Hey Guys,
As you might have noticed the Travian Forums are not available at the moment due to a serious security hole that meant a hole in the forum was exploited on .com, .net & .fr in quick succession. Because of this Travian HQ have had to take down all of Travian's forums to stop any more being taken advantage of and so they can fix the whole in security.
We have been told that the forums will be available again on Monday however it is not certain that everything will be completely fixed by then so there is the possiblity that the downtime will last more than 2 days. I'm using some private channels to keep up to date with any more news about the downtime so if we find out any more that we're allowed to report (so far we've had to keep some details a secret) then I'll post it up here.
[EDIT:] Statement coming from Tranqer (Game/IRC Admin) is that 'TG is performing mainenance on the discussion boards, with an unknown ETA.' My personal view is that this does not bode well for seeing the forums back up in a timely manner, I have a feeling that late Tuesday or possibly a delay going into Wednesday or Thursday could be on the hands.
[EDIT 2:] forum.travian.co.za is now BACK ONLINE and it has been updated to vBulletin 4.1.3 which means it is running the latest forum software in the vBulletin range. What I've heard is the forums will slowly be arriving back online one by one as they are upgraded. The new Travian theme for vBulletin 4.1.3 has not yet been released so they are using an altered version of the default vBulletin theme.
[EDIT 3:] forum.travian.de is also back online with the updated software.
[EDIT 4:] Full list of available forums has been added to the top of the blog, this will be continually updated until all the forums are available again.
[EDIT 2:] forum.travian.co.za is now BACK ONLINE and it has been updated to vBulletin 4.1.3 which means it is running the latest forum software in the vBulletin range. What I've heard is the forums will slowly be arriving back online one by one as they are upgraded. The new Travian theme for vBulletin 4.1.3 has not yet been released so they are using an altered version of the default vBulletin theme.
[EDIT 3:] forum.travian.de is also back online with the updated software.
[EDIT 4:] Full list of available forums has been added to the top of the blog, this will be continually updated until all the forums are available again.
Steve
Please follow us on our twitter page, for the latest news on the return of the forums as well as when we post new blog posts.
87 comments:
Damn hackers. Hope everything goes smoothly with getting this fixed. :) ~ Woden87, .us forums
Updated the post due to HQ's request.
Is it the hack that inserts rogue html into signatures? This one has been doing the rounds on a lot of forums over the last week.
Nah the hack wasn't that, it took down .com, .net & .fr and redirect the domain to an illegal website.
Why haven't HQ come out with any formal word on this? Very annoying.
HQ will come out with a formal word once they have an actual public announcement written. Once it has been made available, I am sure you all will notice it.
Most players are feeling out of the loop. A little post on the main page would have been simple for admin to do. Even if it was to ask us to have patience at least we would have some semblance of whats happening. Instead we are having to contact people in private and getting no real info!
www.forum.travian.de is up and running :-)
Cmon, travian.co.uk
We really miss you....
I bet the RPGers from .com are really peeved right now...
The Knight of the .us RPG Forum would like to express her grief over the situation.
-Link
So whats happening to the uk forum are we ever getting it back? Its the middle of WW time on s5 and people are looking for information!
Yeah, we need the forum back.
I'm really surprised they've only managed to put back up 4 forums, and even then .pt isn't actually open to the public.
Steve,
Thanks so much for keeping this updated.
It's good to know they're making progress, even if verrry sloooowly ...
No worries,
I know everyone is anxious to get their forums back.
come on folks .us forums aren't up yet. You guys are making a killing over here with the gold. Hire a contract web designer working to help with the grunt work.
<3 Nimmo
According to .com newsbox, it takes 1-2 weeks to get them all online. They appear one-by-one in no specific order.
And .de already announced forum maintenance for Friday... it is big change, they need to get settings right before putting all forums back.
Thanks for the Update
~Nimmo
Hey,
They are working hard but as far as I'm aware they've had to pull tech people off other projects to deal with this and they aren't used to dealing with forums full time. So yeah they have to play with stuff and try different settings with the new software because they aren't completely used to it.
We're hoping that .com, .co.uk or .us comes back soon as those are the biggest English language ones.
Tell them to hurry there is serious bragging to be done now the top wonders have been zeroed on uk s5! People need to know how easy it was! :D
Garinil said...
HQ will come out with a formal word once they have an actual public announcement written
?????? It takes them days to write up a public announcement? It should only take five minutes to write it and another minute to put it up on the travian page.
There has been no communication with players/forum users about this. If this happened in the game, people would voice their opinions on the forum. Now that the forum is down where can we go?
When the server goes down players are left completely in the dark. Being kept informed about these issues was always brutally managed, but with the forum at least you had an inkling that something was being done to resolve issues. Now nothing...
Maybe they should send out the satisfaction surveys now. Although they never show up until a server has gone 30 days without downtime. Hmph!
I totally agree with the previous post.
I accidentally stumbled across this page using Google when I was trying to find out what happened. But for this I wouldn't have a clue what was going on!
Shame on you admin for not posting a little message on the homepage!
Working hard? They are either not telling us the full story of they have one bloke doing all the forums on his tea break. It does not take much time, knowledge or effect to upgrade the forum software, its a one man job and shouldnt really be taking him longer than an hour.
Its HQ being cheap thats making them take so long, they have no incentive to do it any faster as all us chumps are still buying gold.
Getting from 3.6.4 to 4.1.3 includes LOTS of DB changes... and that is the main reason why the big forums are making huge trouble and take lots of time.
The forums can be put online at once - they would just have lost all posts and accounts. Let them do it the proper way instead of wrong way.
Another forum went up today and they are doing maintenance on some of the ones already up. They are having to make changes and mess with things so please give them time to try and correct it.
More information would be good but sadly since they don't know all the details themselves it can't really be given.
However my mate ran a large vb3 conversion to vb4 and it took him 2.5 hours going to the default style like travian are to do that one so that's about what it should take. However they are trying out some other stuff so it's likely that is what is increasing the time, along with the fact that most of the HQ staff aren't professional forum admins.
I understand it takes work, which is why I previously suggested they maybe hire on a contract worker to assist with the complexities of putting the board up quickly and securely. What I don't understand is the lack of communication from the company to the players. Right on the homepage itself there is a link that says.
News
Accessing Chat
Unfortunately our usual Java Chat client is unavailable at the moment, but you may still access Chat. Please see the forum announcement for more details:
...more information
Why not change it saying something about the forums. Three short sentences is all it takes. "Forums are down due to security issue that was being fixed. Because of said issue we have had to update them to new (insert technical term here) and we shall be rolling out the new forums one at a time which can take a few weeks to get them all up and running. Thank you for your patience and understanding."
~Nimmo US4
Seperate databases so there is no reason why they cannot be put online all at once if they put enough people on it, or let the forum admins do it themselves, its not a hard thing to do, and anyone who has been made a forum admin should already have a decent knowledge of how Vbulletin works.
"along with the fact that most of the HQ staff aren't professional forum admins. "
most of HQ aren't professional at anything
LOL at expecting anyone from there to bother keeping the players informed, just shut up and keep buying the gold like good little hamsters
Just another reason to leave the game. Travian HQ treat their players with a complete lack of respect. As many others have said, there wasn't even an announcement on the front page of travian.com. That's just pathetic customer services.
Even now the link to forums is broken. They could at least replace it with a link to a txt file explaining why the forums are unavailable, instead of a login prompt that doesn't work.
I ask myself how long it would take to fix the Gold payment server?
Lol, if the Gold payment server went down I'm pretty sure they'd hire thousands of people to try and fix it as quickly as possible.
Those that started a temporary forum for s5 have been banned for their efforts
Yep, they were.
There are those of us who play who could help since we have the expertise to do so. May not be a lot of people, but why not ask for others to come and help?
The way this is being handled is just further proof that Travian HQ doesn't really care about their customers in matters that don't directly effect profits.
Par for the course, Travian.
They won't put a notice on the front page because they don't want to look like clueless idiots for getting their site hacked. Who would buy gold from a company that can't secure it's own servers?
This has happened before and Laika set up a replacement forum server, as soon as the goons from HQ heard about it they ordered him to remove it ASAP.
They really are quite cynical in their treatment of the players and staff, one step out of line and you are banned or removed from your post.
It doesnt take this long to get the forums up & running, the will to do it obviously isnt there imo. & with the banning of some UK5 players for putting up a temporary forum, I have to say for me this is the last straw.
As an internet user I expect occasional downtime... stuff happens... but sadly Travian is going downhill all the time. Once upon a time they used to be good. I have spent a lot of money on Travian over the years, & I realise they are in it to make money, but this is a sad reflection of what Travian has become.
As soon as UK5 end game is over I will not return.
Link to the temporary unofficial UK Travian Forum
http://z15.invisionfree.com/The_Travian_Forum/index.php?
Travian R.I.P.
Once again german hq sinks to a new low in customer relations. To be honest Steve I am fairly amazed they are letting you keep this blog open. The fact that they are punishing people in game for opening off game forums is frankly an astonishing display of arrogance, and is indicative of the contempt hq seem to have for their paying customers. 10 days in and none of the big english language forums are up and running. I notice germany got theirs though.
I'm in a unique position of having access to crew forums and being on good terms with a number of admins, it's not favouritism in that sense, it's just they know I won't publish anything that I know is private/illegal/wrong.
The German forums went up quickly because all the techs can understand the language so it was easier for them and they can mess with settings on that forum easily because they do understand it.
I understand the frustration many people have at the time it is taking and I hope they continue to open more forums and some English ones come soon. Until then I'll keep trying to update this comments section and the links at the top of the blog with the latest information.
On that note, the. ae forums just came back up:
http://www.travianforum.ae/index.php
A halfhearted attempted at communication would have been greatly appreciated!!! *madface*
I stumbled across this page.
All it would have required is a one-line on the Travian homepage stating that the forums were currently down and there was no ETA on the resolution.
Very disappointed.
jdurand (.us forums)
Since these douchebags REFUSE to even give a most basic public address on the loss of *ALL* travian forums, I say we do exactly what they don't want done on their forums... TALK ABOUT BANS AND STAFF CORRUPTION!
To be fair, all crew members should have been told by their admins what comment to give. So you should have been able to find out what was happening.
But yeah a message on Homepages would have been very useful, although SOME admins have added messages to their domain's newsboxes.
The only reason, I knew how the forums were coming back up, is because I am dualing with a mod from .us, and he still doesn't know any type of order, or why they are taking so long. A little communication would be nice, because otherwise they will lose a lot of forumers when they do come back.
-Gotmilk
This is truly pathetic. 10+ days to get a forum back online? Really? Two competent devs could write a completely new forum in that much time set up a script to carry over the old DB information as well... for all domains... at once.
Seriously, this is messed up. The forums (at leas the .us ones) were pretty much dying anyway (along with the game), but this is pretty much the single best way I could imagine for kicking them in the groin and making sure there's no comeback.
Every day that passes, I check less frequently to see if my favorite forum is back... and every day I miss it less. How long until I say "@$%* it" and find something else to do?
~MokMonster, .us
This may sound stupid and maybe I'm asking in the wrong place, but how do I get an account on the forums? I try clicking on the link but it asks me for a password and I'm really confused. Can't find anything about it on Google either. Any advice would be appreciated.
I wonder if HQ see any correlation between the small number of players starting uk4 and the forum downtime? perhaps if they did thenperhaps they would employ someone with some experience to resolve this..rather than the cleaner who i suspect is working on it now.
Not a dig at you steve, i think you are one of the better crew we have had and crew in general is better than it has been for a good wqhile. i just worry that if agge is in charge of which domains get done then we may have a long wait as a payback for laikagate.
Melissa,
Hi, just wait for the forum to come back online properly,
If you see a plain password box that means it isn't online yet.
Probably won't see the UK forum before the weekend.
Yeh, I wouldn't be surprised if Agge make sure UK are last online, that Laikagate screwup really did make him look like a grade 1 idiot, then he does it all over again on the Indian forum, lol.
With Agge in charge this is just a typical day in the office, stuff the users, don't bother to keep anyone but his best mates informed and kiss ass to keep his job.
Really, could they have found anyone more incompetent than Agge?
Someone said
"The fact that they are punishing people in game for opening off game forums is frankly an astonishing display of arrogance, and is indicative of the contempt hq seem to have for their paying customers."
Y'know that is really quite shocking to hear, people come together to help each other out in their own private time and Travian ban them from their game!!!
What the hell is it to do with Travian if people want to set up a PRIVATE forum? Who made Travian the Internet Police?!!!
Words fail me :(
When the forums come back online I hope everyone here will show their support for the S5 players who were unfairly banned and petition for their unbanning, this is an outrageous intrusion into people's private lives and somebody needs to tell Travian where to go.
@Mellia, the reason you can't access the forums is that they had a security issue and are currently not available to the public. They are currently working to resolve the issue but it might not be fixed for a couple more days/weeks. There are other Travian forums available (links at the top of the blog page), however most are not in English. All of these comments are about the situation and many people are angry that the forums are not available at the moment.
@Everyone else, thank you for coming hear to voice your concerns, I am trying to pass them on (possibly in a slightly more polite way :p) to my higher ups and I know that a number of game admins and a couple of HQ people are watching out for this section so they should also be reading your posts.
Also, as far as I'm aware, the people who were banned on Server 5 have now been unbanned and are fully able to play again and have been for a couple of days now. I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure the issue, for the most part, has been straightened out. If not then I'll again try and keep this comments section updated.
You can get banned from the game for creating a travian forum outside the control of travian HQ? Wow, that just shows the true colors of this company and how dishonest they really are. Just like how the amount of gold you purchase dictates the amount of rules you are allowed to break. What a scam.
Also, what is Laikagate?
Steve...thanks for providing the information sorely missing from Travian itself.
You're awesome!
jdurand (.us forums)
@jdurand, No problem, I was telling people all this by Skype anyway so having a website makes it easier.
@Anonymous about Laikagate. It's about a former incredibly mad and evil game admins who illegally banned and made players 'disappear' as well as committing fraud against the company. However it took many years until it was uncovered and caused nearly irreversible damage to the Travian Games brand in the UK.
Thanks for the update on the S5 players Steve, that's good to hear, the first thing I'll be checking when the forums return is whether or not they are happy with their treatment at the hands of HQ.
Travian have no right to tell players what they can do in private, so I hope some gold is going to be sent their way as due compensation.
It's perhaps unfair to lump everything on Laika as an individual, he was just one of a clique of people on UK who were equally guilty of bullying because they all went along with whatever he said. Some of them are still crew, which isn't entirely unsurprising.
"Anonymous said...
Thanks for the update on the S5 players Steve, that's good to hear, the first thing I'll be checking when the forums return is whether or not they are happy with their treatment at the hands of HQ."
Expect the banhammer to be swooping on the forums reinstation. Rumours of arbitary, unagreed punishments abound.
'It's perhaps unfair to lump everything on Laika as an individual'
Having retained his post for some time even after everything was exposed, this exposes the real issue, the disconnect between Travian HQ, and their, perceived community.
Many savvy players sussed what was happening, many coherent and documented complaints were submitted, all were ignored, until internal bitching finally shed some light, and, the box opened.
I should know I was there, you literally have to stand naked at the doors of Travian Gmbh with, 'there's something rotten' daubed across your chest in flaming chilli sauce, to get anything other than an auto reply out of them.
Nothing much has changed since, hence the total farce that is forumgate.
"You can get banned from the game for creating a travian forum outside the control of travian HQ? Wow, that just shows the true colors of this company and how dishonest they really are."
The reason for that and why laika's forum was closed is that they used copyrighted graphics + material in those forums as well as adverts. All those are against the fansite policy.
And nowadays companies are extremely strict at protecting their copyrights...
'that they used copyrighted graphics + material '
Even if this were true it would still be wrong. Not trying that hard to protect the rights with getter, dope and travianreports are they? I love the game but it really is the least proffesional company I have ever dealt with. Laika, brett now the forums ruining a whole servers endgame, and still Steve, you say we may be weeks away from a fix? There can be no justification for this. In an earlier post you say there isn't an english language one because they struggle with the language. Absolute poppycock, .za was up and running in no time. The reason they are not running is they do not produce revenue stream...pure and simple economics.
"and a couple of HQ people are watching out for this section so they should also be reading your posts"
Steve, I'm sure you are right but I really doubt they care about anyone but themselves.
We've had Laikagate, Tulliagate and now Forumgate, the common denominator in all these has been Agge who either doesn't understand, or held a petty vendetta against Tullia or now conspicuously can't be bothered to keep the players informed.
I'm sure Chris wants to post something up but I bet he has been told not to by Agge.
HQ, if you are reading this, why do you still choose to employ Agge???
He has been making Travian look like idiots for years.
Can I have a job at Travian please?
I promise to ignore all non Germans, get drunk and abuse people in emails, behave in an irrational, petty and vindictive manner to anyone who disagrees with me. I will also do my best to suck the life out of the online community for which I'd be responsible, but otherwise I will remain invisible and unapproachable to 99.99999999% of the aforementioned community by never actually posting in any geographical travian forum, even the German one.
I also want to be paid to laugh at you for being so dumb as to employ me.
To be fair Travian are taking action against all tools which do not fall within the Travian fansite rule book. I can't say what they are doing as I'm not entirely sure but if a fansite does break the rules then that fansite will be looked into by the guys at HQ.
They are working to resolve the forum issues but yes it has been a slow process. Just to note, they put up .ae & .cl yesterday, both of which are in languages they don't understand so they would have had to bring in translators to do that.
I'm seriously hoping that the .co.uk forums and the .com forums come back as soon as possible because I have a number of guides I want to post and a lot of things I want to say and do. Please remember that when they do come back online that you really shouldn't aim insults at your local crew, we had nothing to do with the situation at hand and we often do take the abuse when stuff like this happens. If you want to make a complaint I suggest doing it through channels such as emailing your admin, preferably in a professional and polite manner, and they will lodge that higher up the ladder. Believe it or not Public Opinion is important for Travian and I know that this issue is causing them problems at HQ because they know it is hurting the community, which does have a knock on effect on sales.
The Forums are weak and lack leadership!
Thank you Steve, I googled Travian Forums and found this link for your blog, and you are more interested on keeping us informed as to the events. They said the forums would be down Saturday and Sunday originally, I guess that is why they didn't specify "which" Saturday and Sunday.
Maybe with the money that have made from all of us Gold Abusers over the years, they can hire a couple of monkeys to fix it for them.
How would Travian know what public opinion is when they never bother to ask? That every expression of public opinion over Laikagate was ignored for a full year? When was the last time Agge posted in a forum, probably two years ago now, then he did a runner because he didn't hear what he wanted to hear.
They care what people think of the game, but they really don't care about the community, only the local crew do. The forums they have restored have all been tiny ones with almost no posts like .za
Emailing the admin has never done anything in the history of the forum, as much as Chris may want to help he will always need HQ to do something, and as we all know HQ never do anything unless it suits them. But yeh, I hope the uk crew don't catch any flack over this because it's obvious where the problem always is.
Actually if HQ really are reading this then why don't they defend their incompetence on this forum? Explain all the "gates" please.
LOL
I'm curious why it matters what the local language is for the forums? It's not like vbulletin translates all their code into chinese, japanese and german -- php is php wherever you go. You don't need to read the local lang to install that -- that's why the release notes (usually) come in multiple languages. Read them in the one you understand and follow the bouncing ball. Why is that so hard?
Have the local admin (re)do the basic write-ups for anything which needs them... and we're done. Seriously, how long does that take? Hell, google probably has all that stuff cached, anyway. C&P.
While each domain has it's own style on the forums, I think it is more important to get the stuff up there, and then worry about tweaking it to work the way it used to work later.
~MokMonster, .us forums
Since a few have asked after the uk5 player who were banned over setting up a temporary forum I thought I would update you!
Yes these players have now been unbanned but as punishment they had two villages deleted.
They had no choice which villages were taken, they also didn't agree to the unbanning and were planning to fight their cases. But the powers that be decided what the hell and unbanned them at a time neither were online and armies starved.
It was my understanding that person banned had to agree to the punishment before the account was released so no one can believe staff took these steps in such a callous way!
As a result one of the players (top five attacker) is on delete. He's lost heart in a game he has played for many years and spent a great deal of money on.
Shame on you Travian for punishing people who are trying to keep the game alive during endgame!
They did it b/c the forums are down -- they can get away with it. That's really, really messed up
Well, I am as annoyed about the forum problem as much as the next person, maybe even more. But the way everyone reacts about it is just downright childish.
TG runs more than one set of games and forums. Its not all going to one wargame.
These things will happen and there are only a certain amount of people there to help. I'm guessing they too work a general 9-5 kind of schedule. It's life.
I think the people who are going "I'm not coming back if the forums dont get up by X" are just doing TGHQ a favor and ridding the community of silly people.
It's an "internet forum." No one should be making that much of a fuss over it.
Now if the actual playing servers went down this long, thats another story. People PAY to play on these servers and last I checked no one payed to chill on the forum. Servers and forums are two way different things.
Thanks Steve for keeping us up to date, but my earlier point of TGHQ asking for volunteers to help out with the forum stands. It is possible to help out to some degree without breaching security.
Ok, i started travian a few days ago and i love it, and am completely addicted. However, not being able to access the forums i searched google and found this blog (god bless you Steve). On it, i have read about evil admins who abused powers for there own benefits without most staff noticing even when most players noticed it, i've read about how pathetic travian is at customer service and only care about raking in the cash, i've read about how nearly all of the travian staff are lazy, incompetent people who cannot be bothered to properly answer any queries and send back auto messages(but i'd like to point out that some staff are obviously incredible, patient and understanding, such as steve), I've read about a stupid ass licking, box ticking, ignore everything that's bad person called agge, who, for what ever reason has been put in a position of power, i've read about a forum going down to a group of hackers, about how travian HQ don't even have the dignity and effort to write a small message on the home screen so people such as myself have to google it and find out about only due to excellent staff, i've read about how some players were severly punished for giving up their own free time and effort and creating a replacement forum (thanks very much to those players), i've read about how this relatively simple job is taking far too long, i've read about the HQ who care only about Germany and no matter how much you complain, are simply ignored and i'm sure there are many many many other horrifying tales that i'm not aware about. But what pisses me of the most is that travian doesn't give a f***, as long as they're raking in the cash they are content to let all complaints fly by them and spend as long as needed to fix crucial elements to travian. I love travian, and with fantastic, kind, caring, and competent people like steve at the top, i'm sure it would be immesurably good, but we don't have these people at the top, we have ignorant, incompetent and arrogant fools at the top. I love travian, but, i have to say goodbye to it, i can't support it any more. Bye travian, won be seeing ya.
That is very sad what happened to those players who created a forum outside of travian. Which rule exactly did they break?
What is Tulliagate?
Thank you for making this blog.
Thank you to everyone who has shared information here, that would otherwise be censored from the public on the travian forums, all which has exposed the truth about staff corruption and HQ incompetence.
Laikagate = It's about a former incredibly mad and evil game admins who illegally banned and made players 'disappear' as well as committing fraud against the company. However it took many years until it was uncovered and caused nearly irreversible damage to the Travian Games brand in the UK.
Tulliagat = actually refers to a possiblity of two things but the one most people use is when she was removed from her post as a forum admin by the community manager, agge, without warning or thanks. Personally without breaking my NDA I can't comment on it any more than that but there's more to the story than that.
An interesting point is that not only does an NDA apply to Steve, it also indirectly applies to us.
If certain things were said then Steve would have to kill this blog, if one of us said them on a Travian forum then we would be permabanned outright.
Personally I think if something puts HQ in a bad light, that's a welcome opportunity to demonstrate their ability to improve. Unfortunately Travian only ever seeks to hide the truth and punish those that dare question them. Their system makes the resolution of any issue reliant on one idiot, a situation that not only enabled Laikagate, but would equally not prevent it happening again.
Are you listening to this HQ? Look at where your chain of command ends sometime, is the penny dropping yet?
I'm pretty annoyed at this - another example of outright disregard of empathy and care for the customers of Travian. As others have said, TG don't give a rats ass about their community, as long as the money keeps coming in - Agge perhaps posts once in a blue moon to tell us 'The situation is under control, if you want to contact them, please us the following address'... yadayadayada. Bullcrap. Not only this, but they actually hired a complete tool like Laika for a year or so, and only after one of the biggest outcries I've seen happen on well... pretty much any web-based forum, do they remove him. And now this. And then the complete and outright neglect of the playerbase, and the community. In .uk, we had JUST managed to freaking revive the Creative Writing section, then this happens - no doubt, when the forums are back up, no-one will care anyway. So that's a bloody sucker-punch to the groin. I already left .uk once, when everyone migrated to .in. To be honest, after this 'little' cock-up, I might even leave travian (been playing for the best part of 4 years). So anyways, if any of you money-crazed HQ guys are reading this, you've lost a customer.
Sucks for you.
Mighty Cheese - UK Forums
Again we have lots of silly people here.
vBulletin costs $90 per license and between $175- $285 per upgrade. The forums bring in absolutely no income at all. It is there because TG wanted it there. vBulletin is damn hard to hack and they had every right to shut down all the forums to fix the issue. And since there are servers to maintain, other games to maintain (that actually bring in income) the forums is not actually a “pull an all nighter” kind of emergency.
They did what was right, do you know how bad TGHQ would look if they know a few forums got hacked and links led to . .say terrorist sites. They would lose lots of people and even investors. They had to make a decision and they made the right one. If any of you ran any sort of business or serious website then you might understand this.
As for the Agge and Laika thing. They probably have a good reason to keep Agge. Also at the time they probably had a good reason or not enough evidence to sack Laika. Truth be told if you or the community in general wanted Agge gone LOTS of people would have to constantly send emails to complaints@traviangames.com for that to even remotely work. Not on the forum, not on this blog. But personally to that email.
I agree certain things could have been done better yes. But the word got out soon enough.
I’ve been playing a long time as well. Since T2.5 and I have been through the many ups and downs of TG. I will most certainly stay through this forum thing and T4.
Each and every one of you who says they are leaving from the forum thing is just foolish. when the forums are all back up (the ones I populate) I will see how many of you come back despite your "I'm not coming back" speil.
To the Anonymous poster above me, who claims the forums bring in zero money: you sir, are an idiot.
The forums are a place where people can grow an even stronger interest into the game by reading strategies and exploits. It can even renew interest in the game by retired players. The forum obviously is a service TG provides to their customers free of charge, but that does not mean the forums are not playing a role in generating revenue via increasing in-game gold sales.
Obviously you have not given any thought into your post, other than to offer blind support with your nonsense. Your post is a joke, go away.
So, last time the .us forum was down, our admin set up a temp, where he was updating us, and we could still do all our stuff, you just had to jump through a few hoops. Since they clearly do not have the best and brightest on getting these forums back up, because it doesn't take a genius to know that updates can wait till after the rest of the forums are fixed, why can't we at least get something like a temp? There are plenty of free forum hosting sites out there that could be used for like a week. It could be all official and everything. Can somebody please do something, or at least tell us the order they are fixing them in, so I don't have to keep checking. -Gotmilk, .us
Hey, Gotmilk, I'd recommend just using the temp S5.uk forum (mentioned earlier, but the url is http://z15.invisionfree.com/The_Travian_Forum/index.php) for the time being. I'm there, too, although it's still pretty slow at the moment.
- Woden, .us
"Now if the actual playing servers went down this long, thats another story."
Ah - they did a few months back.
Globally.
It's NEVER been explained or apologised for.
8 emails to Travs HQ remain unanswered.
HQ has NO consideration for it's players whatsoever, and the forum admins are simply paid puppets.
Steve, I genuinely appreciate your efforts on this blog.
Hey,
Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to comment on this blog.
At the person above me I'd just like to mention that forum admins are unpaid and Avi (.co.uk forum admin) is a great person, she only knows as much about this situation as I do and she's been sharing that with anyone who has asked. So I don't think it's fair to call forum admins puppets.
@the guy who says the forums don't make money and are only there "because TG wanted it there":
you're an idiot. Would you actually play (and pay for) any game that doesn't even have a forum? Seriously? That's amateur city. It is actually worse than as unceremoniously taking down every forum you have and not even leaving a simple "down for maintenance" redirect page up... you can't tell me they're so incompetent that making a simple index.html file which says, "sorry, forums are down due to xxx" is that hard or time-consuming. It would take what? 5 minutes of the local admin's time? That's hardly an all-nighter.
As for no money -- They have made nearly enough off of me just from the first T4 server to pay for their vbulletin license for the .us server. And I'm playing only b/c the forums got me curious enough to come back to see the changes. And even if I'm unique in that (I'm not, there are 2 other folks in my alliance playing for pretty much the same reason), I'm betting there are lots of folks who might want to sign up for a new server but don't know if/when it is starting b/c there is no where for them to find out -- they lose money there. There are probably lots of new folk who are searching for help or guides and can't find either -- when they quit in frustration... oops more money lost.
Yeah, it actually is a situation where an all-nighter or 2 is warranted... or at least, you know, 5 minutes to change that index.html file to point to a simple "sorry, blame the terrorists" page or something. Anything. Take a moment to pretend you care about the users. Put up an announcement message like they do when they have a survey or have to announce a rollback or anything else they want us to know. It really isn't that hard and really doesn't take all that much effort to let us know a few tiny bits of information to keep the frustration away.
~MokMonster, US forums
Yep, it's the Game Admins who are paid - the forum admins are generally decent people, who give up their time for the forum.
Uk4. 5 days old 5k players. How many of those are actual players , and whether the UK domain still carries out padding at server starts I do not know. But i know i hasven't seen more than 1k online. Place yourself in the shoes of the noob. You come out of BP and inevitably the experienced players start their attacks. What to do? Well if it was me I'd click the link saying 'forum' hoping for advice and some gameplay hints. Lo and behold the link doesn't work and the noob thinks..'screw this for a game of soldiers..i'm off to play x or y where i may stand a ghost of a chance.
The loss of the forum will certainly be affecting revenue...if only indirectly. And you have to feel some sympathy with uk4 and uk5 players...one with a ruined endgame and the other hobbled from the outset.
PLEASE HQ. GIVE US OUR FORUM BACK.
I completely agree with the comment above mine. I know that when I joined travian and was raided heavily, i looked to forums the forums for advice, found it and used it to help me. This kept me playing the game and therefore, paying money to travian by buying gold. The forum is ESSENTIAL to travian.
I would like every annoyed person reading this blog to send one e-mail, just one to complaint@traviangames.com
Complain about everything you can, how they have rubbish feedback, how they can't be bothered to fix an essential part of the game, and, even worse, how they don't even tell people about it.
And I want everyone to post back the reply they receive right here. It will take minutes to send, and then minutes to post back here when you get the reply (if you get the reply).
Please, just do it.
People tried a while back to do something about Agge, one of the mods on the Indian forum even tried a petition to get Agge to change his mind about Tullia.
http://www.petitiononline.com/TulliaIN/petition.html
Of course he ignored it just like he ignores all the complaints, just like all the people from HQ reading this right now will ignore everything we say. Who wants to say anything bad about someone they work with?
Fact is, he is making you all look bad, every time he lets the players down we blame all of you at HQ. Not one of you has stepped up and said "hey this is making TG look bad, let's do something about it".
So yeh, if you work for Travian and you are reading this, YOU are part of the problem because you sat back and did nothing, said nothing and pretended it wasn't anything to do with you.
forum.travian.com is ONLINEEEEE!!!1 :D
With regard to the temporary UK forum
http://z15.invisionfree.com/The_Travian_Forum/index.php
It was set up by some players in Ghey (a UK5 alliance) Those players got banned for advertising, because they advertised it in game by sending IGMs to other players, they also had copyright mentioned to them & the fact that it could be corrupt seeing as it being run by 1 alliance. I have gamed with these people over several years (but never physically met any of them in the real world) & I trust them. I am also in Ghey.
Just bear in mind that the temporary forum isnt being run by Travian, & dont go posting battle plans etc... which you wouldnt do on any forum anyway, & use a secure password... standard practise again on any forum.
The peeps at Travian messed up, & 2 of the crew involved have an axe to grind with some of the players who set up the temp forum... this is in-game politics & grudges from previous rounds & other servers... usual Travian-related crap in other words.
& yes the players were unbanned, but they were also punished & hadnt even accepted their punishments... again due in no small part to those 2 same crew members who have an axe to grind.
This is being allowed to happen by Chriscv UK Admin.
Laika was horribly corrupt & Agge was well aware of the situation & chose to do nothing even tho it had happened repeatedly, so chances are HQ are also aware, but simply dont care, if they are not aware then they are even more incompetant than the impression they give.
I agree Travian were right to take down the forums in light of the "hacking" but now they are sadly lacking in not getting them back up again, & also for the actions they took against members of the community who pulled together to help keep the community going.
Im going to stop now, because this is supposed to be about the forums, & not a general rant against Travian & all their faults :P
Yeah, it's great.
Just waiting for .co.uk now.
Open beta of War of the Immortals just kicked off five days ago. Still consider whether to play or not? You may first look at this brief introduction and several screenshots before making decision. http://www.mmohunter.com/travian.html
Just go here http://travianx.mozgames.com
Better server with no lag.
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