Are you kidding me?

Not bad. I'm more wondering what happened to all of the games and zeldaclassic.com? Did they all get wiped out in the great Dec zombie takeover? (aka when someone had hacked the site?)

I can't remember if the zeldaclassic.com domain is still in use, but the site is still here: http://zeldaclassic.armageddongames.net/

I wish something could be done to make this place look nice. The themes are unfinished and ugly.

Beldaran wrote:I wish something could be done to make this place look nice. The themes are unfinished and ugly.

vegeta1215 wrote:I can't remember if the zeldaclassic.com domain is still in use, but the site is still here: http://zeldaclassic.armageddongames.net/

If the US Government can successfully pass a health care bill, then the AGN administration can find the time to put a banner up. There really is no valid excuse for it, even if every single one of them has a busy life.

Maybe they should give you your money back. Or you should pay them.

Yeah Atma? Well the rest of the internet's forums are free too, and they generally manage not to look like neglected homeless shelters. I post at two other forums, I don't pay the administration, and somehow those forums are nice looking, have friendly management, and fun features.

AGN: Taking pride in being one of the worst run, most neglected, most often hacked forums in history, since 1999.

Beldaran wrote:Yeah Atma? Well the rest of the internet's forums are free too, and they generally manage not to look like neglected homeless shelters. I post at two other forums, I don't pay the administration, and somehow those forums are nice looking, have friendly management, and fun features.

AGN: Taking pride in being one of the worst run, most neglected, most often hacked forums in history, since 1999.

biggiy05 wrote: People have a life outside the internet and other priorities.

biggiy05 wrote:If you don't like it then don't post here anymore.

AtmaWeapon wrote:Maybe they should give you your money back. Or you should pay them.

Okay, even if things like "Because it's free" and "You can post somewhere else" are true, there is still something to be said for the fact that other free sites don't neglect the forums so much, and really, there is no excuse. Who would pay 7 dollars a year for this? If you have/ run a site, then it is your responsibility to maintain it, and I don't care how many times people use the "life" excuse. Get a larger staff if the current ones are unable to do as much because of "life". Frankly, it is a shitty excuse.

I don't have any problems with the staff personally, but I do have a problem with people defending the blatant neglect and throwing shitty excuses at it.

It seems like after the hostile terrorist take over of AGN, the staff has been replaced by robots who will carry out the will of the hacker. The unfinished themes, lack of a banner, spam bots running rampant, and the fact that the mods are willing to let these banned members back is just a testament to how much no one here gives a shit anymore :/

... I'm ready for people to get piiiiiiiissed D:}

You are here so obviously people DO post here.

As if 2 people post before me making 3 in total posting at the same time. (further disproves that no one posts here anymore at least)

franpa wrote:You are here so obviously people DO post here.

As if 2 people post before me making 3 in total posting at the same time. (further disproves that no one posts here anymore at least)

Hold on now... you not liking the theme hardly equates to neglect of the site. (zeldaclassic.com not working on the other hand... everything looks OK with the DNS record and the subdomain setup, if it's still broken later and not a temporary problem I'll try to get in touch with War Lord.)

vB 4.0 is an overhaul of the old software and the theme system is completely different, so the great work Eckels did in the past cannot be ported over. Don't get me wrong, I would love to use Classic Black or some other custom theme. However that would require one of
1) someone with the appropriate talent, like Eckels, stepping forward to volunteer
2) me paying (out of pocket) a graphic designer to build one for us
3) me paying (out of pocket) for a pre-made vB 4.0 skin. When vB 4.0 first came out these weren't even available... maybe there's a decent one out there now. Feel free to post suggestions; if people like it I'd consider buying and installing it.

Why doesn't AGN use a free, open source BBS system? They are pretty nice and have tons of free skins and features.

Plus, you know, free.

Beldaran wrote:Why doesn't AGN use a free, open source BBS system? They are pretty nice and have tons of free skins and features.

Plus, you know, free.

Hey, where there's a will, there's a way. I just don't think the will is much there, mainly because the passion this place once had is not as strong as it used to be. It really should be there, though. After all, this site serves a purpose that no other site can have: It's the flagship for Zelda Classic. Sure the 2.5 situation contributes to matters, but to blame the decline completely (or almost completely) on the developers is just blind to the whole situation and an excuse to ignore issues they have no responsibility over. If you are looking for talent, then ask for it. If Eckels isn't around, you just have to look at other options. I'm sure there are free VB skins, features, etc. to choose from somewhere. Maybe it wouldn't be the best of selections, but it's better than a default template. It just takes enough time to do some research, which anybody with the will can do, even a non-staff member. At least if something can be put on the table and discussed, then that is a sign of possibility. Perhaps it is an opportunity for at least one member (preferably more than one, though) to be of help, provided somebody has the right knowledge on this sort of stuff. After all, we are all people, not just mindless drones whose only purpose is to be fed by others. Ask not what the site can do for you. Ask what you can do for the site. Right? Just be willing to get that help in the first place. The site is free to join, but on the plus side, they can also be potential human resources to take advantage of, also for free. You feed the members, so let them feed you back. If there exists one or more people, certainly regular members too, who have the knowledge on this sort of stuff and the skills to offer, then please stand up.

DarkDragon wrote:(zeldaclassic.com not working on the other hand... everything looks OK with the DNS record and the subdomain setup, if it's still broken later and not a temporary problem I'll try to get in touch with War Lord.)

http://zeldaclassic.armageddongames.net/

That works for me :shrug:

Yeah, but I have a feeling most non-members use www.zeldaclassic.com, noticed that it's been broken for months, and didn't come back.

The Classic Black skin looks like it's at least halfway done, and it looks good on the main forum index. (...Well, until you scroll all the way down.) Meh. AGN's alive, there's still a core group of posters, and we can only assume traffic will pick up once 2.5 is completed. Whenever that is.

Right. The site's there, but zeldaclassic.com is not resolving to that subdomain for some reason.

Unlike armageddongames.net, zeldaclassic.com's DNS record points to a nameserver run by 000domains.org, instead of directly at hostrocket's. I have no idea why, and sent WL an email about it.

DarkDragon wrote:Right. The site's there, but zeldaclassic.com is not resolving to that subdomain for some reason.

Unlike armageddongames.net, zeldaclassic.com's DNS record points to a nameserver run by 000domains.org, instead of directly at hostrocket's. I have no idea why, and sent WL an email about it.

Is anything being done about the spam bots? Don't most sites use a captcha?

EDIT: Seriously? One posted at the same time as me?

I think the Captcha is enabled by default in vB, however, bots have likely evolved to get past it.

DarkDragon wrote:War Lord has taken care of this, and zeldaclassic.com (as well as the long-lost armageddongames.com) will work again as soon as the new DNS records propagate.

CAPTCHAs aren't magic. It's quite cheap to buy programs that can defeat common CAPTCHAs. For those that can't be broken, it's quite cheap to pay people pennies to break them for you.

zeldaclassic.com is still down for me.

I know CAPTCHAs aren't magic, but what is the excuse for having spam bots running around? Other forums manage to keep it under control.

Maybe the other forums are more active? I'm a member of quite a few smaller forums, and we see a lot of spambots on those. Particularly on weekends, when the moderating staff is generally out at a pub and not looking to post on forums. At the only large forums I visit, there are only three reasons I don't see spam bots:
[list=1][*]One requires $10 to make posts. That breaks the economy of spam.
[*]One has essentially thousands of subforums, with maybe 5% active. That makes the prospect of spamming pretty ineffective. If there is spam I don't see it because I'm looking at maybe 0.01% of the forums.
[*]On the one mentioned in 2, it'd be hard to tell a spam post apart from the stupidity of the average poster anyway.
[/list]

This thread is pretty much a list of the only active posters at AGN. How many of them are staff?

Why does there have to be an "excuse" for spam bots running around? Why is AGN obligated to put a staff member 24/7 at the forums to make sure any posts about cheap counterfeit goods are instantly deleted? Does it do commercial damage for you to see them? Does it make you regret the money you spent to sign up? The word you're looking for is "explanation". People give excuses when they don't meet some expectation. Any expectation of a spam-free environment is a poor expectation, not a failing of the AGN staff.

Spam is a scaling problem. Why aren't you whining at Google about the excuse for why there's still spam on the internet? I get 25-30 new emails in my spam folder daily. They're Google! They could dispatch UAVs to the spammers house! The answer is there are thousands of people running bots that just walk down a list of email addresses sending billions of emails per day. The ones that don't have a list can try clever things like "every member name from a forum"@gmail.com. For every spammer we hunt down and prosecute, 50 people answer one of the "make $500/week from your home" signs on telephone poles to join the botnets.

I'm not saying it's futile to fight it, but I am saying it's impossible to win. If you have some grand idea to make it impossible to make spam posts on a forum, you need to patent that quickly because you're going to get some serious kickback for it.