Hey Everyone!
This post applies to Mobile/PC only right now, although console users will have their migration done shortly.
As you may know, the last 4 weeks have seen a few server issues (including on horrible day when they were down for about 16 hours). This mostly seems to stem from the fact that our server provider (Parse) will be closing down in January 2017, and as such, they’ve started to decrease resources/support already.
So… much like the wildebeest of the Serengeti, it’s time for us to do the “Great Migration” (though hopefully less dust and flies are involved).
The server migration will take place in 2 phases - one this week, and one in a couple of months’ time - you should hopefully see minimal loss of game time, and no disruption to your accounts. Of course, we have millions of records to migrate, and even if I do something as mundane as scratching my nose a million times, I’m probably going to poke myself in the eye once or twice (!), so there’s every chance there might be a couple of account glitches which we’ll try to fix asap if you contact support.
For the technically curious out there, here’s a little more detail about what’s going on:
PHASE 1
We’re migrating our database away from our server-provider. This doesn’t require a game update, and should be totally seamless. Servers are taken down merely as a precaution. For 1-2 hours after this migration, we will actually be running TWO databases (both the old one and the new one), so if there are any issues, we can revert back to the old one with no harm done. At the conclusion of the whole process we snapshot the database too, so we have a perfect record of how everything should be. It is most important to get this phase done asap, as the server provider is decreasing database resources very very soon.
PHASE 2
We’re migrating our backend game code to new servers. This requires a client update and will not be ready for 2.0. It should be ready for either 2.1 or 2.2 though, and the migration will take place during the downtime as we switch to the new update. It’s not as urgent to get this part done, but it’ll be nice to on shiny new servers, and hopefully we can bring you some extra stability when it’s all complete.
