John

You say the new forums will be free.

The reason I was asking this is not because I didn't want to pay but because I want to know that whoever is running this won't run out of money and let the board go down(longevity). One of the problems we had with f4g previously was that it was costing more than he was getting in. I think its commendable(if its you Cal) if you are going to pay that out of pocket but we won't have gone anywhere if later on it becomes a burden to you and you can't pay it. The board expenses need to be spread a little more evenly that way its continuance won't be dependant on just one person. I said all of that; just so that I could ask for more details on the costs. With those details I can estimate its fiscal stability.

Given that I can resolve this money thing, I am willing to go with either. Both sites have advantages and I'd really just like to get this behind us. I will say that even if we do decide to stay here with a jolt server, I will keep my account at UOF active and contribute there also.

One thing I would like to ask everyone is; how committed are you to your prospective sites? If we put it to a vote and you were on the losing side would you consider moving to the winning site in the interest of community. I think its important to stay on the same board because it encourages interaction.

Rabin

Nope - I'm staying here. Democracy is overrated

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McJepp

I'll drop in my 2 cents, you can ignore, chew out or whatever.

I'd prefer to stick with an independant site, ie f4g (not fussed who hosts it). My reasons are as follows:

1) Independance. We can (within reason) have forums for any game - WoW, UO, or whatever, whereas UOForums is, as suggested by the name, primarily UO orientated.

2) Ability to speak to the admins. Even with the rebuild, I've still been able to contact Samson, and Marty, and get things done.

3) Personal Preference. Ever since I started UO I've always stuck to f4g, even when it briefly changed to theguildhall.net. It's always been my UO forum home, even though at various points I've been pointed elsewhere (Stratics for example).

4) Ability to associate with the admin team. I myself run my own webserver, and yes I have even at one stage lost everything on the server due to a disk failiure. This can happen to anyone - even UOF. Yes I know they are regularly backed up, but what if the backed up data was just junk - you can't make a good backup out of bad data, no matter how many copies are made.

5) Network infrastructure. This one I may be a little off with, so Adam if you see any errors here then let me know. Jolt is a UK company. Most of the visitors to these forums are from UK and Europe. In my opinion Jolt would be a faster option than a US server as a more local connection means less latency.

6) Modifications. F4G is relatively a basic vBulletin installation, again this helps with speed. Also reliability factors in again. If you are reducing the amount of 3rd party code, you are reducing unknown factors which could show up problems within minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months. I am a firm believer in "Basic is better", not because I have a limited imagination, or a limited skill in figuring out complicated sites/layouts, but because I know that others will be confused (no names mentioned).

7) Willingness to try / Commitment. Marty could quite easily have said "nope, I can't be arsed to start again", returned his vBulletin license, left f4g.net to expire and walk away - he didn't. He set the site up again, knowing full well this could happen (ie doubts in the service), and he has tried to acommodate the community as best possible.

8) I donate to these forums, not because of being threatened with figures, but because I felt the need to put back in - Marty was providing a service I have used for years, mostly out of his own pocket. I certainly wouldn't expect anyone to do that.

I would also like to take this opportunity to ask if people are supporting UOForums as an 'easy' option - they already have a post base and a forum user base, whereas F4G is a clean slate (which has of course it's good and bad points).

One point I feel I have forgotten to mention, is that whilst my vote is for F4G, should Kaldor's forums be moved to UOForums, then I would go with them, purely to keep in the main community, however this would be a last resort.

A question for Cal - with Jolt, are they responsible for the Operating System or would the admins for f4g be responsible? No offense to Samson, but from what I have heard from him, he's not exactly a *nix expert (which I would certainly hope Jolt use). As for the others, well I don't know their experience. I know this is possibly a point against f4g, but it is a concern for me, as I do maintain a network myself and know how much a knowledge of the operating system and the principles behind that OS can help if there is a problem.

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Kaldor is coming... Britannia Beware!

Adam_UOForums

Agreed, we do however have one single forum for "Other games", but it's not a forum for every possible mmorpg game out there.

You can contact me direct at anytime as well, either via icq or pm.

At most, we'd lose a day's worth of posts, but what are the chances? Practically zero.
As I've said to Twothumb, I do one backup and save it onto 3 sources, not including the server itself.
Could the backups be bad? Of course, but they're not, because they're tested by importing all the data into a development board every morning to ensure it was done properly.

Speed is allways something I take into account
Is UOForums slow for you? because for me and anyone I ask, it loads real fast.

I guess the main problem is most if not all of you don't know me, or who helps run UOForums
Could I just get fedup, walk away and take down UOForums? Not a chance.
To quote an interview I did with stratics recently... (http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/u...e=0&view=&sb=5)

Paladis

I think your last quote there explains why Marty/jack found it so hard to just pass f4g on. Like ye say its extremely hard to give away many years work.

John Dell

I think it looks like Adam got an answer for everything

Floria

yup. Marty isn't the first person I knew who got attached to a UO RP forum, who spent day and night to get it running for a mostly ungrateful bunch. He's an adult who knows best what to do, but I hope it doesn't end like UOTC ended for the Catskills RPers.

John Dell

What happened then? (I'm actually curious belive it or not)

McJepp

Adam, my access speeds are... sporadic with my current connection status, shall we say. We're on a good connection at the minute, but I do see latency on UOForums. I just timed a 10 second load before anything appeared in Firefox for the home page. Also my main point with that one was not speed, it was the reliablility factor. With regards to contact, I have actually met (several times) Samson face to face as well as talking to him on ICQ/PM, it's a trust thing I guess.

Also with regards to the backups, that's all well and good. It's just my opinion, is all.

Basically though, when it comes down to it I'd rather stick to what I know, because what I know has worked since I've been playing UO (aside from the recent event, which could happen to anyone).

Edit: Also, to be truthful, I'd much prefer none of the main options and to go with something hosted by me, for the comfort factor. But I can't afford another dedicated server right now, nor the time to invest in setting up so that's put that one to an end.

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Kaldor is coming... Britannia Beware!

Adam_UOForums

No problemo McJepp, I appreciate the questions/concerns you've raised.

I myself don't get any lag loading UOForums and i'm based in UK, like you.

I hear you regarding sticking with what you know.

Paladis

i've met yeself and nubson face to face....all i can say is i wouldn't leave ye alone with me missus and expect to see money on the sideboard at the end of the night

John Dell

You best be there too see that it all goes about as it should then.

Might aswell leave the missus out too, I think the majority of them would like that idea

McJepp

Adam, if it's OK with you I'll drop you a line maybe tomorrow and just clear up a couple of other points I have. For now, I have a Kaldor site to recreate. *nods*

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Kaldor is coming... Britannia Beware!

Adam_UOForums

Sure can

Snubson

Admittedly, Unix based systems, I've had no to little based experience, I threw my IT degree out of the way. Windows, Citrix and all associated programs/operating systems, I've been working together with a fairly large (100 mil turnover) UK company and their IT system for around 6 years, helping sort basic to complex problems. Those who know me from meets or through the forums/icq/ingame, yup snub has a brain. Doesnt use it often, often doesnt see the need to. Anyway, my knowledge on op systems has little or no matter to this thread, nor should it.

Vbulletin for the basics took be around 1hr max to get the basics and as and when I have time in relation to my new degree, I'll be learning more.

These boards, have never solely been a focus upon UO RP, or CoRE. Nor should they ever be seen to be. Those who DO see these boards/forums, havent seen what else has and was hosted upon them. The one thing that here has from UOForums, Stratics, is that there IS and should always be, the options for other online games to have their guilds forums hosted here. Not in a single forum, but, its always been accepted and welcomed for seperate areas for the individual games to be hosted. Hence, why before the wipe, there were sections for WOW, EVE, Starwars Galaxy, DAOC, Tabletop RP, Random areas such as the lounge and ozles empire (Two of the more very active areas of the forums). Those who chose to come here and whine about all aspects of CoRE were here purely because CoRE was based here. In my mind, no matter where CoRE forums are hosted, they'll still go there and whine. It ended up at a point where 75% of reported posts were coming from the CoRE forums, purely because of the activity on those forums AND because, it got noticed here.

Forums for Games, are just that, a Forum for Games. Not just UO, not just CoRE. Marty helped this by paying to keep these forums going (and no, this isnt another "omg he payed for all this" post), because, no matter what new MMPORPG, or whatever the abbreviation is, came out, they were welcomed, fully to these forums and still are to be done so. Why? not because of UO community. But because of the forum community. Feck the point that person A was a gm in guild A. After six months, he clicked there were more forums here, started posting upon the other boards, adding them as ICQ members, talking to them as friends, even though they have never met on UO. Community on these forums (F4G, Guildhall, whatever you know/knew it as) should have very little to do with a game, IF you ever used the forums to their full potential.

Quoting Adam:

I hardly, IF ever play UO now. My accounts is still active. My house, safe. My items safer. I've put 6+ years of activity and money into that account. I'd not like it to go. I've put 4+ years of my input into these forums, YES I was gutted when the server went down and crashed. I wasnt annoyed, because 90% of the posts on here were equivalent to talking to people at the pub. Why were 90% of the posts like this? Because of the forum community. UO does not, and will never ever make the world rotate.
The other 10%, pure unadulterated fiction that happened in UO. YES, I put the effort into making the story happen in the game. YES, I put the effort of typing the 200-1000 word post. Yes I was a bit shocked that such a thing could happen to lose such an amount of posts. Yet, I could admit and acknowledge such things happen. Hell, 8 years ago, I'd written a program, equivalent to half the knowledge on that current Msoft Encarta(copyright), AND lost it due to hardware faults. That was a HELL of a lot worse than some fiction about an online game.


Those who ever saw F4G as FAG, or purely CoRE, were nothing but, blind or obnoxious enough NOT, or even attempt to see what these forums tried, and for a while accomplished.