Fermeture de AO-Basher :(

Par Thekkeht le 20/2/2003 à 17:46:46 (#3277953)

Je viens d'apprendre sur stratics que AO-Basher va fermer ses portes, ainsi Solarax, l'éditeur en chef, va poster la news ce week-end.

Voila la source:

"Well I must say that the Frontpage of Basher doesnt seem to update much anymore which is a little dissappointing, but not supprising considering how much I have to hunt around to find something intersting to read."

The response from Solarax (Editor of AO-Basher):
"I'm afraid that's more or less it, over the last week or two I have had to face the fact that for the last two years I've been addicted to the Internet, Anarchy-Online, and AO-Basher. To cut a long story short, I've made the decision to quit Anarchy-Online, leave the Anarchy-Online Community and retire AO-Basher. It's been a hard decision to make, but really seems to be the best in order for me to make a clean break and reclaim my severely lacking Real-Life(tm). I'll give more details when I post my fairwell article on the site sometime this weekend.

It's been a hell of a lot of fun, but I'm afraid it's the end of an era"

Par ked le 20/2/2003 à 23:43:35 (#3280536)

rhaaa... le dégoût :(
C'était mon site de news préféré :sanglote:

Par Thekkeht le 20/2/2003 à 23:50:37 (#3280579)

It is difficult to maintain a balance between a MMORPG and your real life. Friends you make in the community can become closer than friends you have in the real world, and those friendships are just as strong. The experiences you have ingame can be just as vivid as those you have doing “real” things. But nonetheless, you are left with a slack. It can never be as satisfying, and at the same time, can often cut away large chunks of your life and your contact with people day to day. You can become addicted. You can stop having a real life, and spend all your free time in a virtual world, and yes, that can be dangerous. It can have adverse affects on your friendships in real life.

Running a fansite makes this even harsher. The time and energy it takes to daily search for news, update the site, manage forums and comments, and create new content can wear people out quickly. AO-Basher has been a largely one man operation for over a year now, and Solarax has manned the helm admirably. As one of my best friends, I have seen the frustrations that come from dealing with so much. When he invited Ainur and myself to come on board and redo the site, I was more than happy to help. I got a strong taste of what is what. If you did not know, AO-Basher is an entirely independent operation, and everything you see before you has been created by us for us from scratch, non-profit. Not a single cent has made it’s way to anyone’s pocket for AO-B, and we are very proud of that.

When I joined, we wanted to breathe new life into AO-B. The site as it was originally was outdated and outclassed by more specific sites using more up-to-date means. We made a conscious decision to create a network of AO fansites, instead of duplicating the excellent content already provided by our sister sites. We integrated the excellent guides at Anarchy Arcanum into our page, though this conversion was never completely finished. We brought a Gridstream banner to expose more people to that excellent webcast. We brought in Speedy’s, and wanted to feature Faunlore. When Auno closed down Antiguardians, we were put in a spot, and Ainur and I began work on our own database, which was reaching completion when Jayde brought a whole world of whoop-ass down on it, so we decided to integrate that in. Auno came back shortly after that was decided, so I wanted to include his Antiguardians site via a simpler land control overview based on his XML dump. Unfortuantely, this last project was never completed due to a family emergency on Christmas that took me away from basically my entire life for a month. The other plans we had were to rotate “advertisements” for ingame establishments, items, and AO tools like Clicksaver, similar to what Anarchy Arcanum has started. Again, this project was interrupted.

This network was our goal, and I am profoundly saddened to not see it happen. I encourage all of you to go give these sites the support they deserve, and I thank all of them for their cooperation. It is truly amazing to see what a community can do, and how in-depth and professional they can become about it. Also, check out the excellent regional/foreign language based fansites, and the profession specific sites.

We had a whole slew of things we wanted to bring you, from some pretty snazzy t-shirts to a comic book style replacement for the animated series FunCom cancelled. A bug database. “Get to know” the random FunCom employees we never get to meet, focusing on them, not the issues. I designed a sub-site that was all done in-char for the smaller community events and all that good stuff.

In short, the time I’ve spent with the Anarchy Online community an AO-Basher specifically has been amazing. I got to know a lot of great people who I hope I will never forget, and I got to piss off a lot of people who I hope never forget me. I can only mention a few names here, but I’ll try to get as many as I can… first of all, Solarax and Ainur, who made this experience everything. Mouse, who left our community last year, but still hasn’t escaped me in DAoC. I need some SCing done on a new set of leather, BTW, Mousii. Dai-Galean and Abrii, who I consider good friends even above Dai’s now-past role with FunCom. I sincerely wish the best for you guys. Go ahead and write that book, Dai. :-> Cz, who I never got to know as well, but was still available to do everything he could, and the departed Cosmik. All of my wacky Scandinavian family who made GVRK what it was and make Forsaken what it is, who are too numerous to mention here. The gang in #anarchyonline, who make life bearable. Letah, for being an avid AO-Basher from the beginning, and her long hours sitting alone in the abandoned #ao-basher (and for being a r0x0ring Doc Professional). Everyone from the other fansites. From Ellusion and Twicer to Auno and Jayde to Tarryk, Gridfan, Xtrophic, and the rest of the huge crew at Gridstream to MORB and Dovve, to the numerous profession specific sites that rock, and even to the other general news sites. You guys do such amazing work, you put us to shame. FunCom, who has done an excellent job trying to reach out to the community, despite what most of us think. And yes, we are hosted by FunCom. No, I have no clue how that came to be, and no, it did not affect our reporting or opinion at all, but their kindness was key to allowing us to run advertisement free. SilkeX… who literally defies words. CaptFallout, because how the bloody hell can you talk about AO-Basher and not mention CaptFallout?

There are too many to mention, especially all of our readers. AO-Basher maintained a database of 55,000 registered users and charted 80,000 unique visitors a month. Not too shabby, I think, for an independent site run by one person. Reading the comments threads on some of the posts was sometimes the most invigorating part of this site. Thank you all. I hope you enjoyed this experience as much as I have, and I love you all, even the ones I hate.

I believe that our server will be left up. Our automatic resources like the playfield information that is so popular and the guides, breed and skill info, commands, and other features remain open, as will the news archives. Like the "Behemoth," though, AO-B will drift on through time unmanned.

This site was all Solarax. His archive of news posts is something that truly defines what Anarchy Online is and was. Taking a look at the “Yesteryear” feature on the front page is like taking a core sample from the arctic snows. It instantly captures the events and attitude of the time perfectly. From way back when I was just a little visitor to AO-B, he was always THE source, the historian of AO. Like Dan Rather, but with a personality and better hair. But this site is what it is – a fansite for a computer game. This should not be taken too seriously, and certainly not in front of Solarax’s personal life.

We made the decision to retire AO-Basher instead of passing it on to new hands. So much blood, sweat, and tears have gone into this that it is ours. When I joined AO-Basher, we fought an uphill battle. I can tell you now that the admin rights were completely farked, and Solarax could only post news because IE remembered the password. Ainur and I spent a while trying to break into the FTP without the master password. We had to dig around the database and violate our own security to gain access. In retrospect, it was fun, like exploring PW on foot for the first time at level 20. But since then, we’ve made it ours, and I, for one, just can’t pass that down. It would be like sending your child to live with another family forever.

Wait, didn’t I just say that this should not be taken too seriously?

Gentlemen, what we have here is a terrifying example of the reindeer effect.

Screen d'adieu

* Razishlyat has quit IRC (“ DARREN RAZI AND SOLARAX ARE abusive of their ops … are the ops just magically turning a blind eye to the fact that razi is useless and abusive of his 'status’ … and the fact that razi has a huge ego, and does next to nothing besides some MINOR html editing and stuff i mean ..he's useless his uber leet html skills are ...nonexistant")