Thank you guys for understanding. We're adding more things to the FAQ as they pop up, I just wanted to hop on real quick to say that we are looking into an easier way to move items around. Also, you won't have to have everything moved over by the time the new shops go live. Other people just won't be able to see them for the mean time.

We've been talking about doing this for years - you'll notice that other sites have limits. Games have limits. This was something I was stupid about at the start of Subeta, and it's caught up to us. Every major query run on the site that takes more than a second to process comes from locks on the user shop table. It was bad planning and now we're course correcting.

They won't - Vaults aren't accessed frequently. Vaults aren't used when we release a new feature, or when quests are changed, or whatever the case is that people rush to buy things from user shops and everything starts crumbling. Vaults don't currently have a processing time of 3-4 seconds on updates that hang the entire server process, etc.

This is hard to explain without getting very technical, but, what is happening now is that user shops exist on a table, and when you "write" or "edit" a table, it has to "lock" so that information is preserved. This is a feature of any SQL-type database system.

If you update the price in your user shop, or an item is purchased, or any type of edit on the table, the entire table has to lock for some amount of time, which means that the next query (looking up items, also purchasing an item, etc) gets put a few milliseconds behind until the first one is done. These pileup and you end up with 5-6 seconds for a query to finish, or sometimes 30+ seconds, which is where the errors happen because the servers timeout waiting on the query to finish.

This doesn't happen with vaults, or wardrobes, because there aren't nearly that many things on the site hitting them. People aren't frequently updating the price of items in their wardrobes, frequently adding/removing items from them, or anything like that.

In addition to the limits, we're re-organizing the way that the items sit in our database so that none of these things are stored in the same place, and you shouldn't be waiting on the entire table to finish a process before you add an item to your gallery.

if they're in an inactive shop now, not selling, what is the difference if they're removed? And, in order to keep the value of those items, why would we put them in the donation corner?

I also want to be clear that we're interested in increasing the limits, we are just starting as small as we possibly can at the start until we get a better understanding and testing of the system.

It's much easier to raise a limit then lower.

and everyone else:

You don't have to have everything moved in 10 days. You will still have access to your old shops and be able to move things out of them. They just won't show up in the shop search or be visible to other people. They'll be like mini vaults until you work through them. We'll find a way to make getting items out of them a bit easier (dump the whole shop would be very hard on the servers), that was the first thing that I was worried about, having just emptied a shop that was around 2,000 items.

The programmers can explain it better, but this is more a matter of fixing old coding than upgrading to new servers. It will still be the same poor setup no matter how great the hardware is.

You will still be able to work with your own shop/gallery, but no one else will be able to see it.

I love lots of these ideas! We've been brainstorming and have a few things up our sleeves already, but these are all great suggestions I'm going to add to my list. We've been toying around with some things! I'm going to see if we can make pets hungry faster, I know that may interfere with battling and such so I want to investigate that a bit before we just pull the plug, but that's definitely on the list!

I really like this idea, partly because it doesn't require another currency. and I are going to make more things fraggable soon (r101 and r150!) but bringing more attention to the Recycle Beast is equally as important.

Keep the ideas coming!

I'd like to reiterate that we're beta testing this. The limits are in no way final right now; I know a lot of you guys are worried about them staying where they are right now for months/etc, and that isn't the case. We are taking the feedback you guys give us here, the news comments, and in the GA forums!

When old shops are disabled that's essentially what will happen since they won't show in the shop search anymore.

If people want to hoard, they're going to hoard. We're working on reducing strain with new coding and finding new ways to use items. Again, the limits are not going to stay at what they are right now. We started small for beta testing because that's what it is--beta testing.

From what the programmers explained to me, it isn't as much them sitting there and existing, but how much strain the poor coding has caused with quickstocking, pricing, autopricing, buying, searching, etc. I don't believe them just sitting and existing do much damage, like collections. I'm not a programmer, so I don't have been exciting words to explain that better :P

The coding is being replaced, that's the whole point of this. The shop system is old, we're replacing it. It's a huge strain on the database. We're starting off small with the new coding so we can test it. Having an infinite shop system in retrospect wasn't a great idea, and it hasn't worked well for site stability or functionality. It has to be changed. The limits will not be this low.

I've said it a few times, but you do not have to have your transition complete by the day we expect the new shops to go live. Your items will still exist. You can move them out and to your new shops at your own pace. We've also clarified that we're going to create a way to move items more quickly. Right now we need people testing the new shops so that we can find any bugs and fix them before it goes live. It will help site functionality so much, it's a step we really have to take.

It's not just how horrible the old code is, it's how bad it is for our databases. Let me quote Grace on the Gold Account FAQ thread where she explains why this is needed:

Like I said, the limits are going to increase because the coding for the new shops and galleries allow for scalability!

You don't have to have a single thing done in 9 days. Everything will still be removeable from your end, just not to others. You are more than welcome to wait until we raise the limits and get the transfer tool situated. We released this now because we need people testing it. It's the reason the site has the 502/504 errors, we need to fix that as soon as we can without just debuting a new untested system that was thrown together overnight. has been working on this almost exclusively for nearly a month. We've tested it ourselves, but we need to make sure this new system works, which is why we're opening the beta testing to get any bugs out before it's live. The limits will be raised during the testing period--so we can test them. We just need to start off small so can monitor exactly what's happening and see how much this will help the strain.

@blackwolf_2009 and I are working on that right now, actually! <3

From what I understand that's dependent on the testing! I'll check with about that more specifically once she's back.

Okay, I've made an announcement thread with the FAQ which you can find HERE. I've added a bit more than what Grace has on her GA Beta Testing thread. and I will be keeping an eye on this thread, the GA thread, and the news comments for whatever else we'll need to add. :) We've locked it because we'd rather keep everything in one place (like your feedback here and bug reports in the GA thread).

Sorry, I think I keep using "shops" to mean both! I'll make sure to be a bit more clear with that.

For shop tills, we will let you know / update the FAQ as soon as we find out! There are a few things that still need to be worked out, and this is on the list :)

We've been the first to admit that the vintage coding hasn't really been compatible with how the site has developed over the years. This is a step we really need to take. It isn't about blaming anyone, it's just the reality of what's happened. We're doing everything we can to lessen the impact on users, but it's this huge, resource intense feature right now that we have to fix to be able to continue having the site function. It will only get worse with time. We want you guys to be able to play the site, so we have to fix this huge looming problem that's only getting worse as time goes on. We’re doing everything we can to make sure this transition works well for ALL of us. We want you guys to be able to sell your vended items or restocked items, but we also want to stop the errors around site so you can actually do those things.

good ideas on questing! That's something we can look into for sure. A few people have suggested Recycle Beast changes of some sort, so that's pretty high on our list of things to update. :) I personally would like to see him cycle through items a few times a day maybe or like suggested, be able to turn in holiday items/floaters right after a holiday.