Last Oasis did not get off to the most auspicious of starts when it launched in Early Access in March. The servers of this ambitious MMO soon began to show signs of strain, with many players unable to stay in the game for more than a few minutes before being booted or the servers clogged. With no easy solution in sight, developer Donkey Crew decided to take the game temporarily offline and offer refunds.

Over the weekend, the servers were brought back online for a public stress test. Everything from launch was erased, so players who were lucky enough to play a lot still had to start fresh. According to an update posted on Sunday, testing was going well and the servers remained up all night. It may be safe to start considering a return.

The Donkey Crew also explained what really went wrong, and it turns out it was a few things Players reported getting stuck on the world map. At first there were only a few, but as the back end became more unstable, the reports began to increase. Players eventually got stuck in queues or could not connect at all, and the server began shutting down.

Apparently, the server shutdown was not due to a bug, but a failsafe caused by something that was happening that was affecting the consistency of the server. However, the database became so slow that the server could no longer check its status and had to shut down all together.

Other problems also became apparent, such as lobbies and queues not being optimized for the number of players trying to join the game. The backend could not handle all the requests coming from clients. And the bug that kept people stuck in the queue exacerbated this, as they kept sending endless requests to the back end.

It seems like a big mess and no doubt the team is exhausted. However, they seem to be working on a solution. Due to the server issues, most of my time playing Last Oasis was spent in the queue, but what I played was very promising and I am eager to get back to my strange walking ship.