hi i searched the blog but couldn't find an answer. what uh. what actually happens to players when the game crashes
This is usually does not become a problem, because the game in most of its iterations is ran on several computing devices at once, each computing device running the events for its Player. If a crash occurs, it is always Player-bound; all events are related to exactly one Player - sometimes the assignment is random, true, but everything is tied to a Player and exactly one Player.
When a crash occurs, it crashes for one computing device. The rest of them pick up the slack, tuck the crash into an error notice which the quarantine and gloss over it, while the crashed game splinter reboots. What you usually see is "Chum Chumsky touched a wall and suddenly the whole temple structure disappeared". Chumsky's game crashed because of some wall interaction, so the rest of the game splinters just deleted the problem.
So. Usually when the game crashes, the corresponding Player for a couple of seconds to a few minutes runs on a different computing device before being handed back to the home device. At this point we have it so well handled that it is seamless and you usually don't notice beyond the glitch itself. (It's kind of like some games crash while loading and reboot while making you stare at the loading screen for a super long time, but here you stay playing at the computer next door, so to say.)
Problem happens when there aren't any devices which don't have a crash. Maybe there is only one device left. Maybe a glitchy AoE attack hit all Players. In that moment the game crashes for real, which of course, given its nature, happens retroactively.
In that moment, existence stops for everything in the Session, including the Players. That's ntot he same thing as they stop existing. Everything is just... suspended. From the inside you don't notice it because the existence of everything within the Session doesn't change relatively to each other. (Imagine a car. People in the car are moving. The car is going down the road of existence. When the car stops, the people inside still are moving. Though technically they aren't because there isn¨t any time, but since the existence of time has stopped for them too, they don't notice.)
So from the inside? you notice nothing. From the outside? That bubble of the universe is suspended in static, motionless, changeless. That lasts until someone notices a crash has occurred and has his tired ass down to the database to turn that bubble off and on again and figure out what caused that crash from log reports, to prevent it from happening again.
But from the inside, the Players don't notice a thing. Occasionally someone checks their desktop to find "Game.exe has crashed. It has since been rebooted and everything is running smoothly[TM]. Send error log report to SkaiaNet Tech Support?" Nobody ever clicks on Yes.
Ever.
Sincerely
SN Tech Support (Gear)