For those of you confused about what happened to the site (if you weren't around during the past few months, you're probably scratching your head right now), let me explain what happened.
Somewhere around Christmas (who needs specific dates?) the Guild unexpectedly went off the air. Many people joined the official Facebook group looking for answers. It took a while before admin Contra Fates was able to get in touch with our illustrious overlord Mahz, who was able to shed a little more light on the situation. The old Roleplayerguild used Google AdSense for a long time to generate enough revenue to be (mostly?) self-sustaining. AdSense was lost sometime before the Guild went down. This resulted in missing revenue, which (among other factors -- actually, probably mostly other factors) led to Mahz missing a payment to the server host that the website ran on. So far, so good -- Mahz aimed to get the site back up on January 1st, 2014. In the meantime, a backup site was launched (www.oldtower.com) that a lot of people migrated to. It soon became apparent, however, that the server host had "disassembled [the] server and wiped all of [the] data" (source: http://oldtower.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=260). Posts, users, private messages -- everything was lost (and unfortunately not backed up). Undaunted, Mahz decided that this was the right time to start from scratch.
Which brings us to the next point. The reason the site looks so different and (many) functions are still missing (as of January 18th, 2014) is because Mahz is building it from scratch, instead of relying on vBulletin forum software. That's what the old Guild (and many other forums on the internet) ran on. It was, however, difficult to work with and integrate new features into (like a functioning dice-roller). Hence the decision to create the Guild from the ground up, which allows Mahz to customize it as he sees fit (within the extent of his abilities).
This new iteration of the site was initially hosted on a different URL. People were allowed to register and test out the forum while Mahz worked out the basics. That data was also accidentally lost when Mahz moved the database from the test server to the launch server (whatever that means), so everyone got to register again a second time. But it's cool -- this time it's permanent (there is now an automated back-up system in place).
Of course the administration apologizes for the loss of all the precious data and years of creativity that the old Guild contained ("I am genuinely sorry about this -- how the history and effort of so many people over so many years has simply been erased. It make me sick to my stomach." - Mahz) but this is also an exciting time as we get to see what new directions the Guild can and will take. New features like the tab-switching between IC and OOC threads have already been implemented.
So, yeah. That about sums it up.
Somewhere around Christmas (who needs specific dates?) the Guild unexpectedly went off the air. Many people joined the official Facebook group looking for answers. It took a while before admin Contra Fates was able to get in touch with our illustrious overlord Mahz, who was able to shed a little more light on the situation. The old Roleplayerguild used Google AdSense for a long time to generate enough revenue to be (mostly?) self-sustaining. AdSense was lost sometime before the Guild went down. This resulted in missing revenue, which (among other factors -- actually, probably mostly other factors) led to Mahz missing a payment to the server host that the website ran on. So far, so good -- Mahz aimed to get the site back up on January 1st, 2014. In the meantime, a backup site was launched (www.oldtower.com) that a lot of people migrated to. It soon became apparent, however, that the server host had "disassembled [the] server and wiped all of [the] data" (source: http://oldtower.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=260). Posts, users, private messages -- everything was lost (and unfortunately not backed up). Undaunted, Mahz decided that this was the right time to start from scratch.
Which brings us to the next point. The reason the site looks so different and (many) functions are still missing (as of January 18th, 2014) is because Mahz is building it from scratch, instead of relying on vBulletin forum software. That's what the old Guild (and many other forums on the internet) ran on. It was, however, difficult to work with and integrate new features into (like a functioning dice-roller). Hence the decision to create the Guild from the ground up, which allows Mahz to customize it as he sees fit (within the extent of his abilities).
This new iteration of the site was initially hosted on a different URL. People were allowed to register and test out the forum while Mahz worked out the basics. That data was also accidentally lost when Mahz moved the database from the test server to the launch server (whatever that means), so everyone got to register again a second time. But it's cool -- this time it's permanent (there is now an automated back-up system in place).
Of course the administration apologizes for the loss of all the precious data and years of creativity that the old Guild contained ("I am genuinely sorry about this -- how the history and effort of so many people over so many years has simply been erased. It make me sick to my stomach." - Mahz) but this is also an exciting time as we get to see what new directions the Guild can and will take. New features like the tab-switching between IC and OOC threads have already been implemented.
So, yeah. That about sums it up.
