Thunder Bluff: characters take the elevator

The finding

The four mesas of Thunder Bluff are linked to the Mulgore ground only by two pairs of elevators. For navigation, they form an island: the navigation mesh ignores the moving cars. So characters could not take them:

• 77 level 80 autonomous players are on the mesas. 39 of them had not left by a normal means since their last arrival, 189 hours as a median, and circled around town;
• others escaped by walking into the void, along a straight line the server returns when it finds no path: 1,209 such exits during the break.

The fixes

• The mesas: they now count as separate land, linked to the ground by the elevators.
• The elevators: each car becomes a trip leg, going up as well as down. The character waits for the car on the landing, boards during the stop, rides and steps out on the arrival landing, like a player. The stop timings are read from the game data.
• Jumps into the void: the straight line towards another land is refused.
• Login on board: a character who finds itself in a car gets off at the next stop.
• Setting: a single setting switches it all off.

Checked on the test server

Two parallel 30-minute trials with the same 13 Horde characters, on the mesas or on the ground:

• with the old version, no trip is planned, and characters leave the mesas by walking into the void;
• with the new one, 28 trips go through the elevators, without a single failure. For example, a warrior waits for the car, boards 5 seconds before departure, goes down in 14 seconds and steps out on the lower landing;
• the 5 forced trips reach their destination, going down as well as up;
• no death, no error.

Deployment

The new module version is installed on the server. The autonomous players stay stopped: these fixes will be in place for the restart.