well, the first game was interrupted by server issues -- network lag caused Lee Sedol to lose on time by move 51

They'll play a rematch tomorrow (Jan 21): same bat time, same bat channel.

Maybe this is a chance for LeeSedol to see that his server hasn't improved at all since starting beta and he can put the hammer down.

They only made it to move 11 today before one of the players lost on time again (Andy this time, I think).

The lag was so bad, I had reloaded my page, which of course bumped me out of the game, and once the game is over, you can't get back in. So I don't what the conversation was and plans for rematch.

There's no such thing as bad publicity eh......

I managed to get into their 3rd attempt, just in time to see it had already timed out or got stuck by move 4

Hmm

these guys are going to crush kaya.gs, it's just unavoidable.

I wonder who did their testing? Beta phase on Go servers seems to have some abnormal meaning.

_________________
North Lecale

This is just embarrassing. It looks like they will be wasting a great idea through poor preparation.

Whoever runs go9dan.com obviously has money (to sponsor a go league of top pros) and connections (to reach out to various pros). They seem to lack technical chops and preparedness. They could easily have hired someone with the skills of wms/KGS or Gabriel/Kaya.gs, so it looks like they lack HR vision as well. Did they blow their budget on promotions and not have enough money left over for engineers?

Their website doesn't even have announcements that cover the recent problems. This is incredibly frustrating.

The whole operation seems very amateurish. Lee Sedol's name deserves to be associated with something much better than this.

Rant over.

well, actually they do (though maybe you're looking for more details?)
http://go9dan.com/Home/NewsContent/14

One of the most important aspects of the beta test phase would have been for 2 or 4 or 16 guys on the other side of the world to play each other.

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North Lecale

Unbiased as i can be on this thread, making an html client for a realtime system is not trivial at all.

Its not a "solved" problem, in the sense that there are many opinions, diverted technologies and strategies to solve a particular problem. In Engineering terms, there is no recognized architecture for online games based on HTML.

Figure that sites like Facebook took more than 4/5 years to have actually live-updated content. For many years it was a plain blog. And even now, its not particularly a real time environment: you don't get things as they happen, not even which contacts you have are actually online.

Kaya.gs's architecture ended up having issues with the unexpected, as many technologies we use are rather green and we have had to deal with issues around them. Many issues we had came from third party solutions, not our own. (for example, there are a few phrases that if you try to translate, it will hang the client, due to a bug in the translator which we didnt do).
(critical)Issues on html clients are guaranteed to arise.

There was one thing we did by decision, regardless of technical quality, which was running the server as soon as possible with as little expectancy(features, quality) as possible.The first alpha release didn't even have passwords for users. And the intake of issues we had on the first 3 weeks was astounding and unexpected, which let us work over them gradually, as we expanded features and functionality.
48hs before alpha launch, the lobby looked much worse than this :

Go9dan went the other way around, which is prepare everything for launch, and have little battle experience. In turn, they experience these kind of issues at key moments.

They will improve with some time, and get better gradually. I actually would like to see the pro league running, and see how they attract Asian players from titans like Tygem and Wbaduk.

I hadn't experienced lag before on that site, which they claim is related to the betting system on that latest post. Performance is one of those things that no matter how well you did things before, the new one can mess up all the ones from before.

_________________
Founder of Kaya.gs

Kaya's procedure is better: start small ("Hello, world!"), test the hell out of it; add features incrementally, test the hell out of it; rinse and repeat.

(I have a feeling NASA's Curiosity has followed a similar approach: baby steps, test test test; more baby steps, test test test; repeat.)

Let's see how long it takes Go9dan to successfully complete the 10-game match.

Hmmm, I seem to remember Kaya advertising a rebroadcast of a quebec tournament, and the server crashing with noting working right. The game ended up being rebroadcast on kgs...

People forget these things quickly (like you have), so give them a chance.

Thanks for the link. I didn't see that the first time the issue occurred. I suppose that this is the news from the second occurrence. I would have liked a little bit more information (or at least some timeline for future updates), but I guess it is better than nothing.
I cannot speak for speedchase, but I am willing to give them a chance. However, they have looked pretty bad so far, so it is natural to worry. In fact, you might say that we are worried because we want them to succeed. They have many fantastic ideas that are worth trying.

Also, it is not fair to compare Kaya's early technical issues with go9dan.com's (Kaya's problems seem to be...well there are already threads about that). Kaya's development model leans heavily on user testing. This was made clear upfront and they have visible features on their site that actively seek feedback. While they don't implement every requested new feature, they have been very good about fixing reported technical issues related to existing features. Furthermore, the expectations generated are different when broadcasting two amateurs in Quebec playing in a regional tournament. When you announce that the strongest player in the world will play the first AGA pro on your server, then you are implicitly telling people that your server's technology is ready for big time. If the server is not ready, then they should have managed people's expectations better.

I hope that Go9dan.com gets its act together...

Off topic, but not really. Systems level testing of Curiosity was virtually impossible, so the system level tests were all modeled. Piece components did have a lot of testing done.

It does look like they spent too much money on marketing and too little on the technical side. Even now some pages on the site are down, displaying error stack trace, therefore revealing the technology they are using, and showing a simple programming error to the whole internet. The word amateurish has been used in the thread. This is a very basic mistake and a big security concern. For a game server the security of the system has to a matter of paramount importance.

Sorry, but I disagree. Comparing the technical problems of these two sites is far more fair than comparing it to, oh say, Google or Twitter... but hey, they both have their issues as well. Ever been unable to check your gmail (through the web interface) or caught a fail-whale? It happens. Things mess up.

And if you expected go9dan to have no (or only minor) problems, well, that's kind of your fault. It was announced as being a beta, and the website's banner still carries the beta tag. (Although, I will grant that, from what I've read of it, it seems more like an alpha right now than a beta.)

Perhaps lemmata's point was simply that Kaya did not expect big things from day 1, and went through extensive beta testing before being publicly released even by an inch. While go9dan claims to be in beta, it is acting like it's the biggest server in the world. It's not - it's a botch job. It seems to have no eye on usability, security, decent features or the like. The only thing it has going for it is this exciting series of matches, but so far it's drawn a big crowd and disappointed them twice. It doesn't look like an alpha or a beta to me - those words imply that it is being alpha- or beta-tested - I would say that it's just crap.

Personally, I think it's a bad money making scheme. I don't trust it in the slightest yet, and a series of games won't change that.

I suppose you and I disagree on the degree of the problems on go9dan.com. I would not characterize these problems as minor. When a server with a small user base is unable to get a pre-arranged and pre-announced (by the server!) game going between two pros for more than a 40 moves without technical issues interrupting the game (likely the only game on the server at that time), then that is a major problem in my book.

I did not expect go9dan.com to have no problems or even only minor problems. I did expect to be able to see the game between Lee Sedol and Andy Liu that they told me that I was going to be able to see. I did not expect to be able to play a game myself or chat. Forget about me watching the game, they couldn't even get the two players to complete a game.

Another major difference between Kaya and go9dan.com is context. While both carry the beta tag, the latter announced that it was going to run an online league between ten top pros in China and Korea while the other said that "they're working on things". The beta tag itself is meaningless. There are ways to implicitly communicate the readiness of a business operation to the public. Go9dan.com chose to project the image of readiness by announcing ambitious projects that require readiness for the extremely near future.

Of course, I don't expect Go9dan.com to be perfect from the beginning of the development process. However, the problem is that they raised expectations.

The online pro league is supposed to have total prizes worth $100,000. Despite the promotional nature of the league, it is serious business. The league is supposed to start this week. If Chen Yaoye beats Lee Sedol by time because of lag and a dispute arises between the players, how will it be resolved? The winner of the Chinese Mingren tournament receives about $4000. By go world standards, this is not a small event. What if the problems occur multiple times? Does it delegitimize the event? Will there be ill feelings? An international incident? Will anyone drop out of the league? How many times will pros tolerate having to restart their games from the beginning? Will some not play seriously if this becomes too much of a problem?

Although both sites are "in beta", the scope of readiness that is needed for go9dan.com's announced plans for January is much greater than the scope readiness that is needed for Kaya.gs's announced plans for January.

None of these things really matter to me personally. I am not even angry at go9dan.com. My hopes were high, but my expectations were low. I am just disappointed that people with good ideas, capital, and connections seem to be squandering a golden opportunity by running the business and technical operations as if they were complete amateurs. Perhaps they will get their act together before the go league starts. Who knows. I hope so. [edit:sp]