Where is the Professions forum?

[linko50]

Maybe i missed it, but i dont see the usual professions forums.... where are they, or can we get some?

 

[Experimental]

Maybe i missed it, but i dont see the usual professions forums.... where are they, or can we get some?

How about they just finish fixing the old forums and give THOSE back to us.

 

[Zeke]

Maybe i missed it, but i dont see the usual professions forums.... where are they, or can we get some?

The Thieves Forum stole them all when they found out they weren't insured.

 

[TheScoundrelRico]

Maybe i missed it, but i dont see the usual professions forums.... where are they, or can we get some?

I stole them...la

 

[dielock]

I am not sure, but I am beginning to believe considering the length of time it is taking. That we will never see the old forums in their old format ever again. They said early last week that it would take them 5 days or so to get everything back. It has been almost 10 days.

 

[Kiminality]

I am not sure, but I am beginning to believe considering the length of time it is taking. That we will never see the old forums in their old format ever again. They said early last week that it would take them 5 days or so to get everything back. It has been almost 10 days.

Delays happen...
Complex databases are, apparently, very difficult to recover...
Have a little faith

 

[Petra Fyde]

Since no one seems to have read the announcement that's been at the top of every board since 11th May I'll quote it here:

Why are these forums different?

We decided a while ago that VBulletin offered most of the features we custom built in to UBB out of the box - that would make it much easier for us to do things like forum upgrades, etc. We've been doing small alpha tests of VBB over the past month or so. In terms of this downtime specifically, VBB let us get these temporary forums set up and configured far faster than doing the same with UBB. Moreover, this will be a great opportunity for users to give us feedback on VBB and suggest features/customizations (keep in mind there are *many* "rough edges" here - our goal was to get these boards up ASAP).

What happened to the forums?

It's important to note that we take lots of precautions to prevent the loss of data. Stratics is hosted on five production servers. The forums sit on a brand new machine with eight SAS drives operating in a RAID configuration. In the unlikely event that machine loses enough drives for there to be data loss, we contract for both local daily backups as well as local backups to remote datacenters in New York and the mid-west. That's an eight drive RAID configuration with brand new SAS drives and three daily backups. In this case, our primary data center accidentally wiped the data off the forums server while trying to install a new operating system on a similar looking machine. At the same time, we discovered that the system administration firm we contracted with at the time had not performed any recent backups in spite of correspondence with us to the contrary.

Thus we were forced to send the machine out for data recovery by a leading firm. Unfortunately, the process is very slow. Thus these temporary forums.

Why are some forums missing?

Some forums were omitted for the sake of expediency in getting temporary boards up. No worries though - those forums that are missing will return.

I've bolded a couple of the more relevant bits.

 

[dielock]

I am not a computer expert, not by far. I am an Engineer and a businessman. I sit and listen to many excuses and plans to resolve issues. I know when smoke is being blown up my hmmm and when it is not. This is starting to feel like it is.
And yes I have read the announcement. The day it was published and a few times after.
I am skeptical and cautious, thats all.

 

[Kurgan]

I stole them...la

Seems like something you would do..

 

[Petra Fyde]

Tell you what. Phone your local computer shop, tell them you formatted your hard drive and reinstalled windows but now you need to get back a database you had on the drive last week.

See what they tell you. Then multiply that up by your best guess at the size of the databases involved in Stratics.

 

[linko50]

back to the origional question, can we have our professions forums back from whoever stole them? if you read the bounty board there is a damned good price on their heads....... oh wait, that left before stealing did

 

[xenonthemage]

Yes, you can have it back. Not right now though. Working on a few other things before we get to adding categories back.

 

[linko50]

thank you

 

[Joyous2K]

Maybe i missed it, but i dont see the usual professions forums.... where are they, or can we get some?

This is the professional forums.

My answer is divide by 1.1 if human and divide by 1.3 if Elf. Gargoyles may have a different factor, but I am presupposing that it will be the same as human wolf form.

 

[Tina Small]

The temporary forum named UO Players Corner seems to be working pretty well as a temporary substitute for the various professions forums we used to have. Might want to try it out if you're looking for help with questions regarding skills and professions.

 

[Rowdydude]

I say good riddence they were out dated and diluted with obsolete information and techniques. Hopefully this will force the outdate of the all the FAQs and playerguides

My other comment is that this is what you get with VOLUNTARY help.

I will always beleive that the downfall of UO began when they stopped administrating their own boards.

 

[Joyous2K]

I say good riddence they were out dated and diluted with obsolete information and techniques. Hopefully this will force the outdate of the all the FAQs and playerguides

My other comment is that this is what you get with VOLUNTARY help.

I will always beleive that the downfall of UO began when they stopped administrating their own boards.

I don't know about all that.... The first page of the profession forums I frequented always had relevant stuff "to the now." Usually, if something changed, or if a known bug wasn't ever going to be fixed it would be stickied or posted.

People always had current template advice for a profession, they always had tips that worked for them, training advice, suggestions...

Great tool. My first Stratics was in profession forums. Then I came to the hall and am the person you read now.

 

[Basara]

For that matter, as I've noted elsewhere (though that post from a few hours ago in a similar thread, that has fallen a page or two off the main), The Miner forum had a completely NEW FAQ posted on April 14 or 15th, HALF of a new smith FAQ was up (both by me - and the second half of the smith forum WOULD have been up that weekend we lost the forums), along with several other related files with totally new and updated information. Another new moderator had just done a new Mage forum FAQ, and IIRC was working on one for the Murderers forum at the time of the outage. Then, there was all the info relevant to the current state of the game that T'Amon had compiled on the Q & A/Player Center forum.

The forums were where the MOST up to date information on stratics was, in many cases. It was the main page and links off of it that was lagging behind at the time, because that had to be done separately, often by reformatting the stuff that was in the newer FAQs by a completely different means (involving entirely different formatting guides), required different (and more in-depth) vetting of the facts before acceptence, and then the links had to be changed.

 

[Melina Havelock]

I say good riddence they were out dated and diluted with obsolete information and techniques. Hopefully this will force the outdate of the all the FAQs and playerguides

My other comment is that this is what you get with VOLUNTARY help.

I will always beleive that the downfall of UO began when they stopped administrating their own boards.

Maybe YOU didn't benefit from them, but others did. Even the slower boards like gardening had new posts. No there isn't any new info to be given regarding the growing of plants, but returning and new players like tips on how to get started, best method of layout to grow, storage, etc.

Whenever I start new characters I always look to the professions forums for info on templates. Some of the faqs had been or were being updated. And of course there was current info from players. All one had to do was ask. The sooner we get the professions forums back the better.

 

[Petra Fyde]

The professions boards are missed, no arguement about that, and we look forward to their timely return, bearing in mind that working on these boards is voluntary, there's a heck of a lot to them and the people working on them have their normal paid work to do too.

Meantime, don't dismiss out of hand the resource that is still available to you, we the player base. Ask your questions in the UO Player's corner forum, I'm pretty sure you'll get an answer. Some of them I might even manage to answer myself.

 

[Bazer]

When we get em back well get em back or theyll just out em here, they doing it.

 

[T_Amon_from_work]

I say good riddence they were out dated and diluted with obsolete information and techniques. Hopefully this will force the outdate of the all the FAQs and playerguides

My other comment is that this is what you get with VOLUNTARY help.

I will always beleive that the downfall of UO began when they stopped administrating their own boards.

As Basara points out, several places had gotten newer/current info up and were working on even more. Basara even supplied several items that I'd placed in Player Q&A.

But I am glad you know so much about the game and seem to be more than willing to impart your knowledge to the masses. That is what you were about the volunteer for, right? To write up newer materials for Stratics publication ... more current essays?

If not, then please do NOT denigrate the efforts of others who DO try to keep up with things. Mmmmm, kay? Thanks!

 

[T_Amon_from_work]

thank you

If we had more to offer up, be sure we would. But you know what we do ...

 

[T_Amon_from_work]

I am not sure, but I am beginning to believe considering the length of time it is taking. That we will never see the old forums in their old format ever again. They said early last week that it would take them 5 days or so to get everything back. It has been almost 10 days.

You've never experienced a forensic recovery then have you ... nor the rebuild/merge of terabytes of information into some sembence of order ... nor the testing to insure it's as stable as possible under load ... nor trying to ...

Ahhh, never mind.

 

[Lord Kynd]

Tell you what. Phone your local computer shop, tell them you formatted your hard drive and reinstalled windows but now you need to get back a database you had on the drive last week.

See what they tell you. Then multiply that up by your best guess at the size of the databases involved in Stratics.

formatting and reinstalling the OS i think is quite a bit different than a hard drive crashing.

there are data recovery place's you can send hard drive's to to retrieve info off junk drives, i've done it several times. .. formatting and installing a OS is a totaly different story...

did someone out of the blue decide... oh hey, i think i'll format and install a OS today ?


here are some quick links....
http://www.salvagedata.com
http://www.datarecovery.net
http://www.r-studio.com
http://www.cbltech.com
http://trlogic.com

and ask at your local computer shop's .. not best buy or circut city.

 

[Petra Fyde]

Yes it is, would you care to re-read the announcement and tell me which option you interpret it to mean? format and install or crashed drive.

 

[Basara]

did someone out of the blue decide... oh hey, i think i'll format and install a OS today ?

As a matter of fact, YES......

The company that was hosting the physical server for stratics was SUPPOSED to do it to SOMEONE ELSE'S machine, that was in the same area as ours, and looked like ours.

they grabbed the wrong machine

They only figured it out after they got a call that stratics had gone down at the same time they began their work, which probably meant that they formatted some of the Stratics' machines EIGHT drives, but hadn't started the OS reinstall yet with (someone else's) software.

That's when we found out that our "Backup Provider" had been taking our money, but not actually doing the service they were paid for....