Unplanned Maintenance

We apologize for the unplanned downtime. We have identified some issues which affect all three of our servers. Until the issues can be solved, and we are finished searching through logs and testing everything, we need to keep the servers offline.

Estimated Downtime?

We will have to keep the servers down until Sunday night or Monday morning. We just need the extra time to fully handle everything.

Once again, we apologize for the downtime. However, it's important we handle this now to ensure a fair, fun playing experience.

Thanks for your patience.

Update

We're a little behind schedule. While we have a fix in testing, and have done most of the work, we still want some extra time to be sure of everything before we put the servers back up. Servers will be back up by Monday night (server time) at the latest.

Thanks for your patience.

Servers Back Online

We apologize for the extended downtime, but it was necessary to fully deal with the situation. There was an exploit identified which allowed some players to duplicate adena and other stackable items. The exploit was limited to a handful of players on the server. It has been fixed, and there will be no more issues with this exploit. We are sorry that this happened, but it is not possible to catch all bugs before they happen. We have taken even stronger measures to prevent such a situation in the future.

All offending players have been banned. Anyone who was directly involved in the trading of duped items has also been banned while we finish our investigation. Almost all of the exploiting was limited to ShortBus and Rage clans. Players in those clans have all been banned while we investigate them.

Players who wonder about seven signs or raid bosses--nothing has been adjusted or changed. Everything continues as if the server was online the past 3 days. We're sorry to anyone who was unable to sign in the last 2 days, but we felt it was best to just let Seven Signs rotate naturally for the rest of the Seal Period.

Thanks for your patience during this time. Enjoy the servers once again.

New Hardware Online

As previously announced, our new hardware arrived at the datacenter on Thursday. Thursday night and Friday we installed and setup the server OS and software. 2 hours ago we moved Celes onto the new machine.

The server has been running very smoothly, and while we haven't hit peak time yet, it is definitely running much better than on the old hardware. We'll see just how well it runs once sieges start. However, all signs point to an enjoyable siege experience, and we don't expect any more server-side lag issues caused by hardware or software limits.

We'll post if there are any further changes, but everything is running well

Lastly, the server cap has been raised so there shouldn't be any issues logging in during peak times anymore. As long as the server remains lag-free, we will continue to increase the cap so everyone can play.

Registration Open

Registration has been opened again. Until we have cleared siege weekend on Celes the registration will only be raised by 3000 accounts. Assuming no major lag issues, we will increase the registration cap more so everyone who wants to play should be able to play.

Have a fun time on Celes

Datacenter Uplink Issue Resolved

Seems we found an issue with the uplink speed. The datacenter changed us over to a 100 Mbit billing commitment (billed at 95th percentile), but never changed our uplink port to a Gigabit port. I always thought we had a Gigabit uplink port. We're getting that changed now.

When Celes had sieges going, we pushed 100 Mbits which meant that there would be lag when the uplink was maxed out, even packet loss. While I can't guarantee that was the only reason for lag during siege, it explains the packet loss and delay. My opinion is that with a Gigabit uplink and the new hardware, sieges shouldn't have any major lag spikes or major delay.

In simple terms, we have solved what should be the last problem causing us lag or delay on the server. From now on, everything should run very smoothly, even during sieges. We'll confirm this in 2 weeks.

Thanks for your patience during this time. We'll continue to do our best to make all our servers as enjoyable as possible.

This announcement is about the latest patch v2.4, which is required to login as well as some news on registration and new hardware.

Patch v2.4 Released

The latest patch includes a full set of security updates, as well as new blocks on various macro programs (such as MacroGamer). Extra detection methods have also been employed against sandboxing solutions. This is part of our promise to fight all 3rd party tools, and keep your game experience as fair as possible.

Also, we have added compatibility with Garena. L2 will no longer close Garena for being an illegal program. Enjoy playing DotA

This patch is required to login so make sure to open the Azure L2 Updater, or grab the latest system RAR archive from the Downloads page.

Having Issues?

Make sure that your antivirus is not blocking L2.exe. Many players have problems with AVG and NOD32 blocking the game, even when they are disabled. You need tyo add an exception for L2.exe in order to play.

Users who have Sandboxie installed, make sure Sandboxie is not running on your system or the client will refuse to load. The client should give you an error message now, but it is possible sometimes it won't.

Registration

Game account registration has been increased by another 1000 accounts. We will increase it more once our new hardware for Celes is online (see below).

Celes Hardware

As some may have heard through announcements or IRC, we have ordered and are waiting on our new hardware to arrive. We decided to order a multi-purpose box we can use for running Celes, as well as hosting other servers/projects.

Currently we have been using our old Nanaki machine as a Virtual Private Server node (VPS for short), but we plan to phase out that machine by selling it or splitting it into spare parts. This new machine will serve as our new VPS node, and host Celes on it as well.

Our new hardware for this VPS node is as follows:

• 2x Intel Xeon E5520 (Quad core 2.26 GHz)
• 16 GB DDR3 1333 MHz ECC/Registered
• 2x Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS 300GB SATA2 10k RPM 16MB HDD
• Supermicro motherboard and chassis.

We expect to have the new server installed by early next week. Our supplier says Tuesday to Wednesday at the latest. We have to wait for the WD Velociraptors to arrive.