to see an update.

That post is two years old.
It doesnt nessicerilly have any bearing on the current situation.

So what IS the current situation?

So what IS the current situation?

Probably much the same as the old one, which is why it was probably made into an announcement.

So what IS the current situation?

Probably much the same as the old one, which is why it was probably made into an announcement.


That is sad, :cry:

Iz bloody pafetic is whot et is mate.

One of the posts was complaining about people having a "few" nations, saying if they could not do that it would free up the server a little.

I pray he never comes back, not out of maliciousness, but because he would probably have a heart attack when he saw crazy girl and qaaol!

That is sad, :cry:

Why is it sad?

Gravedigging! ;)

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Gravedigging! ;)

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

I suppose you're right.

That is sad, :cry:

Why is it sad?


Because the server is changing slowly, and i'm sick of double posts and n00bs complaining :x :x

it honestly seems like at some times that the game is hosted off of a Porn server and is given secondary priority for access with the smut sites getting all the bandwith. lol

good thing it is pretty dcent when Im most active.

it honestly seems like at some times that the game is hosted off of a Porn server and is given secondary priority for access with the smut sites getting all the bandwith. lol

good thing it is pretty dcent when Im most active.



Lucky when i am online the server is as slow as it ever gets, :cry:

Because the server is changing slowly, and i'm sick of double posts and n00bs complaining :x :x

I see what you mean but I don't think that it is that bad.

No idea why this was Announce-ified, but I'm returning it to a normal thread.

]No idea why this was Announce-ified, but I'm returning it to a normal thread.

:o

No. Archive it....please! :D

So what IS the current situation?

Probably much the same as the old one, which is why it was probably made into an announcement.

Am sure I read somewhere - not even sure which thread/ forum - a conversation with a mod which gave more information. it sounded like there was progress.

but i could be imagining it so don't quote me ;) on that

Am sure I read somewhere - not even sure which thread/ forum - a conversation with a mod which gave more information. it sounded like there was progress.
It was Max. Read the second section of Max Chat (http://www.nationstates.net/pages/MaxChat.html)