From what I see overall:
All in all, I do like most of where things are headed, and hope that we see more and more done over then next few days.
- What's good so far:
- Forums all merged to FINALLY be one, rather than halfway split, with a sorta-in-sync database shared between them: good. Now I need not bother with logging in with the exact same credentials just to post in a different portion.
- We now have a
strikethroughtag: finally! Been waiting quite a while for that.- We now have avatars shown next to posts. Potentially good, though it is a little lacking: 200x200 is perhaps way too large given how many lines many posts take. (plus, most of my avy collection isn't available that large) Also, there's no option to simply snatch a direct link from the Internet: you either have to upload it from your own computer, or use that "Gravatar" gimmick, which I'm sure is yet another fad that will be defunct and unusable in a year or two.
- What's obviously incomplete:
- Hybrid's website/forum links are back and works fine... The other three shards have problems. Divinity's still returns the vBulletin message of the past couple days, while both Demise and Revelation get an error. Not sure on whom responsibility has been shoved for those, but whoever it is they need a heads-up fast!
- I suddenly went from being a few hundred posts away from being labeled as "Master of the Internet" to "New Member." (also, I went from ~9,300 posts to >28,000 "messages", whatever the hell that means) In short, most of the profile stuff seems to have been reduced to a mess. Most previously-entered profile information has been lumped into a mass of text, which when losing labels loses all context. (such as the "interests" field)
- Similarly, the general structure of some forums appears to have been disrupted. Was some ability to nest categories lost? A key example would be the Demise "bugs & fixes" forums, where now you have the super-category "bugs and fixes" listed at the same level as all its child categories, provided you're looking at the "Demise" sub-category. (viewing the forums globally, you merely see the parent categories)
- Also, Unicode support was possibly broken: I notice that for a lot of our non-roman-alphabet players, (particularly our Chinese playerbase) I see fill-in hexidecimal boxes instead of characters. This appears to be limited to the members list
- A number of convenient features of the old system are currently lost/broken. The members list can no longer be sorted; you're stuck with the default alphabetical sorting, where as before you could sort by join date and total posts.
- The "who posted?" feature is no gone; prior, you could click on the post-count of a thread to get a list of who posted, (and how many times) whereas now that's gone.
- What makes me wary:
- The white background with deeper blue accents... Can you say Facebook, anyone? If I wanted to use Facebook to connect with the RunUO/UOGamers community, I'd go to a RUO/UOG community on Facebook. I'd have to assume that there already is one anyway... I understand that optional skins are part of a fix, but
- The whole "like" thing... Aside from being way too Facebook-y, it's shown to be problematic. Remember when all the forums used the decade-old "forum karma" system? That lasted for all of a few months on most of the sub-forums before being removed.
- "Trophies." Achievements/trophies have been kinda dubious in games alone... At least in most cases. (excluding TF2 here) On a forum, they make even less sense, and potentially can lend toward post-whoring.
- The new post editor: I don't like rich-text editors being the default. (after all, aren't a good portion of us RunUO fans supposed to be a little used to being around code?) Moreso, the plaintext/raw code version lacks any buttons for quick-inserting tags.
- I seem to have lost the ability to select whether I attach my signature on a post-by-post basis. Given that my signature is mostly irrelevant outside of the Demise sub-section, this is inconvenient. (previously, I just de-selected the "apply signature" option on all posts on RunUO, other shards, etc.)
- The new smilies look a little retarded, IMO.
Ah, yeah, just discovered that as I went to try and click on one of the links in my signature.man the internal link breaking
Indeed, and I imagine it wouldn't be that hard for Ryan/whoever to give them something to stash them out of immediate sight. They needn't actually be cut out entirely; just not in everyone's face.There's a lot of social networking type stuff that just doesn't make sense for this community but those can be ignored/not used
There's a lot of social networking type stuff that just doesn't make sense for this community but those can be ignored/not used
Indeed, and I imagine it wouldn't be that hard for Ryan/whoever to give them something to stash them out of immediate sight. They needn't actually be cut out entirely; just not in everyone's face.
Some of us occasionally/frequently/usually access the site from more "public" computers, and hence in those cases don't get to have our own arsenal of plug-ins/preferred browser/etc. with us at every turn. So, we have to make do with whatever's on the machine in question, which is ALWAYS rather sad. (I'm just glad that around here they aren't stuck with only IE!)I already blocked the facebook thing with adblock.
I already blocked the facebook thing with adblock.
Bold move, IB currently has a lawsuit against Xenforo. Hope all works out for the best, i know you guys put a lot of time and $$ into this conversion.
Love all you guys do keep it up!
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?363883-Internet-Brands-claims-against-Xenforo
You forgot, internal forum links are fubared.
This really sucks for scripts that need dependencies
There's a lot of social networking type stuff that just doesn't make sense for this community but those can be ignored/not used
But Opera (when I get to use it...) is the best of browsers! That, and some of us naturally just auto-block flash by default, to protect ourselves from being assaulted by poorly-made and crash-prone flash aps/ads. Or even just to remove that potential vector for malware.Its a shame that fucking browsers with addblock can't be blocked.
But Opera (when I get to use it...) is the best of browsers! That, and some of us naturally just auto-block flash by default, to protect ourselves from being assaulted by poorly-made and crash-prone flash aps/ads. Or even just to remove that potential vector for malware.
Though perhaps you might have also noticed that some of us despise Facebook. I'm hoping that we have the entire RunUO/UOGamers community as a distinct community of its own style, not as a Facebook tie-in or wannabe.
As for the AdBlock... I think we'll get an AdBlock blocker around the time cable companies and network executives get a DVR-blocker, and spammers get a spam filter cutter. I can understand your frustration with people only accepting the delivery of your content on their terms, but sadly, there's really not much of anything that can be done. It kind of ties in with the Facebook link: one may not like it, but it's become part of the way business is done.