hmm...boxcar doesn't seem to be updating people's NW for me...anybody else have this problem?

should be back on... the bot committed suicide last night

hmm it's happening again?

still happening.

pay better salary for bots.

In this economy? No, just threaten to fire them.

-Fooglmog
Guy with no clue.

then they work even worse.

i'm debating taking down Boxcar after this round because I'm tired of dealing with the site (which is a hack job as-is) and it doesn't produce enough revenue to justify me putting effort into it compared to other things I work on.

sorry

where will all the alliances it hosts go?

How is that our problem?

LaF was nice enough to open our site for other alliances to use. We were in no way obligated to do so, nor are we obligated to continue.

i don't know

I tried to get something new moving forward, but absolutely no one with the skills required was willing to help out, so I don't feel like it's my job to host everyone in the game while I also write the game

it's pulling my focus in two completely different directions and I frankly don't have the time to give either one the attention it deserves, let alone both

and as Marshall said, Boxcar was initially a LaF-made endeavour, and we opened its doors to the entire game because I felt it would be good for the game. I was immediately greeted with a 100 post flame thread for the gesture. Well, after a few years of dev, and lots of changes in both my RL work and what I do in my spare time, I'm not able to offer the level or quality of service that I expect. As such, I'd rather close it down and get others to create hosting sites so I can focus on game stuff, rather than continuing to divide my efforts.

wow h4xor wanger, take a pill. i dont even use boxcar. i was simply speculating.

did something crawl up your wazoo and die?

yes, its called the flack and destain that we've been recieving over the years over what was initially meant to be a nice jesture to the community.

But I should also point out that I have very little say regarding the operational status of the site.

Yes, Boxcar's been bashed more than any other hosting service for absolutely no reason, just because people can't keep in-game and out-of-game straight in their own heads. Since we opened our doors to the public, I've spent probably 95% of my Boxcar time supporting it, where as when it was just LaF using it, 100% went to new dev.

I'd rather have someone to pass Boxcar onto, but no one has shown any desire to help or the skills to help out effectively, or if they meet the other two criteria, they have bee implicated in cheating on FFA.

Regardless... Boxcar and EE are direct competitors for my time. The free time I allocate to this game goes to one of those two things. I've made it clear for some time that I need to focus my time on specific things, and given the choice between spending time on EE or on Boxcar, it's better for the game for me to focus on EE.

I should also clarify that taking down = not maintaining... I wouldn't just take it off the net, just not put its upkeep as a priority at all. I expect TC may be more willing to do that, rather than take it down as well :p

ah, good on that last point; i thought you meant shut it down like GT did... better to leave it sit unmaintained for a while... maybe people will reconsider your 'rebuild boxcar' idea...

I wouldn't mind opening evo2025 to the public, but that would be a LONG term project....

Can't say I blame you Pang, maintaining a hosting site is no fun at all.

Dragon knows the score :p

I was happy to maintain it when it was the only thing I worked on in my free time :p

I have too many competing things now, and Boxcar is the only non-necessary one :(

Or the other major alliances that use it who have an interest in it could step up and do the maintenance.

Thats too bad pang but I understand. Trust me if I had the qualifications to program anything I'd do something; however I have no experience.

And Pang: I think you should get someone on staff to incorporate more of the 3rd party sites functionality into the game it's self. There is no reason why most of the tools cannot be built in as they enhance the playing experience and it would be in the best interest of the game itself to make it a one stop shop!

We have been considering expanding the scope of the tools ingame for sure.

i don't really see a future for everything built into the game as there will always be developers who have time to make better tools for their alliance.

also i don't see why ee devs should put their time into making intraalliance communication and all the other stuff third party sites have today, when they could be focusing their time on making a better playing experience.

well i didn't mean remaking all the tools by any means... i meant things like... making a half-decent country search for once =/

if we had someone who could step up to help, we would:/

I'll ask around insite though.

I wish I knew anything more than basic HTML :(

Me too Thomas, me too.

In my opinion, if the 3rd party sites go to the fluffter (i.e. Boxcar becomes unmaintained), that'll kill the game quicker than not making changes ingame.

Dont maintain EE = dont gain new players
Dont maintain Boxcar = lose your current ones

No wonder h4 likes this idea.

or maybe it'll spur people on to develop other hosting sites?

the only reason Boxcar was made was because GT died and ES wasn't cutting the mustard for LaFfers -- same reason qz made evogt as well

it was opened to the public because I felt that if it wasn't opened, it would cause Earth 2025 to die faster... but it's getting to the point now where I just have too many things on my plate so we need to consider which ones are priorities over others.... EE is obviously higher priority than Boxcar, because there are several other hosting variants, but only 1 EE.
I'm sure long term I'll be working on a new hosting service (it's already somewhat started) but Boxcar as is is bloated :p

Pang, I think it would be OK if you just left it as is until something else is in place to take over and allow users to migrate to whatever that may be, which sounds like what your plans are from the first few posts you made.

If people lost their site entirely they'd have to use the existing sites, which aren't great... I don't know them all but there are at least a couple of public sites and a handful of private (one clan only) sites.

If it came down to it a clan could function with nothing more than a message board and eestats.com. Obviously this would not be ideal but would work for most applications.

I support time being spent on the actual game as that is the reason we even have these sites, and the only think keeping us all around! But I would also think that someone somewhere would see value in creating an awesome site!

I know I have talked to you about this many times, but with very little knowledge of mysql, I just wont cut it lol

also sorry for reviving a dead thread

I was going to come here to complain about an issue with boxcar but I see we have bigger issue.
The membership of LCN is mostly handicapped,we do not really even have any bots for IRC.
The death of boxcar would put us in a bad way.
Do we have some kind of pay pal set up that I could talk the rest of the membership into paying a few bucks??
They are cheap son of a guns but if this would help rebuild boxcar I think it might be worth it to try.
Honestly if boxcar dies I think any kind of alliance based server will go with it.

there's ghq although it lacks alot tools.

Dragon would kill me if I stated anything

It's not the bots fault.. all these Economic down turns are really hitting bots hard.

Unable to connect


Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at http://www.boxcarhosting.com
Hell maybe Pangy pulled the plug

temp downtime.

no, server hiccup'ed when I was doing some updates then I went to bed thinking it was nothing :p

it was up by morning (thanks TC!)