Are the WOTC forums borked?

[Jhaelen]

Well, today I couldn't even access their homepage at first. Then I noticed they seem to have changed the domain name from 'www.wizards.com' to 'wizards.com'.

Maybe there's been a similar change with the forums?

 

[redcard]

I'm beginning to wonder if this 4e "Nerdrage" is resulting in someone or some groups of people DDoSing the WOTC forums.

 

[Moon-Lancer]

A big boss at hasbro or WOTC is going to have to say, "Yeah, we're going to have to a webstaff more akin to a MMORPG staff than what we have now".

Its unrealistic to assume can compete with an mmo with a fraction of the up keep.

I don't know wizards current situation though, so i don't know if this is the case.

 

[Castellan]

I'm beginning to wonder if this 4e "Nerdrage" is resulting in someone or some groups of people DDoSing the WOTC forums.

Accusations like that are unnecessary. I've seen more angst out of the anti-anti-4e people than I ever thought imaginable (and it far outstrips the anti-4e folks).

Looking at WotC's setup, they're running an all-Windows set of servers. My years in IT suggest that they're a Windows-only powerhouse out of some misguided belief that "Windowz Rulez!" and they're suffering from a lack of diversity in thinking. (Don't misunderstand me -- my bread and butter come from knowledge of Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server. I just know how a lot of these kinds of folks think, and if it's not Microsoft, it's not an option...)

Heck, just checking their HTML source suggests that they think Cascading Style Sheets are a passing fad and that we'll all go back to tables-based browsing once we wise up and this Web 2.0 thing is over with....

Fact is, they're probably over-worked and under capitalized and they're suffering badly for it. Add to that the new code that's been put in (probably without much testing) and it's a recipe for disaster.

 

[SavageRobby]

I'm not surprised their forums are down ... again.

I'm more surprised when their forums are up. They remind me of the Mac/Vista commercials, "I'm happy to report I've been error free for over a week..."

 

[redcard]

Accusations like that are not unnecessary. As a free software developer and a linux professional, I've seen similar type things occur when KDE released, when Debian introduced KDE, and the list goes on and on and on. I've personally run a server when something has "drawn the ire" of the nerd community (Of which I am one) , and I've read Slashdot as the 4e has come out and I can clearly see some upset people. Now I don't have Wizards logs, but I know for a FACT that the DDoS is often used as a weapon when technically oriented geeks (and I _AM_ a geek/nerd) get angry. I've seen what it does to servers, and I've seen what it's done to bandwidth costs.

EDIT: And might I add, the Gleemax servers that the forum is hosted on are all running RedHat Linux

 

[malkav666]

I have noticed that the last three days I have been having signifigant issues with posting over there. Endless database errors.

I hope they get it fixxed soon.


love,

malkav

 

[pogminky]

Down again.

 

[Nifft]

EDIT: And might I add, the Gleemax servers that the forum is hosted on are all running RedHat Linux

That's smart of them.

I worry because I see .aspx pages on their main site, but I guess they're using LAMP for the really high-stress stuff.

Cheers, -- N

 

[wayne62682]

That's smart of them.

I worry because I see .aspx pages on their main site, but I guess they're using LAMP for the really high-stress stuff.

Cheers, -- N

To my knowledge, only the forums (forums.gleemax.com) are on a LAMP stack, being PHP based (modified VBulletin, I believe). The main gleemax site (gleemax.com, accounts.glemax.com) is ASP.NET. The main Wizards site seems to still be Classic ASP.