Myst Online: URU Live Forums

Re: CAVCON Meter

Annabelle — Sun May 26, 2013 3:07 pm

Author: Annabelle

Posted: Sun May 26, 2013 3:07 pm

Samuraid wrote:

Cavcon up at 2.4 (from 2.2).

So here's a totally wild (and probably incorrect) estimate.
We know for a fact that the MOUL fund received a 100 euro donation, and during that time the meter went from 2.2 to 2.4. Assuming there were not a lot of other donations during that time (really wild assumption), then 0.2 of the month would be roughly 100 euro.

This is why I'm uneasy with the original thread made by NellieBly. Nice effort and surely nice intentions but giving out the total amount of "what explorers said they were going to give to Cyan collectively" (<---this is important, that's not money, that's a promise of donation which can be voided for a reason or the other) is rather a bit displaced.

Now I'm pretty sure a lot of explorers like you Samuraid thinks...oh well the CAVCON raised from 2.2 to 2.4 which is the SOLE donation of The Female Hood Passing the Hat campaign.

My donation was real. Converted in euro, I paid in USD... my donation was real (enough said)

Re: CAVCON Meter

Samuraid — Sun May 26, 2013 1:45 am

Author: Samuraid

Posted: Sun May 26, 2013 1:45 am

Mac_Fife wrote:

Samuraid wrote:
We know for a fact that the MOUL fund received a 100 euro donation
Not really - we know it was pledged, but that doesn't mean it was received before May 20th (the party was on 17th and the post by Nellie Bly giving the total was made on 21st), and we do know a few other people did make donations in the period. So really, we don't know anything as "fact" .

Whoops. I misread. Thanks for setting the record straight, Mac.

You made some good points about the server sizes and cost estimates, and Cyan's labor above and beyond on certain months would surely, as you pointed out, increase the monthly bill.

All in all, though, these rough wild guesses are more reassuring than anything, letting us know that the base monthly cost is not out of reach. I'm definitely going to try to set aside and donate this month.

Re: CAVCON Meter

Mac_Fife — Sat May 25, 2013 8:18 pm

Author: Mac_Fife

Posted: Sat May 25, 2013 8:18 pm

Cyan are in the process of (or may have completed) moving to reserved EC2 instances. From Chogon's post we can infer that there is more than one instance and probably at least three instances.

For a thought experiment, let's assume three instances, and let's also assume medium utilization: Since the vault is memory cached, I'd guess that MOULa uses at least one "high memory" instance, but assume that the other two are medium sized, standard instances. The cheapest of the Windows high memory instances is then $850 per year up front plus $146 per month or an average $216 per month combined. The standard instances are £320 per year plus $63 per month, or $90 per month combined. That points to a total of $216 + $90 + $90 = $396. You then need to add data usage on top of that at $0.12 per GB - take a wild stab at that and estimate 30,000 logins per month each using 20MB (=600GB) plus, say, 50GB on top for people making fresh installs gets you to about another $80 worth.

Total it up and take it to a round number, so call it $500 per month (the equivalent 'on-demand' instances would have cost about 50% more). Not a million miles away from Samuraid's estimate, but it doesn't account for any labor from Cyan. There's always some of that each month since at the very least we get server maintenance/restarts every three weeks (so in some months that will happen twice), but Cyan is never going to publically declare its internal rates (nor would anyone else for that matter). You can perhaps assume three people are involved and maybe multiply the downtime by some notional hourly rate, but you're still left with a complete unknown over the time spent dealing with account queries, unplanned maintenance, etc., so you might as well take another wild guess and say "Meh! $300" (or some other number of your own choosing). In some of the recent "troubled" months I could easily see the labor costs being considerably greater than the server leasing costs.

There's a lot of big assumptions in the above, so don't try to treat any of it as "fact" - it's just an exercise in estimation.

Samuraid wrote:

We know for a fact that the MOUL fund received a 100 euro donation

Not really - we know it was pledged, but that doesn't mean it was received before May 20th (the party was on 17th and the post by Nellie Bly giving the total was made on 21st), and we do know a few other people did make donations in the period. So really, we don't know anything as "fact" .

Re: CAVCON Meter

kemsil — Sat May 25, 2013 6:54 pm

Author: kemsil

Posted: Sat May 25, 2013 6:54 pm

This is very interesting subject. I have wondered how much money is needed to keep this going. To have an idea of how much is needed will make it more likely that I will donate. Thanks, Samuraid

Re: CAVCON Meter

Samuraid — Sat May 25, 2013 6:14 pm

Author: Samuraid

Posted: Sat May 25, 2013 6:14 pm

Cavcon up at 2.4 (from 2.2).

So here's a totally wild (and probably incorrect) estimate.
We know for a fact that the MOUL fund received a 100 euro donation, and during that time the meter went from 2.2 to 2.4. Assuming there were not a lot of other donations during that time (really wild assumption), then 0.2 of the month would be roughly 100 euro.

At the current exchange rate, 100 euro is about 130 USD. So 1/5th of an average month is maybe in the ballpark of $130.

Multiply it out, and we get $650 per month.

I realize this is likely a very wrong guess (especially since costs vary month to month, and it doesn't account for other smaller donations), but even if it's something in the vague ballpark, it gives us a slightly more defined goal. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find the basic monthly cost (EC2 instances, bandwidth, EBS, etc.) in the $600 to $800 range.

Just some food for thought. Take it with a grain of salt (or maybe a few.)

Re: CAVCON Meter

chrissifniotis — Wed May 22, 2013 6:13 am

Author: chrissifniotis

Posted: Wed May 22, 2013 6:13 am

Hm, good points there. If there were a number value I'd probably feel less inclined to do as I'm doing now; wait until I have a great deal in the bank so I can pull out a comparatively small amount and jack up the meter a good deal.

Re: CAVCON Meter

Jhon J. Jaguar — Tue May 21, 2013 9:04 pm

Author: Jhon J. Jaguar

Posted: Tue May 21, 2013 9:04 pm

The server question is a great mistery
Any time work, another time is damage...any time is very fast, and another time need many minutes for upload.....
Mah....In all cases is funny see this into MOUL, eve if can create confusion....LOL
Thanks for the informations.....Shorah everyone

Re: CAVCON Meter

Mac_Fife — Tue May 21, 2013 6:35 pm

Author: Mac_Fife

Posted: Tue May 21, 2013 6:35 pm

Cyan don't want to talk numbers because it puts pressure on people over whether their donation is "big enough", causes questions like "Why am I donating $X when clearly lots of people must be donating nothing". Further, it causes you think, "OK the target is $X, there apparently Y players so if I donate round about $X/Y I'm doing my bit, it's up to everyone else to do theirs now".

The other problem with a numerical target is that it's not really known: While server costs are probably fairly constant the "support" labor costs likely vary quite a bit, from almost nothing in some months to probably the major portion of the costs when there's an update or when there have been server problems, as we had over several months recently.

In my experience, when you set a regular target what tends to happen is that people do enough to just about make the target each month and no more: You actually fall slightly short most months with the occasional "success" when you exceed the target. I feel that even the "CAVCON 3.0 target" is prone to that.

I made an attempt at explaining where the costs come from in my blog post "So, what is this CAVCON thing?", so I'll refer to that rather than repeating myself here.

Annabelle wrote:

I saw this number "1017 UniqueUsers"... What does it means? Am I considered 1 unique user or 21 unique users since I have access or own 21 accounts?

In your case it'll mean 21 users - I don't think Cyan will take the time to try to work out exactly who "owns" each account so that measure really means "unique login IDs".

Re: CAVCON Meter

Annabelle — Tue May 21, 2013 5:19 pm

Author: Annabelle

Posted: Tue May 21, 2013 5:19 pm

I know I might bother some with my questions but I'm clueless when it comes to CAVCON.

Would it be more preferable to have a target to reach in $ instead of a number that says absolutely nothing?

I have donated this month a certain amount. This amount was sent on the day the CAVCON meter went up from 2.1 to 2.2. I was a bit desesperate thinking...oh well if my amount just made the CAVCON meter go from 2.1 to 2.2, it must take a whole lot of money to reach the 5.0. But then the meter was stopped on May 14th. My donation might or might not have been taken into account. Now Nev'yn sent money, he told us, and the Female Hood's Passing the Hat campaign sent money too.

There might be as well other.

I'm still completely clueless. It's a delicate matter I know... How much a donation is sufficient? Is there more a need for monthly steady donations or like I'm doing, "big" donations once in a while. I put "big" like that because that's something we cannot figure out ?!?!?

Does Cyan needs $500 a month or $5,000 a month? Having a target in money would be easier. I would be able to say...ok I gave a lot or ... hmm I'm stingy.

Are we paying for server usage, server maintainance, electricity, server connection to the Internet, Cyan staff members? Knowing that would help us trying to mentally figure out how much they need.

I saw this number "1017 UniqueUsers"... What does it means? Am I considered 1 unique user or 21 unique users since I have access or own 21 accounts? What about a month where I'm doing some clean-up. I can log all my accounts and, of them all, 90% are just logged in few minutes to grab a quest or store one.

I'm asking that because if let say the total amount needed would be $5,000 a month, then I would be able to figure out what could be a sheer load for each account (let's understand... not the ones just logged 1 or 2 mins...the account i'm using for Annabelle or the accounts I own for La belle Anna or for Sophie).

Then there's the other number: 5,776 logins. I'm lucid enough to know that (well in April, I didn't log very much) in a normal month, let's say May, I may account for 5% of the logins. Essentially because I need to get in or out a lot, I'm working always with 2 accounts (avatar + bot), I logoff after a certain time to avoid stack dumps, etc. Is this costly? Does it mean that my consumption of the server is more heavy than another explorer? I know explorers who "stay" online on a nearly 24h basis. They aren't "there" always they just loggin and go afk for long period of time. So am I consuming more or less than them?

As you can see, without any amount, CAVCON is a mystery.

Re: CAVCON Meter

Nev'yn — Mon May 20, 2013 9:54 pm

Author: Nev'yn

Posted: Mon May 20, 2013 9:54 pm

Mac_Fife wrote:

...added one account per week (no doubt manually inserted)

Ugh.

(/me has a flashback of having to manually insert new library cards when the library's computer system was down.)

Re: CAVCON Meter

Mac_Fife — Mon May 20, 2013 6:23 pm

Author: Mac_Fife

Posted: Mon May 20, 2013 6:23 pm

Probably not. What I suspect might have happened is that the "total accounts" figure may have been taken from the number of account requests (i.e. you were counted as having an account if you had submitted your email address, even if you hadn't got as far as setting the password). When the account creation system went down, it's possible that "pending" list was lost and the subsequent figures are based on the number of activated accounts.

I base this hypothesis on the fact that it looks we rolled back to a previous figure and have since only added one account per week (no doubt manually inserted).

Re: CAVCON Meter - Past Stats

korovev — Mon May 20, 2013 9:03 am

Author: korovev

Posted: Mon May 20, 2013 9:03 am

RAWA wrote:

04/24/13 - 107991 Accounts, (Login stats lost in server crash)
Apr 2013: CAVCON:3.0, (Logins stats lost in server crash)
05/01/13 - 107662 Accounts, 05776 Logins, 052869 AgeVisits, 1017 UniqueUsers

329 accounts got deleted?

Re: CAVCON Meter

Mac_Fife — Sun May 19, 2013 9:01 pm

Author: Mac_Fife

Posted: Sun May 19, 2013 9:01 pm

No, RAWA's update cites the Donation Meter value as of May 14, so anything since Wednesday won't be included.

Re: CAVCON Meter

Nev'yn — Sun May 19, 2013 8:42 pm

Author: Nev'yn

Posted: Sun May 19, 2013 8:42 pm

Well, I just send some money in on Friday, I highy doubt that was counted towards the most recent increase, hopefully it will help even things out a bit, if others also did some donating.

Re: CAVCON Meter

Charura — Sun May 19, 2013 7:39 pm

Author: Charura

Posted: Sun May 19, 2013 7:39 pm

Mac_Fife wrote:

still a bit of a concern that the Donation Meter is only 2.2 half way through May.

Thanks for the kick in the keister Mac!!! We needed that.