Okay. For most of the time, the avatar images just don't show up. The pets all do. Just the avatars, exept for Krin's.

I apologize for not having the most technical terms, but it's due to the fact that there's a lot of stress on the site right now. There's some inefficient coding that is being worked on that should help with the problem.

(scouring the forums but I cannot for the life of me see where Krin posted about it orz )

It's meant to do this. When the Server Load reaches a certain level, I have it coded so that Avatar Images no longer compile (they are very intensive and when dozens are being requested per second, it takes a lot of resources).

By having them disable themselves at this point, it helps alleviate some of the stress the server has at that time.

As soon as the server load goes back down below that threshold, they will load again as normal. I have also improved how all dynamic images cache on our Site so if you successfully load the avatar images, then the load level gets too high, as long as you don't make your browser re-request the images they will stay visible. So in your case, you had my Avatar image cached so even when the server was past the threshold, you still were able to see my image.

And again, it's a completely automatic process. As soon as the server's load goes below the threshold, they will load again on their own. You don't have to spam refresh to make it load - that just makes the server work even harder for no reason. =P