PWI Forums Migration Discussion

Asterelle - Sanctuary

http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/pwi/news/detail/9196863-announcement%3A-portal-wide-forum-migration

May 5th PWE is migrating the PWI forums over from VBulletin to Arc's own Vanilla forums.
Big deal right? Well it kind of is.

While VBulletin is showing its age and the new forums have some interesting features, this migration opens up a ton of questions.
What's going to happen to all those guides and discussions that we have spent years creating on the forums?
Are the old forums archives going to be accessible?
Are the post counts going to carry over?
Are all the subforums going to be restructured any?

If we need to migrate old guides we need to be told now.
Also I'm not sure if Sweetiebot is going to make the jump. She's not really all that portable and most of her core logic would need a rewrite.

What do you all think of the migration?

Redmenace - Heavens Tear

At least it allows for embedded images. Does it support selective blocking?

\hoping the stickies make it over
\\but not too bothered by the post count

DEMHEALSMAN - Dreamweaver

Same old same old, just archive the forum threads you want by saving the pages.
Forums are dead anyway.
Forum pvp best pvp.

Best question is:
Will it have WORKING avatars?

Asterelle - Sanctuary

I don't really think they will migrate any of the stickies since all our accounts over here (ie "Character - Server") are VBulletin specific and not directly in our arc accounts. I would like to see some admin response on what they are planning to do.

opkossy

..... **** **** **** **** ****. Also ****.


*sigh*

We were so against this and tried to have them simply give the forums some proper attention as it was one of the oldest and more stable/active ones for a while. Then management stopped bothering to even pretend to care and the forums went in decline and bleh. There were also some talks of changes to the rules, but I'm not entirely sure of exactly how much is gonna carry over.


To answer your questions based on what I know from when this was actively getting discussed:

All current information, guides, and so on here aren't gonna be carried over. At the time, there were plans of trying to save the more useful stickies and links with help from the mods but seeing how the company is now, our lack of CM, and so on... yeah that's not likely.

Nope. The old forums were going to be rendered inaccessible after the change. If we get lucky, they may not do it properly and we'd still be able to use the forums here or at least view them but odds are the whole thing will get scrapped.

Post counts, titles, avatars, signatures, and so on won't carry over. Only people already using the Arc forums will have anything to show for it.

We'd have subforums again though perhaps not quite the same structures as seen here. There were going to be a few of them that wouldn't make the jump. Lower Depths, as an easy example for obvious reasons. Doesn't help that with Arc's forums you can't actually see subforums at a glance like you can here. There is/was a tagging system but that's another bucket of worms to get into.




I was against it. Still kinda am, but once they decided to not even fix the color for hyperlinks here even with sparkie trying to have them deal with that, I figured it was only a matter of time before, well,

OPKossy wrote: »

[...]planning to abandon this forum after they switched us to Arc standard forums and the higher ups just want it kept under wraps or something.

Eoria - Harshlands

Guess it's time to start saving guides to post.

XXxICExXx - Morai

I used them when i tried Stonghold game but it seemed rather basic. It looks a little better now.

Dont like the idea that we will be a sub forum amoungst many other games, forgotten and pushed down a long line of shinier titles b:cry

Seek_NK - Harshlands

The background color sucks b:angry

bloodedone87

Thank you so much PW.
You really know how to please your players.

eirghan

Is there any way that sweetiebot can be made into an aster site feature?

Honestly thats the thing i will miss the most. I like spamming her for rolls on gear, farming, pack opening. That at least i hope you are able to save in some remote way even if she is formatted to bring people to your site rather than assist a forum with managers that really pay you no mind.

As far as history goes im very disappointed that this forum will be lost. If anyone has the ability to save at least the sticky guides that would be helpful but actually we will lose all of the little posts about updates, patches, nerfs, etc that tells new players how things are and why. Very disappointing when all we really need is a an hour or two to fix up some of the broken stuff here.

Oh well... C'est la vie... du forum.

Mosz - Heavens Tear

OPKossy wrote: »

...All current information, guides, and so on here aren't gonna be carried over....

i know the wiki is a lil bit dead, but can we at least take the first post(s when necessary) and put them into a new wiki section

make a section on wiki: technical support, class guides, dungeons, quests etc, just grab the first post(s) of the stickied stuff and toss it in there

opkossy

Mosz - Heavens Tear wrote: »

i know the wiki is a lil bit dead, but can we at least take the first post(s when necessary) and put them into a new wiki section

make a section on wiki: technical support, class guides, dungeons, quests etc, just grab the first post(s) of the stickied stuff and toss it in there

Any of that done is basically gonna be on us to do it. We can, sure. Plenty of us are probably easily able to save a lot of the info that's gonna be lost. It's a question of how many of us actually want to bother migrating it to the new forum. Especially with the track record PWE has and how most of us have become so sick and tired of how they treat us and the game that we mostly just can't be bothered to put in any effort with things anymore.

NRGLG - Heavens Tear

(I'm going to make a mirror of the forums. Shh.)

I wonder why they decided to do this now.

eirghan

NRGLG - Heavens Tear wrote: »

(I'm going to make a mirror of the forums. Shh.)

I wonder why they decided to do this now.

\o/

Mwahahahaha

ggalacticparadox

What a joke. Absolute and pure idiocy. A company ran by simple-minded baboons. Everyone's hard work will be wiped for a proprietary in-house forums software? Furthermore, the issues pertaining to things like guides, quality corner bugs/issues, DQ stuff, etc all will be wiped. Issues merely swept under the rug by deletion.

I just checked, and the one upside of the new forums software, is that they have failed to implement the bans from vBulletin to Vanilla. -Mods modding til they can't mod-

The fact that they couldn't bother to tell us the status of our old CM, or even bother to confront us about this change on the forums, really shows how idiotic this company is. While they won't have to pay the licensing fees for hosting vBulletin, they will essentially tank 6 years of archived guides and resources on these forums. This is also why I believe the PWI-Wiki will be tanked shortly, as well. If it doesn't pertain to ARC -- their new flagship enterprise, it should go. Anything hosted on the domain of perfectworld.com or pertaining to Perfect World, needs to go.

This is partly why PWE/ARC has been doing so poorly year after year now. Who, in their right mind, would jump on any game hosted by a company that fails to properly manage the game? Your data is theirs, and they will do what they want with it. You own nothing. Furthermore, they purposely do things to make players abandon the game at an ever increasing rate.

I'll try and run a backup/mirror of the forums later tonight. If I'm successful, I'll publish it on my domain, much like Ecatomb and the in-progress PWI-Wiki.

Xainou - Sanctuary

Wow. Guess that's PWEs way of getting rid of negative publicity.

This is pathetic. Makes me even more glad I quit some months ago

Fail_BM - Raging Tide

I guess it is time to stop checking PWI forums.

Last time I checked vainilla's forums do not have a good design and avatars were all the sameb:spit

opkossy

NRGLG - Heavens Tear wrote: »

(I'm going to make a mirror of the forums. Shh.)

I wonder why they decided to do this now.

(Would be appreciated)

It's been something that was getting discussed and addressed from times when v4l was our CM so the idea itself isn't something new. It's just that they no longer give a rat's *** and don't want to bother with the extra work of maintaining separate forums. Now that we have no CM again to push for us keeping our own individual forums? Perfect time to just throw this out and if we have a problem with that then too bad for us.

Desdi - Sanctuary

Eoria - Harshlands wrote: »

Guess it's time to start saving guides to post.

Pretty much.

Goodbye wonderful title and post count. Not that I care so much about them, but it's still very sad. Goodbye history of PWI forums, we've had good times.

SylenThunder - Twilight Temple

Desdi - Sanctuary wrote: »

Pretty much.

Goodbye wonderful title and post count. Not that I care so much about them, but it's still very sad.

Yeah. I'm off saving avatars and backing up my threads. this really sucks, and if they don't fix Arc Defender, I may just stop visiting entirely.

NRGLG - Heavens Tear

OPKossy wrote: »

It's been something that was getting discussed and addressed from times when v4l was our CM so the idea itself isn't something new. It's just that they no longer give a rat's *** and don't want to bother with the extra work of maintaining separate forums. Now that we have no CM again to push for us keeping our own individual forums? Perfect time to just throw this out and if we have a problem with that then too bad for us.

I was gone when v4l was the CM, so that must be why I missed it. And yeah, it does seem like something PWE would do. Not really sure who's running the company anymore. They seem a bit obsessed with everything being merged though.

(As a side note, it's looking like the forums will be around ~500GB. That's tiny. I'll rar/zip/7z the file when I finish and share it so that anyone who wants to mirror it, can mirror it.)

ggalacticparadox

OPKossy wrote: »

(Would be appreciated)

It's been something that was getting discussed and addressed from times when v4l was our CM so the idea itself isn't something new. It's just that they no longer give a rat's *** and don't want to bother with the extra work of maintaining separate forums. Now that we have no CM again to push for us keeping our own individual forums? Perfect time to just throw this out and if we have a problem with that then too bad for us.

Can't expect a company like this to really ever truly care for the players/customers. They are solely in it for themselves. Unfortunately, what the company fails to realize is how bad PR and customer relations ends up shattering any chance at future hits. I just don't think it's feasible to have such bad relations with the consumers of the product, and yet, still manage to pull in the cash and hit titles.

The fact that we don't have a CM is another blow and joke. I find it so completely disjointed and idiotic to not bother telling the players that their old CM got canned. Instead, completely ignoring every thread and issue pertaining to the game. Then, going above their heads to the ARC news page, and posting how you will delete the PWI-Forums in a week. Seriously!?

NRGLG - Heavens Tear

This whole thing does explain why the forums still has the New Horizons expansion at the top. I think they knew this was coming for quite a while and didn't bother to tell anyone until there was a limited amount of time left. Probably hoping to prevent upset by doing something quickly.

...that or they made this decision offhand and just didn't change the top picture because they didn't feel like it.

ggalacticparadox

NRGLG - Heavens Tear wrote: »

This whole thing does explain why the forums still has the New Horizons expansion at the top. I think they knew this was coming for quite a while and didn't bother to tell anyone until there was a limited amount of time left. Probably hoping to prevent upset by doing something quickly.

...that or they made this decision offhand and just didn't change the top picture because they didn't feel like it.

I agree. As Kossy has stated, this has been in the works for a while now. If you upload the backup, I can mirror it tonight on my domain. Thus, we will have a completely readable backup.

opkossy

NRGLG - Heavens Tear wrote: »

I was gone when v4l was the CM, so that must be why I missed it. And yeah, it does seem like something PWE would do. Not really sure who's running the company anymore. They seem a bit obsessed with everything being merged though.

(As a side note, it's looking like the forums will be around ~500GB. That's tiny. I'll rar/zip/7z the file when I finish and share it so that anyone who wants to mirror it, can mirror it.)

Nah. It wasn't discussed in the general public is why you'd have missed it. In fact, most were still waiting for an upgrade to the vBulletin software at the time. It was something the PM and CM at the time had brought up and since we mods have that line of communication with them and both being people who cared and wanted to improve things for us (our PM from the time no longer works for PWE) they'd actively discuss things like this with us in private and ask for our opinions and advice before finalizing things. At least for stuff they could control, anyways.


(Huh. Somehow I figured it'd be a bit bigger than that. Nice to know it's relatively small.)

ggalacticparadox wrote: »

Can't expect a company like this to really ever truly care for the players/customers. They are solely in it for themselves. Unfortunately, what the company fails to realize is how bad PR and customer relations ends up shattering any chance at future hits. I just don't think it's feasible to have such bad relations with the consumers of the product, and yet, still manage to pull in the cash and hit titles.

The fact that we don't have a CM is another blow and joke. I find it so completely disjointed and idiotic to not bother telling the players that their old CM got canned. Instead, completely ignoring every thread and issue pertaining to the game. Then, going above their heads to the ARC news page, and posting how you will delete the PWI-Forums in a week. Seriously!?

Various members of the company have cared for us at certain points. But we don't have those members so... yeah...


Really show of hands, how many of us actually plan to bother with any of PWE's future games once PWI dies completely? They've earned their horrible reputation and I wouldn't recommend their games to even those I dislike. Not because the games aren't good. The games themselves tend to be very nice and lots of fun. The people who manage the games, on the other hand, really have a knack for running good things into the ground.

bloodedone87

OPKossy wrote: »

Nah. It wasn't discussed in the general public is why you'd have missed it. In fact, most were still waiting for an upgrade to the vBulletin software at the time. It was something the PM and CM at the time had brought up and since we mods have that line of communication with them and both being people who cared and wanted to improve things for us (our PM from the time no longer works for PWE) they'd actively discuss things like this with us in private and ask for our opinions and advice before finalizing things. At least for stuff they could control, anyways.


(Huh. Somehow I figured it'd be a bit bigger than that. Nice to know it's relatively small.)




Various members of the company have cared for us at certain points. But we don't have those members so... yeah...


Really show of hands, how many of us actually plan to bother with any of PWE's future games once PWI dies completely? They've earned their horrible reputation and I wouldn't recommend their games to even those I dislike. Not because the games aren't good. The games themselves tend to be very nice and lots of fun. The people who manage the games, on the other hand, really have a knack for running good things into the ground.

I would recomand the game to others but I would tell them to not expect good management. In fact I would tell them to expect the worst management posible.
I wonder why they do these kind of things that arent needed.Who the hell benefits from this change?
Also I wonder when PWE or ARC or whoever is will start listening to the players. When they will start asking players what they think before making this kind of changes.
Oh wait. I know the answer: NEVER.

SylenThunder - Twilight Temple

OPKossy wrote: »

....Really show of hands, how many of us actually plan to bother with any of PWE's future games once PWI dies completely? They've earned their horrible reputation and I wouldn't recommend their games to even those I dislike. Not because the games aren't good. The games themselves tend to be very nice and lots of fun. The people who manage the games, on the other hand, really have a knack for running good things into the ground.

Torchlight 1 and 2 were fun, but once you're done, there's not a lot of re-play-ability in them.
STO was too riddled with microtransactions to be enjoyable.
NW wasn't quite as bad, but after finishing the main questline, it wasn't a lot of fun anymore so I quit playing. Now I hear the expansions and such are so buggy that even Cryptic has given an official apology.
I played with a few others, but none really held my interest. They were either like PWI with different graphics/quests/ect., or they just didn't have enough meat to hold my attention for long.

Even now, PWI is loosing the "fun" factor. The big factions are basically ruining the game for everyone else. They're doing it on purpose, and it's not like we have any support from PWE to do anything about it anyway.

Once PWI dies, I'll just move onto my other projects like my 7 Days to Die servers I host, or other games that I am currently testing or working on developers with.

bailes021

OPKossy wrote: »

Really show of hands, how many of us actually plan to bother with any of PWE's future games once PWI dies completely? They've earned their horrible reputation and I wouldn't recommend their games to even those I dislike. Not because the games aren't good. The games themselves tend to be very nice and lots of fun. The people who manage the games, on the other hand, really have a knack for running good things into the ground.

I, personally, will never again touch one of their games. I'm super close to hitting the uninstall arc button, as is.

iperen

Asterelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

What do you all think of the migration?

Tbh, I can't say I care all that much. Back in the days, I came for the information and discussions. None of them are relevant anymore and most of the names I respected are gone anyway. Now I come more for the laugh. There are some things that would be sad to loose, but not all that much imo. The only thing that really bothers me is :

Asterelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

Also I'm not sure if Sweetiebot is going to make the jump. She's not really all that portable and most of her core logic would need a rewrite.

Without Sweetiebot, I doubt PWI forums will survive long.

Peccable - Raging Tide

another "feature" that no one asked for. i wonder what is next..
hmm, does this mean that we will finally be able to COMMENT on arc news?

zoner112012

SylenThunder - Sanctuary wrote: »

Yeah. I'm off saving avatars and backing up my threads. this really sucks, and if they don't fix Arc Defender, I may just stop visiting entirely.

THIS.....every day I log on the game I have to open up my task manager and close down 4 seperate arcbrowser.exe and one extra ArcOverlay.exe thing every day or it lags me to hell and back. WTB a fix for this before PWE decides to say **** us and ruin the entire forum experience.