PWI Forums Migration Discussion

war34child wrote: »

At least this is one of the last gaming forums around the whole world, which isn't/wasn't completely dead.


Let's see if we really get a permanent support on the new forum. Or if PWI will just get buried on last spot of a list of 100+ games in the future.

Btw., I agree, mods which are not employees of PWE/belong to the player base should have never existed. It was just the cheapest option for them. A GM/CM which plays the game for 2h per day should have a better contact to player base and would know what's going on.

Are you confusing the mods with CM and GM?
What are you talking about mods not belonging to the player base?
The mods we do have he have know clearly know what they are talking about. If you have readed their posts you can tell that they know what they are talking about.

very poor choice imo, i've been using the arc "vanilla" forums for another arc mobile game and it was total ****, bad scripts bad layout... i believe they even shut it down already

Vanilla format is utter ****. I didn't know it was ARC's, that would explain why it looks and act so idiotic.
It has no user friendly interface, posting, reading threads and any sort of easy accessibility is zero, I actually stopped visiting the forums of one of their games that used it.
Oh, and don't be hopeful that it will solve the issues these forums have, they are old but did a decent job still, unlike vanilla that opens up a whole new can full of smelly ****.
I also highly doubt they'll import anything, that's just nonsense they're trying to pull the wool over our eyes. After they switch they'll most likely post that unexpected technical issues have arose and they weren't able to make the transfer of data.

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?

No staff to fix important issues like blatant abuse of their own tos? Pushing customer service related issues back to china instead of dealing with the issue themselves? Support staff that answer tickets using cookie cutter pasted responses that make no sense and only vaguely pertain to the issue reported? Or even blatantly lying about their capabilities to correct issues? Then tearing down the last line of communication left with the player base and the company to erase all bad pr with their history for a fresh new start on a site that lets face it, if its like anything else that has been released will have bugs and errors that need to be fixed but will not be because again, full circle, there are no staff to fix important issues.


No, once i am done my toon and this game dies (and my server at least has saw a huge decline in population of active players) i will run straight in the opposite direction.

/rant

SylenThunder - Sanctuary wrote: »

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.

Interested to know what this is. I'm in a "big faction" and I at least have never seen anyone log in to fac chat and ask "So, what are we doing to actively ruin the game for everyone else today?" I can't speak for other factions of course, or what goes on when I'm offline though.

Maybe there's a conspiracy and I've been left out of it :c

Asterelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

Go make a post there in support if you want Sweetiebot to live. Else she will die with the PWI forums b:sad.

OPKossy wrote: »

Doubt it. Even some members of their own staff didn't (or still don't in a few cases I'm sure) have the appropriate permissions and that's while they were relaying official info. So I'm not expecting them to give any of the former mods that capability again. At least not at first. If it happens later on is to be seen.

No Sweetiebot. No moderators. No magenta font.

**** this.

Angels_Age - Dreamweaver wrote: »

new plan:

1. wait for someone to mirror these forums
2. blow up new forums with hate
3. /profit

I know you might be referring to the new PWE/ARC Vanilla forums in your #2, however just to clarify, the mirrored forums that I'm working on will be read-only. The SQL database can't be coped from merely a mirror, so posting and using accounts on the mirrored forums will be moot.

And on that note, since no one has posted any new info on a mirror...

I've been running a full backup of these forums (and all images attached, including links to photobucket, etc), for about 13 hours 30 minutes using HTTrack. So far, it's pulled 2.59GB, and it doesn't seem to be stopping anytime soon. Once it is completed, I'll .RAR it up and upload a direct download to my server. I'll then, promptly upload all the data to a subdomain on my server, and it will be up from then on.

Haven't had a chance to make the subdomain yet, but expect something like: http://pwi-forum.gdevtalk.net. Will update you guys later tonight with any new information.

So let me get this.
If you guys that are capable of doing this are making a mirror of this forum that means we can just go there on what you are creating and post like we do here and **** Arc Forum?
Or the only thing we can do on that mirror site is to read the thread that were already created here without being able to create new ones?

Asterelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

I was doing some testing and it's kind of ridiculous how much HTML they let you get away with in the new forum. You can't do script tags but there is a truckload of things you can abuse if you're good with CSS.

I just saw what you did as well. That's epic. They have put so much thought into this migration.

ggalacticparadox wrote: »

I know you might be referring to the new PWE/ARC Vanilla forums in your #2, however just to clarify, the mirrored forums that I'm working on will be read-only. The SQL database can't be coped from merely a mirror, so posting and using accounts on the mirrored forums will be moot.

And on that note, since no one has posted any new info on a mirror...

I've been running a full backup of these forums (and all images attached, including links to photobucket, etc), for about 13 hours 30 minutes using HTTrack. So far, it's pulled 2.59GB, and it doesn't seem to be stopping anytime soon. Once it is completed, I'll .RAR it up and upload a direct download to my server. I'll then, promptly upload all the data to a subdomain on my server, and it will be up from then on.

Haven't had a chance to make the subdomain yet, but expect something like: http://pwi-forum.gdevtalk.net. Will update you guys later tonight with any new information.

The link doesnt work for me. Says the page is not available.

NRGLG - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Mine has been going for 23 hours. It's up to 10GB. Treading through the forums millions of pages takes a long time.

Ditto and it's up to 1.08GB. Are you sure you're reading the size correctly?
Last night around maintenance the DL rate totally tanked to about 5kbps.

Also, httrack has taken to periodically freezing. Not sure what's going on there, but can't really examine it atm. I'll just leave it be for now.

ggalacticparadox wrote: »

That would make sense. I have stated that I haven't made it public yet, and am still in the process of downloading all the files. It will be up eventually...

Oh, silly me.
And I was wandering why I can enter ecatomb but on the mirror of the forum I couldntb:chuckle

Asterelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

Pff I haven't even begun shenanigans. There's literally nothing stopping you from positioning elements all over the page.

I've been proving this ever so blatantly. Really though, nice find. I haven't seen a system this easily vulnerable in years.

Xainou - Sanctuary wrote: »

Now what would happen if someone really disliked PWE and had the technical knowledge to do that ... b:chuckle

They could use their signature, like I have, and make every thread not be seen.

This only makes it even more obvious to me why the forums should be mirrored.

The funny thing about this whole change is that one would logically assume it's happening due to costs of keeping the vBulletin license. However, unless they are doing the starter package w/ one GM/staff of the Vanilla forums, the cost is nearly equal or even greater per year than a vBulletin license. The first month is apparently free.

Delving further into this, I generally believe it's a combination of a few things. Consolidation from corporate, lack of staff per game, and the increasing number of titles being supported by the company, all probably lead to this.

As clearly shown by Aster and a few others, the Vanilla forums are quite open for abuse. This change was clearly not thought out very well. Furthermore, it would appear that there is about as many PWE/Arc employees viewing the Vanilla forums as there are here: about zero, with the occasional one, once every few days.

So, they are porting these forums + content to a different forums/board software, consolidating all titles to one message board, and plan to staff it the same while it's clearly open for bugs/abuse?

PWE/ARC always does this. They put about 1/100 of a thought into any major (or minor) decisions, fail to think of any possible consequence, and then ignore the people who pay for their business to be open. I have full faith that they will go through with this, fail to port anything over, erase what is on this domain (pwi-forum.perfectworld.com), and keep the bug-ridden Vanilla system that is open for abuse. They simply couldn't care less.

OPKossy wrote: »

You have complete and total free reign with the html....

... I cannot support abuse of that, but I will say that the Kyubey avatar is perfect for what you've been testing so far. Same applies to you, sir taco king!

To be fair, I'm abusing it to prove a point. Without that, they might not believe that someone could do what is being done. Think of it as committing evil for the greater good. You know, that kind of stuff. That and I'm having a tremendous amount of fun messing with it.