Doomworld is dead, long live Doomworld

[Yuki Senmatsu]

Xaser said:

@Use3D: Could you erase Omegalore's reaction image while you're at it? D:

(Seriously though, had a jump scare moment when I opened the page there.)

I'm a jerk.

Too late. Already done that. Me and my habit of using my drawings as emoticons.

Sorry about that.

[QuakeGod]

Hey all, I'm a guy from TF / AG. I don't have much to add really that Linguica hasn't already laid out.

- The main reason we're shutting down is, of course, money.
- The secondary reason is that the passion is gone for my brother and I and has been for awhile so fighting to keep it alive sounds exhausting. It has been 17 to 18 years.
- The end date isn't finalized yet. It's not days, but it's not months either. The sooner the better.
- We're willing to help out as reasonable to make the transition not suck. I don't think there's any particular asshole-ish desire to keep our hosted sites' domain names from them.

Even if the lights did switch off tomorrow, we do own the physical servers and I'm sure we could find someway to get the data back into your hands in this sort of worse case scenario. We could mail a tape backup over or something. :p

-Brian

[EarthQuake]

Well, that's some great news. Sorry to hear about your circumstances, but thanks quite a lot for hosting us this long!

[esselfortium]

Thank you for reaching out and offering to help out, and indeed for hosting DW in the first place!

[Spirit]

Thanks for posting, Brian! That is reassuring to hear.

I've got interim hosting ready to migrate files into archive.org, whenever you are ready. :)

[SYS]

Of course I miss this thread until now.
Just tell us where to send the money LingLing.

And good on you Brian for the Domain transfer news.

[Mechadon]

Your a good dude QuakeGod!

[Technician]

I've stated it numerous times but, this is the only online community that I'd genuinely miss.

[Ed]

Agreed. Echoing what everyone else said, thank you for giving my favorite website a home for nearly two decades.

[david_a]

I admit I had never really investigated what Telefragged/AtomicGamer actually was and assumed it was some cynical faceless corporate entity instead of four guys.

Thanks for hosting us!

[Buckshot]

This site needs to be protected under some of historical preservation act of some sort.

I, too, would die a bit on the inside if it went away.

[Fonze]

Thank you Brian and all the guys over there at TF/AG for keeping this site up long enough for a hermit to find it :)
I hope the future will be brighter for y'all with this weight lifted off your shoulders.

I'm also glad to hear that y'all will be helping to make the transition better, along with the mods of this site.

A big thank you to the mods here as well for handling this thing that I'm sure none of us would want to do.

DoomWorld will live on, regardless of how bad the change is. I'll do my part and I'm sure many others feel the same :)

[Reisal]

We definitely appreciate you also helping us out like this, QuakeGod. It means a lot to many of the core (year 2000-2003 users who registered) members here.

[Jon]

Glaice said:

We definitely appreciate you also helping us out like this, QuakeGod. It means a lot to many of the core (year 2000-2003 users who registered) members here.

And everyone else. No need to be cliquey.

[ReFracture]

Sure has been an interesting decade here. :P

Thanks for chiming in here Brian, we appreciate the hosting all these years.

[Havoc Crow]

QuakeGod said:

Hey all, I'm a guy from TF / AG. I don't have much to add really that Linguica hasn't already laid out.

- The main reason we're shutting down is, of course, money.
- The secondary reason is that the passion is gone for my brother and I and has been for awhile so fighting to keep it alive sounds exhausting. It has been 17 to 18 years.
- The end date isn't finalized yet. It's not days, but it's not months either. The sooner the better.
- We're willing to help out as reasonable to make the transition not suck. I don't think there's any particular asshole-ish desire to keep our hosted sites' domain names from them.

Even if the lights did switch off tomorrow, we do own the physical servers and I'm sure we could find someway to get the data back into your hands in this sort of worse case scenario. We could mail a tape backup over or something. :p

-Brian

Sorry if I sound rude, but did you also inform other admins of the websites which are hosted on AG?
And when is an official shutdown notice going to appear?

[Technician]

Glaice said:

It means a lot to many of the core (year 2000-2003 users who registered)

:C

[Gez]

JudgeDeadd said:

Sorry if I sound rude, but did you also inform other admins of the websites which are hosted on AG?
And when is an official shutdown notice going to appear?

Well... Looking at what's listed here and there, and querying their domains on whois:

Action Quake II/Action Half Life http://action.telefragged.com/ http://ahl.telefragged.com/ : no longer exist already
Levelord's Domain http://www.levelord.com/ : still on telefragged, last updated January 2008
Civilization Fanatics http://www.civfanatics.com/ : still on telefragged, active
LinuxGames http://www.linuxgames.com/ : still on telefragged, closing
Curmudgeon Gamer http://www.curmudgeongamer.com/ : seems to be independently hosted
LegendOfZelda.com http://www.legendofzelda.com/ : seems to be independently hosted
Liberated Games http://www.liberatedgames.com/ : still on telefragged, last updated December 2012
No Mutants Allowed http://www.nma-fallout.com/ : seems to be independently hosted
TotalWar.org http://forums.totalwar.org/ : still on telefragged, active
Zelda Dungeon http://www.zeldadungeon.net/ : seems to be independently hosted

So ideally Levelord's Domain would be archived entirely on archive.org or similar, Liberated Games and Linux Games could be archived as well, Civilization Fanatics and TotalWar.org need to find independent hosting just like Doomworld does, the others should be safe.

[fraggle]

QuakeGod said:

Hey all, I'm a guy from TF / AG. I don't have much to add really that Linguica hasn't already laid out.

Nothing really to add, just thanks for keeping doomworld running all these years.

And thank you in particular for making this a smooth transition.

[david_a]

Gez said:

So ideally Levelord's Domain would be archived entirely on archive.org or similar, Liberated Games and Linux Games could be archived as well, Civilization Fanatics and TotalWar.org need to find independent hosting just like Doomworld does, the others should be safe.

According to the Staff page Liberated Games and Linux Games are run by the founder of Atomic Gamer so I'm not sure we have to worry about those.

[Job]

QuakeGod said:

Hey all, I'm a guy from TF / AG. I don't have much to add really that Linguica hasn't already laid out.

- The main reason we're shutting down is, of course, money.
- The secondary reason is that the passion is gone for my brother and I and has been for awhile so fighting to keep it alive sounds exhausting. It has been 17 to 18 years.
- The end date isn't finalized yet. It's not days, but it's not months either. The sooner the better.
- We're willing to help out as reasonable to make the transition not suck. I don't think there's any particular asshole-ish desire to keep our hosted sites' domain names from them.

Even if the lights did switch off tomorrow, we do own the physical servers and I'm sure we could find someway to get the data back into your hands in this sort of worse case scenario. We could mail a tape backup over or something. :p

-Brian

Thanks for everything! You've done a lot for us for a long time, but nothing lasts forever. You folks, and the DW staffers, did a great job keeping the site clean and as ad-free as possible, which is hugely appreciated given how many ads you have to wade through on most sites these days.

Not only has your generosity directly benefited every member of the Doomworld community, but consider how much content was dreamed up, collaborated upon, developed and released because of what you've done over the years. Essentially, your team helped Doom cultivate its legendary ability to draw players in and provide hours and hours of enjoyment, contributing to a legacy that will last into the future. That's a pretty big deal.

[Jon]

david_a said:

According to the Staff page Liberated Games and Linux Games are run by the founder of Atomic Gamer so I'm not sure we have to worry about those.

See also http://www.linuxgames.com/archives/19522 - they intend to shutter linuxgames at least.

[Buckshot]

Wonder how much the hosting fee's cost.

I've got all sorts of servers & blades laying around... and I know how much a dedicated circuit costs for business (I order them for projects at work all the time), I presume that's all you need.

If that's the case... it's definitely not cheap. Even dedicated business T1's (yes, T1's, lol) will run you a merry several hundred dollars a month.

But If it can be done just on residential services (though I assume static assignment would be an issue), I'd have no problem picking up a ~100mbps time warner residential connection and slapping some servers on it to keep this site going, since those are only $70 a month here. Not too worried about power consumption either, since its flat rate billed.

[boris]

Buckshot said:

Wonder how much the hosting fee's cost.

I've got all sorts of servers & blades laying around... and I know how much a dedicated circuit costs for business (I order them for projects at work all the time), I presume that's all you need.

If that's the case... it's definitely not cheap. Even dedicated business T1's (yes, T1's, lol) will run you a merry several hundred dollars a month.

But If it can be done just on residential services (though I assume static assignment would be an issue), I'd have no problem picking up a ~100mbps time warner residential connection and slapping some servers on it to keep this site going, since those are only $70 a month here. Not too worried about power consumption either, since its flat rate billed.

Dunno about the US, but in Germany you can get virtual private servers starting at like 8 Euro/month. Granted, the quality they have is what you'd expect for 8 Euro/month, but with only little more you can get pretty good quality.

[Jon]

Thanks to Marv, the dw related content from what was called 3ddownloads is archived here

https://archive.org/details/doomworld

I have a spreadsheet I'll paste the link to with the contents and a column so we can work out what Is on idgames already (the majority)

[Quasar]

Is it possible to get a dump of the eternity directory? I lost access to list directories a few months ago and so I'm unable to even get to a lot of stuff I had on there.

[Jon]

Quasar said:

Is it possible to get a dump of the eternity directory? I lost access to list directories a few months ago and so I'm unable to even get to a lot of stuff I had on there.

Do you mean from the 3ddownlpads dump? If so I'll fix you up.

[Quasar]

Jon said:

Do you mean from the 3ddownlpads dump? If so I'll fix you up.

Referring to doomworld.com/eternity - if it gets migrated with the rest of the site, great, but last time I was informed there were permission problems with the folders on the server when I tried to see if I could get directory listing re-enabled.

[Linguica]

I have basically the entire web directory mirrored, so nothing is going anywhere.

[Gez]

As a follow-up, the TotalWar.org guys are aware now:
http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?149312-Important-Our-host-is-shutting-down

Haven't found anything on the CivFan forums. Are they aware?