Site Blog

VERSION 3 - After many months of extensive testing by our most loyal players, we are excited to announce the upcoming release of Egg Cave version 3. It's happening! Version 3 is an all-new Egg Cave, with a totally fresh and new look that loads faster and is (more) compatible with modern mobile devices. Don't worry! We'll be the same game with a familiar but improved look! And we think you'll love it.

On 30 March 2017 beginning at 9:00 AM ECT eggcave.com will go down for maintenance to update the web site. We anticipate that eggcave.com will be inaccessible for up to 9 hours (until 6:00 PM ECT) during this transition. We don't expect to use this full maintenance window (we could be done earlier) but that's what we're projecting. Here is the full maintenance schedule for this transition:

• 9:00 AM: The site will close. All open trades and auctions will be closed, returning anything held in escrow to your account. All creatures are made safe.
• 9:00 AM - 6:00 PM: Migration of our critical infrastructure.
• 12:00 PM (estimated): Your creature images will be loading again.
• 6:00 PM (latest, possibly earlier): eggcave.com is back online with your creatures ready for adopting and feeding!
• 6:00 PM - 11:59 PM: Your mail, profile comments, creatures for resurrection (dead creatures), and notifications will be imported from version 2 to version 3.

What you should do to prepare:

• Double-check and verify your email addresses: verify each email address associated with all of your Egg Cave accounts. Do this for your main and side accounts. Make sure that they are up-to-date and that you have access to each email's login. The #1 reason people lose access to their Egg Cave accounts is because they no longer have access to the associated email address to verify their identity.

Questions

Why will this take so long?

We know, we know! This maintenance will be quite long, the reasons for which are complex. Here's the gist: because Egg Cave's codebase is nearly 8 years old (which in the tech world is like 1 million years), we had to recode everything from the ground up. The most time consuming part of the transition will be importing your data to version 3. We have to do this for everybody, which amounts to hundreds upon hundreds of millions of rows of data.

As much as we would love to tell you that it's possible to import hundreds of millions of rows of data in a few seconds... it's not. It takes time and requires us to feed the new servers your data bit-by-bit in small, incremental steps.

Why will mail, profile comments, creatures for resurrection (dead creatures), and old notifications be imported *after* the site is back online?

For this transition, we had to split our data up into two types: (1) critical data that must exist in order for you to log in and (2) auxiliary user data. Critical data is speedier to import and, once present, the site will be functional for you. Auxiliary data (like notifications) are much larger and require greater time to import.

Essentially, we split the transition into two phases of data migration to have eggcave.com online faster. We can bring the site back online for you to log in and feed while we're importing remaining auxiliary data like notifications.

What will we be moved during this time?

All of your account data and creatures.

Can my creatures become unhappy or die during the transition?

No creatures will be lost or can die during the transition. In fact, when version 3 comes online, we'll make it easy for you by setting everybody's creature happinesses to 100%.

Will there be anything that's not transferred?

Currently open and running trades and auctions will not be transferred to version 3. In version 3, they will need to be re-created. The reason we're doing this is because in version 3, trades and auctions are brand-new and allow you to put both items and creatures in the same lot (i.e. there's no longer separation between "Items Trades" and "Creature Trades").

What about existing EC and items held in escrow for trades and/or auctions?

At 9:00 AM, all Egg Coins and items held in escrow will be returned to your account. You do not have to manually close your trades and auctions -- we'll take care of it for you.

Will I be able to load my creature images during the transition?

At the beginning of the transition, no. However, we estimate that creature images will come back online about 2 hours into the transition before the full site is back online.

A Note on Infrequently Accessed Egg Cave Accounts

Inactive Egg Cave accounts that have not logged in since 21 October 2015 will be REQUIRED on version 3 to set a new password via the account's associated email address. If you do not have access to the account's associated email address, you will permanently lose access to the account if no security questions are present.

This is happening because on 21 October 2015, Egg Cave updated its secure password hashing algorithm and has since maintained backwards compatibility with older encrypted passwords. However, version 3 will not maintain backwards compatibility with the older encryption and will force you to set a new password via the associated email address.

If you have logged in to Egg Cave since 21 October 2015, this does not affect you and no action is required.