Curse

Elvarg · Dec 21, 2006, 03:17 AM // 03:17

First of all, ANet, let me say THANKS, THANKS, and another THANKS for implementing this LONG-DUE feature. FINALLY I don't need to have another heart attack after lagging out 90% through an Anguish mission.

I did a small analysis, however, on how the re-login works, and found out the following:

- Return after lagging out is good. I tried "lagging out" by hardware means (disconnecting ethernet cord) and software means (disabling connection), and after both ways, a popup appeared giving me a chance to reconnect. As soon as I re-enabled internet, I could reconnect fine.

- Return after crash worked fine when I used the Reset button on my computer. After I reloaded, booted GW, and entered my username/password, GW realized the exit was not "clean" and I was given the chance to reconnect, and came straight back into the game.

My concern, however, is that often GW starts acting "funny" (lag/freeze/gfx issues/other problems) which can be fixed simply by restarting GW. However, either closing GW through the X button, OR EVEN when using Ctrl+Alt+Del and killing the GW process made GW think it was a "clean" exit, and consequently, does not give me the chance to reconnect. I think it treats me as a voluntary disconnect as soon as I close or terminate GW, so reconnecting is simply like logging in after logging out, i.e. back to town.

As well, sometimes, in order to fix internet connectivity you HAVE to restart the computer, but right now, restarting it any other way than pressing Reset would make GW think the exit was "soft" and revoke my chance of coming back.

I therefore please ask you to consider treating at least the Ctrl+Alt+Del means of killing the GW process as NOT a clean exit. I mean come on, nobody would ever close GW like that unless there were serious issues like a frozen screen. While nothing stops me from pressing Reset, it 1. is not a very healthy way to shut down the system, even potentially corrupting the hard disk, and 2. not everyone knows about this, and it would suck for players to find out the hard way that their Ctrl+Alt+Del is not considered a "crash".

Therefore I please ask you to implement a Ctrl+Alt+Del termination to be considered a "crash". AFAIK, it would not open any exploits (if people want to "simulate" a crash they ALREADY can do it by pressing Reset, pulling out ethernet cord, etc, and this is just a more convenient way). It would make certain game issues much easier to resolve, without going through the whole boot process. Finally, when a program is closed via a TERM signal (Ctrl+Alt+Del), it is distinctly different from an internal exit, so you should have no problem detecting it as such.

By extension, if I close the game via Ctrl+Alt+Del, it should always give me a chance to come back next time I start the game (subject to the 10 minute rule, of course), even if it already sitting on the re-login screen caused by a network problem (see above reasoning that sometimes I need to restart computer, and if I currently restart it while already lagged out, GW thinks I said no to the offer).

Thanks a lot for what you have done already, just hoping you can improve upon your work by addressing another aspect of the problem.

azathothx · Dec 21, 2006, 04:01 AM // 04:01

/signed. Very good considerations.