My experience trying to buy land during the presale
I have been patiently waiting for the 7th of November, as the presale for lands is on for that date. I got logged in about 10 minutes before and made sure my keychain was logged in and all that good stuff.
As the counter reached zero, nothing happened. I was told I would not need to refresh the page but after a few seconds nothing happened. So I refreshed. When I did the lands screen came up giving me the option to buy plots, tracts or regions. I selected a plot, but as soon as I clicked the buy button I got a "not enough DEC" message. I noticed upon refreshing my 2.5m of Dark energy crystals did not show up. I attempted to refresh again, and got stuck on the spinning monster logo.
Around this time I had Splinterlands Discord opened on my other monitor and I saw the chaos breaking out in chat. Everyone seemed to be having problems. And only a very select few got their orders in. From what I understand some savvy blockchain folk just did a json script to buy at the exact second of the presale. Along with making sure they are connected to the lowest latency node (low ping).
I failed to do these two things, as I thought just using the site normally would be fine. Well I underestimated how bad some people wanted these lands. And after 25 seconds, it was all gone!
I got nothing, just frustration as many other people are in the same situation as me. By the time I got Splinterlands to load, the sale was over and it was all done until the next one.
Joining a Discord chat later in the day on the Minnow Support Project @aggroed explained at the exact second of launch it seems a DDOS attack may have caused many of us not to be able to transact. Though they are still looking into this last I heard. Along with this, hundreds of people were desperately trying to get their order it. And between these two things, it was all gone in 25 seconds with most people standing no chance to get land this time around.
Though even with all this madness, I am quite amazed how this played out. With so much interest it makes me quite happy to be a part of this game. And looking forward to the next sale, hoping it will not be such a cluster fuck. Selling out in 25 seconds is pretty amazing, but with most people unable to get their order in I feel this was not handled very well.
Next time I may do things differently. Making use of some of my computer skills I may do a VS script allowing me to attempt purchase faster than humanly possible. Along with finding the lowest latency node to where I live. Really sucks I have to go to such methods, but I feel I may never get any land unless I am competitive with other buyers. And after yesterday, it seems just trying to buy the normal way may be fruitless.. even during the next round.
See the video below to see how this played out. I give commentary along the way to better explain what I am seeing.
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thanks alot
It's good that lots of people were interested, but if most did not have a fair chance to buy land then that is not so good. The site seemed to crash when the time came or at least it kept refreshing so I was unable to click anything. I think this sort of sale at a specific time is just the wrong way to do things. Have a lottery for people who actually play the game. Their loyalty ought to be worth something. Why not give all of them a chance to buy a couple of plots? Selling most to big players is pandering to big money rather than those who have stuck with it all this time.
I will say that I did participate in a pool for the initial lottery and did not get anything that way. I was refunded in time to try again. I only want 2 or 3 plots.
This has left a bad taste with me. I am considering if I even try for future sales.
Yeah I am bullish on this game since so many people were interested, but as a player I felt frustrated that I could not be a part of this presale. I think the countdown like you said may not have been the best way to handle this, and maybe there are some better ways to handle. Hopefully the founders are discussing how to handle this next round better.
Yeah I feel ya, I am thinking about to too. I earned a nice profit holding DEC so if I sold it all now Id be pretty well off.
The Discord went crazy after this mess. At least some of the team were willing to participate and concede that mistakes were made.
Shit again - and possibly end up in complete shit. Such a beginning makes you think, again a scam? There are many promises and few toku. The round must be replayed - it's not fair. It's like pre-mining - coins get cheap for a select few, and other fools pay three prices.
Downvoted for profanity and repeat of exactly the same comment.
@apshamilton
Never seen anyone downvote someone for swearing, hahah but everyone to their own.
If they are spamming the same message on all land posts I can see how thats a problem.
Mainly the later, but pointless profanity is also to be discouraged.
Not sure what you mean by again? This was the first sale, yeah it was not handled the best but I would not call it a scam.
Yes it does feel like the premining/ninja mining days with how this played out. I really hope this is not the norm for these sales. Will make it very hard for normal players to get lands.
I managed to get in the regular way and was just fast off the mark. There was only a 30 second window though which meant i was lucky rather than anything else. No scripts just timing.
If you are buying a good amount there were groups going for full regions at 7500 which gives a discount and is your best bet to succeed in the next round. If it's only for a few then your way is probably best.
Oh man you're quite lucky, Yeah during that 30 second window I just got the spinning monster icon.
Hah yeah I just cant spend that much on an NFT right now. A tract is something I can buy, but seems alot of other people are trying to as well..
Congrats on your land purchase :-)
Similar experience here except my page auto-refreshed, then went into maintenance mode. I never had a chance.
Hmm, maybe my adblocker stopped mine from refreshing. I forgot to turn off my ad blocker so maybe it was my fault.
I barely had a chance but when I clicked to buy, said I had no DEC :-/
Hope things improve in Phase-II of presale. Good Luck.
Yeah me too, curious to hear the changes they plan on making for the next sale.
thanks alot for the comment and curation.
DDOS, the convenient 21st century boogeyman to trot out for every occasion :0)
Haha! yep! Its easy to claim but hard to prove sometimes, id like to see some metrics from their server logs once they figure it all out.
I would love to see the very same thing!
Yeah, that was a joke. The page wouldn't even load for me. If a few hundred people trying to buy land can crash their servers, it makes me wonder how robust their setup is.
Mine loaded but I was missing all my coins to buy anything facepalm
It is concerning, I would have thought they would use Cloudflare DDOS protection, hope next round they do.
I hope they can scale well.
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