WoW Crawler
Crawler Delays
by Xxav on September 4, 2009, 5:34 pm, under WoW Crawler
I wanted to let everyone know that we’re aware of the crawler delays and are looking into the matter. Currently, this is about 1200 guilds waiting in the queue that were added by users. I just made a few changes that should prevent guilds from getting stuck in the queue for days. We’ve had some malicious activity on our server the past few days and I’m currently investigating to see if this is related. I want to thank all those who have downloaded the crawler in the past few days. We’re currently reaching over 2000 guilds crawled per hour which is pretty awesome. Once I know more about the huge queue I will post back here.
UPDATE:
A malicious user was queueing tons of guilds over and over. I have since blocked him and have added countermeasures to future attacks.
Here’s their IP address: 75.127.177.114
Sorry for the crawler delays! They should be back to normal shortly!
Crawler Fix and Instant Scoring
by Xxav on September 3, 2009, 12:43 pm, under WoW Crawler, World of Warcraft
A change was made last night that would cause recently started crawlers to crash upon starting. I just corrected this bug and I am also going to use this to force an update to the crawler on those who have been running older versions. You can find the new version here as well as a list of changes. Sorry for the hiccup and thank you for crawling
Also, we’re currently working on a way to enable live scoring and hope to have this completed tonight. This would allow us to provide an estimated new score for a guild whenever new data is collected so you could then see it instantly reflected on the charts. Keep an eye out for this soon!
UPDATE: Instant scoring is now live!
ToC Kill Date Inaccuracies
by Xxav on September 1, 2009, 6:21 pm, under WoW Crawler, World of Warcraft
I’ve been receiving a lot of emails about Trial of the Crusader boss kills being one day off and wanted to address this. The reason this happens is because our crawlers are getting information for these bosses based on the multi-part zone achievements. For example:
<achievement categoryId="168" desc="Defeat every boss in the Trial of the Crusader in 10-player mode." icon="achievement_reputation_argentchampion" id="3917" points="10" title="Call of the Crusade (10 player)"> <criteria date="2009-08-26+02:00" id="11684" name="Defeat the Beasts of Northrend"/> <criteria date="2009-08-25+02:00" id="11685" name="Defeat Lord Jaraxxus"/> <criteria date="2009-08-25+02:00" id="11686" name="Defeat the Faction Champions"/> <criteria date="2009-08-26+02:00" id="11687" name="Defeat the Twin Val'kyr"/> <criteria id="11688" name="Complete the Trial of the Crusader"/> </achievement>
That is what the crawler sees when it visits are player’s achievement page. The dates listed here next to <criteria data=” are the dates that are being recorded. We have no other way of checking for a date and are at the mercy of the Armory in this regard. I just wanted to emphasis that this is on Blizzard’s end and is not guildprogress.com’s fault!
One thing I would suggest is relogging after your raid over to sync with the Armory. I am not sure how effective that is but if you are concerned about having accurate data on the Armory you can give it a shot!
Crawler Error Corrected
by Xxav on August 6, 2009, 10:02 am, under WoW Crawler
If you had trouble receiving credit for a kill or achievement since 3.2 was released please queue your guild again. I just realized Blizzard went back and changed the name of all the old achievements to be the same format as the new Crusader ones (ie. Heroic: Shattered became Shattered (25 player) ). The new rules have been loaded in to the crawler and we should be good to go.
UPDATE: 10 player Coliseum bugs have been corrected. Please re-queue if you’re missing them!
Badge Bug Squashed
by Xxav on June 22, 2009, 7:40 pm, under WoW Crawler, World of Warcraft
If your guild badge was not displaying properly it should now be fixed. If not, please try to rebuild it and let me know if the problem persists.
Also, this bug caused a bit of chaos yesterday and this morning which resulted in the crawler not working and part of the site being down. If you notice your crawler being “stuck” please exit it and restart the program. Thanks again for those of you who run the crawler.
Sorry for the downtime!
And by the way, I’m still looking for ideas and suggestions for new features and improvements. You can comment on this entry without having to register. I am currently working on an interesting new feature that will display the data in different format. I’ll release more on this as it nears completion. But really, I want your feedback!