Server Status Update - 10/4/17

Server Stability - Due to the servers growing popularity the server is once again under DDOS attack by the usual suspects. We have worked with our server host to improve the active mitigation profile and the attacks are being well managed at the moment. However during a DDOS attack your connection could be affected by the attack or the mitigation. If you get disconnected just try to reconnect. If the client gets stuck on Connecting, close the client, wait 10 seconds and try again.

We are working closely with our host and the proper authorities to report any DDOS attacks and their sources. Thanks to the generosity of our players Renaissance is able to afford well protected hosting which trivializes the effect these attacks have. The ego's of other shard owners just seem to fragile to accept our success these days. Sadly they think attacking other servers and padding their online count will result in success. Our focus will always be on our players and the quality of the server, not a measuring contest with other servers.

If you would like to find out how you can help support Renaissance check here.

House Decor Contest - The staff and volunteers are working on creating the voting threads and getting all of your entries added to the compendium. These will be up by the end of the weekend (9-24). Voting will complete on 9-30.

Dragon's Den Dungeon - The dungeon is undergoing player testing today (9-22) and will open to the general public later today. The rare spawn in the instance will be turned on at 6pm cst tomorrow (9-23) to give players a fair chance to find it.

P77 Hotfix - A hotfix patch is in the works to address some edge case issues related to guard activity that have been noticed since fixing the RunUO guard timer bug. As the guards are now doing their job properly, in some cases they are doing to good a job. We are researching the causes for this and will have a patch ready soon. Players are advised to be careful attacking other players pets, using poison on an innocent or leading with an explosion in Buc's Den or against players on the edge of town limits. Not all of these situations have problems but until we restrict how guards react to these situations it would be best to be cautious.

Players attempting to abuse these edge cases will be warned, and if necessary jailed until a patch is ready

Clean Up Britannia, Moats, Copper System - These items are in the final development stages and are planned to be included in Patch 78. There is still a ton of work and testing to do but this is now our primary development focus. Expect more news and testing windows soon.

Update 10/4/17

IRC Conduct / Spammers - Currently some of our players are still being targeted by someone using a cellular access point to join our chat room and spam obscenities on a fairly regular basis. His most recent out burst included more of the same along with some advertising for another server that starts with a "F" and ends with "ever". Which of course goes a loooong way to explain the behavior. We are working closely with the IRC operators and have isolated this players IP address and connection times. Due to the nature of some of the things he has posted and home some of it could be considered a crime we have forwarded it to the relevant authorities along with providing a log of this players statements to his cellular provider. Just because your cell hotspot gives you a unique IP address every time you power cycle it does not mean that they cannot see who exactly had what IP address at what time. I suspect this person will be having a very embarrassing conversation with either his mother or his cellular provider in the near future.

Work continues on our new IRC moderation bot to better address these issues in the short term. However please report any conduct like this to the staff when it happens so we can take the neccessary steps to report the players in question.

No, However I don't want to explain the problem until it is resolved. Once a patch is ready to go I will post some more information. It is something that has worked for years, its just rarely seen.