Goldmining is causing the lag, and must stop

[Raneth]

As you all know, we've been struggling with site slowness and lag for years now. We have finally narrowed down the cause, and it's not one we're happy to report. We had hoped it was simple bots, but bots are not the main cause.

Gold mining is slowing down and crashing the site. As people have gotten more efficient at it, opening thousands of pages as people acquire more and more creatures, the site simply cannot keep up. Gold mining is essentially "DDOSing" the site--sending so many requests to pages that it cannot keep up. There is no way around this. Mining has to stop.

This is an official stance from now on. If you are gold mining with add-ons and scripts, stop immediately. As we fix things around the site and make improvements, and control bots who are nuisances, we need a smooth site. If we notice IPs who are mining at unsustainable rates, you will be banned.

If gold mining continues at rates that slow the site, we will remove the ability to get gold from adult creatures. There will be no point to setting up mining for all these pages or writing scripts to get gold. We will leave the ability to get gold from eggs and hatchlings, but if that also drives people to mine in ways that crash the site, that will also be removed.

Obviously, people need a way to get gold. We will set up additional solutions, and are currently brainstorming ideas. We are open to ideas for ways to acquire gold and balance the in-game economy. Please feel free to discuss.

I know people enjoy mining. But ultimately, the way it works currently is unsustainable. Please do not mine, and let other players enjoy a stable site.

Some clarifications from the thread:

Using snaplinks, linkclump, and such extensions to click through click threads on the forum, or the IFN is still allowed, the site can handle that. If this proves to be a problem as well, we'll let you know, but it shouldn't cause that much trouble.

What is crashing the site is if people mine e.g. the Image Free Gold Mine so that they open hundreds or thousands of links in one go, and keep doing that for hours on end. There's no clear reason why the site cannot handle that any more, but at the moment it just can't.

Snaplinks in IFN and click threads is still ok.



A general rule of thumb that could be considered when you people are wondering what's okay and what's not: It's okay to use snaplinks and linkclump and such etc. when clicking on hatchlings and eggs. Purposefully mining on adult creatures is not okay any more. (And yes, the IFN or click threads may also have adults, it's okay if those get snaplinked/linkclumped too, so you don't have to worry about accidentally clicking on adults on IFN.)

[Chimera]

Are snaplinks and similar extensions still allowed in the hatching threads and the IFN? Is the IFN still allowed, or will it be taken down?

[BBkat]

Are snaplinks and similar extensions still allowed in the hatching threads and the IFN? Is the IFN still allowed, or will it be taken down?

Snaplinks and similar extensions are addons and scripts so, presumably no they're not ok. We gotta do it the old fashioned way.

[ZhaaliQuartz]

Lovely to hear new ways to earn gold. Goldmining is kinda awful.

[Atlantica]

how will eggs hatch if people have to click one at a time?

people dont want to do that take much time

it not about only gold it about growing and hatching too

people cannot click 5 egg with snap link they may not click at all and nothing will grow

[Rosehill]

Using snaplinks, linkclump, and such extensions to click through click threads on the forum, or the IFN is still allowed, the site can handle that. If this proves to be a problem as well, we'll let you know, but it shouldn't cause that much trouble.

What is crashing the site is if people mine e.g. the Image Free Gold Mine so that they open hundreds or thousands of links in one go, and keep doing that for hours on end. There's no clear reason why the site cannot handle that any more, but at the moment it just can't.

[Chimera]

Using snaplinks, linkclump, and such extensions to click through click threads on the forum, or the IFN is still allowed, the site can handle that. If this proves to be a problem as well, we'll let you know, but it shouldn't cause that much trouble.

What is crashing the site is if people mine e.g. the Image Free Gold Mine so that they open hundreds or thousands of links in one go, and keep doing that for hours on end. There's no clear reason why the site cannot handle that any more, but at the moment it just can't.

Ty, good to know!

[Karzarill]

My wrists appreciate being able to still snaplink stuff in the click threads since is where i mainly click when I do click critters on MS.

[Raneth]

I also want to mention, please spread the word about this to any and all players, because IP bans that occur may be done without warning. Rosehill can see internally when a particular IP is hogging up all the site's resources, and bans may happen from there without the user being notified or warned beforehand.

[Syndicate]

Perhaps we could also remove the crawler bots we don’t need, like majestic and ahrefs etc, and put a crawl limit on google/ the ones we like. These guys are always crawling creature pages, at what speed idk. I just have an inkling they could also be partially responsible since I’ve noticed the creature click count goes up at a minimum of 400 every 5 min even when there’s no one else online.

For gold, how about adding a Mage collector who's got a fresh quest every day? They're on the hunt for stuff like eggs, hatchlings, adults, or items and they’re asking players to help. Completing these quests will score some sweet gold rewards.