There's not a whole lot of new items to report for this weekend. I've been down with flu-like symptoms for most of the week. Generally achy, severe headaches, and dizziness. For the most part, I felt like crap, but I seem to be getting over it.

There's a new "Server Status" pane on the main web site (if you can't see it, you're not logged in!), placed there mainly to taunt and tease, but it's a start toward a more "public view" of what is going on behind the scenes. For the curious, here is a general overview of Phoenix's server architecture:

On the highest layer, there are the World Servers. There is only one World Server per world. World Servers are responsible for low-level database functionality, monitoring and statistic gathering of Master Servers and Zone Servers, player character routing, global chat functions, and other high-level functions.

The next layer deeper are where the Master Servers reside. Master Servers are responsible for player authentication, zone and instance server spawning, killing, and resurrection, as well as local chat. When connecting to Phoenix, a player first connects to a Master Server to set up their game session and redirect them to the Zone Server where they left off last time they were connected. On new characters, the Master Server redirects players to the starting zone.

The lowest-layer are the Zone Servers. This is where players connect and interact with each other, NPC AI is controlled, and the actual game logic lives. Smaller areas of Phoenix will have one or two Zone Servers whereas large zones may have up to ten.

Instance Servers are dynamically loaded by Master Servers on an as-needed basis. These servers can be configured as additional Zone Servers, or handle "Instances" or "Dungeons" as they're called in other games.

At the moment, there is only one world, rightfully named "Development." Post-release, we'll have:

• Development: Developer-Only World. This is where our most unstable code lives, and all of our development occurs.
• Staging: New features, not quite ready to go live, but stable enough for the public to try, provide feedback, and help us squash the final bugs prior to be pushing live will be found here. This world will allow rapid skill development, and a much better chance of obtaining high-quality items. However, as a Staging world, player characters will be wiped on a regular basis. The Staging world will only be available when there is something to test.
• "Live": There will be one or more of these, depending entirely on player load. This is where the Phoenix game lives.