- Joined
- Jan 31, 2005
- Messages
- 11,859
- Reaction score
- 585
- Points
- 113
- Location
- Australia
- Website
- www.mmobugs.com
Hey MMOBugs,
I just wanted to do an update on things that are going on around MMOBugs. Firstly I want to mention, it's been 11 and a half years now since the site was created. I created MMOBugs as with each patch I was getting sick of how big my email list was getting, when emailing friends MQ2 compiles. I can't believe what we grew into, the friendly people I have met and all the cool things that have happened over the years.
I think my fondest memory's was around the nodelay/ghostkill era. I really can not believe how long SoE left those ingame, but that was certainly the peak of my enjoyment of MQ2 usage. I haven't played EQ for enjoyment since they "Sunset" the EQMac server.
I'd love to get back into the game sometime, but all my free time gets eaten up by work and family commitments. I did really enjoy Pokemon go, as I could play it with my daughter. I have considered created our own bot development team for pokemongo, then I can still play and use it as an excuse that it's work.
Two months ago we were going to move the site over to Xenforo. We cancelled everyone's auto-billing subscription (as they could not be taken over) and merged the site over to Xenforo. Unfortunately there was way too much broken, so we made a decision to revert back and do some more work on Xenforo.
A few weeks later, we decided to go back to the drawing board and fix up vbulletin issues instead. Xenforo is great, but there was so much that would be lost in the move and a bunch of custom coding that would need to happen to rebuild many of the systems we have in place. I'd love to move to Xenforo sometime, but unfortunately I don't think it's going to happen in the short term future. We are going to get back to polishing up vbulletin for the time being. You should start seeing some changes here and there.
Having finally re-enabled auto-renewing subscriptions after two months of not having them enabled, it has left a hole in our budget.
MMOBugs makes a fairly large donation to EQMule each month, and has been the largest donor to him for over 3 years now. Nobody else puts towards as much effort into MQ2 development than EQMule. Everyone in the MQ2 community benefits from his work and he should be rewarded for all the time he puts in. Due to our subscription cancellations we've had problems donating as much as we normally do this month.
To try and resolve this, we're running a short sale on MMOBugs subscription prices.
1 Month -$12.99 to $9.90
3 Months -$29.99 to $24.90
6 Months -$49.99 to $44.90
1 Year -$89.99 to $79.90
This sale is only for the next week or two, then they will be raised up again. 1 Month and 3 Month subscriptions will auto-renew, so once you lock it in that price, you will keep it until we decide to move forums again. The 6 month and 1 year subscriptions will need to be manually renewed.
If your subscription is already up to date, please consider purchasing a "Site Donation" from the Subscription menu. All funds will go towards keeping MMOBugs updated, MQ2 development and you'll get a cool little image by your username once I finish writing it (sometime in the next week).
EQMule made some changes to MQ2 three weeks ago which broke pretty much all plugins. This was done to decrease crashes from using depreciated functions inside MQ2. The changes were a pain in the ass but long overdue for helping with stability of MQ2. Htw has been tirelessly working on fixing all 150+ of our plugins, which he finished doing last week. We have only released changes to Test Server so far, but nobody complained about problems, so we'll get this pushed out to live servers very soon.
The biggest benefit you'll see with the next update is the freeze time from MQ2Ic is barely noticeable any more and we should see far less crashes.
Videos is something I've been meaning to do for a long time but always find a reason to put off. I feel the biggest problem users have with MQ2 is being overwhelmed with so many features and options, and not know where to start. A few years ago I did up a few videos on plugins, and I think they went over pretty well. I am considering going back to doing some more videos. I'd love to hear feedback from members on what you'd like to see covered so I can start planning a few.
Many years ago we used to have a MMOBugs members reward system to reward those helping out around the site. This is an idea that I'd love to see rebooted. None of the MMOBugs development team are active EQ players, the only time we log in is normally to fix bugs. We need active players to help out with fixing problems, coming up with ideas, and helping direct our attention to issues. Stay tuned to see some sort of reward system for those that help. If you want to lend a hand with being a moderator or developer on MMOBugs, please shoot me a message as we are on the look out for fresh blood.
In our marketplace, we have always limited people from viewing and posted to only be paid members due to reasons of fraud. It's been about 7 years since we did any sort of overhaul to the marketplace system. Fraud has become far less a problem than it used to be, hence time to re-visit the marketplace system.
Many new marketplaces has popped up since that allows paid and free members to buy and sell on it. I'd like to know what members think about opening up the marketplace to unsubscribed members. I have allowed free members to see marketplace listings this week but I have not allowed posting by them.
We would see a huge increase in ads posted if the marketplace was opened up, but we'd also see fraud increase too, and added competition to current members. We could add some perks for members to make them more noticeable and could do something about verifying people. I'd love to hear some feedback on what you'd like to see.
There are some other topics I'd like to discuss, such as the truebox server, active hacks, lifetime membership and our free MQ2 Lite version, but I'll leave those topics for another post.
My goal for MMOBugs has been to give one easy to download package of MQ2 and plugins, ready to go, to cut out the tedious part of coding/updating/compiling plugins. 90% of our users come from word of mouth. If you think we are doing a good job, please let your friends know. If you are not happy with something, please let me know so I can attempt to resolve the problem.
Thanks for reading and please let me know your thoughts.
Cheat Smarter!
I just wanted to do an update on things that are going on around MMOBugs. Firstly I want to mention, it's been 11 and a half years now since the site was created. I created MMOBugs as with each patch I was getting sick of how big my email list was getting, when emailing friends MQ2 compiles. I can't believe what we grew into, the friendly people I have met and all the cool things that have happened over the years.
I think my fondest memory's was around the nodelay/ghostkill era. I really can not believe how long SoE left those ingame, but that was certainly the peak of my enjoyment of MQ2 usage. I haven't played EQ for enjoyment since they "Sunset" the EQMac server.
I'd love to get back into the game sometime, but all my free time gets eaten up by work and family commitments. I did really enjoy Pokemon go, as I could play it with my daughter. I have considered created our own bot development team for pokemongo, then I can still play and use it as an excuse that it's work.
The Forum Move to Xenforo
Two months ago we were going to move the site over to Xenforo. We cancelled everyone's auto-billing subscription (as they could not be taken over) and merged the site over to Xenforo. Unfortunately there was way too much broken, so we made a decision to revert back and do some more work on Xenforo.
A few weeks later, we decided to go back to the drawing board and fix up vbulletin issues instead. Xenforo is great, but there was so much that would be lost in the move and a bunch of custom coding that would need to happen to rebuild many of the systems we have in place. I'd love to move to Xenforo sometime, but unfortunately I don't think it's going to happen in the short term future. We are going to get back to polishing up vbulletin for the time being. You should start seeing some changes here and there.
MMOBugs Subscription Sale
Having finally re-enabled auto-renewing subscriptions after two months of not having them enabled, it has left a hole in our budget.
MMOBugs makes a fairly large donation to EQMule each month, and has been the largest donor to him for over 3 years now. Nobody else puts towards as much effort into MQ2 development than EQMule. Everyone in the MQ2 community benefits from his work and he should be rewarded for all the time he puts in. Due to our subscription cancellations we've had problems donating as much as we normally do this month.
To try and resolve this, we're running a short sale on MMOBugs subscription prices.
1 Month -
3 Months -
6 Months -
1 Year -
This sale is only for the next week or two, then they will be raised up again. 1 Month and 3 Month subscriptions will auto-renew, so once you lock it in that price, you will keep it until we decide to move forums again. The 6 month and 1 year subscriptions will need to be manually renewed.
If your subscription is already up to date, please consider purchasing a "Site Donation" from the Subscription menu. All funds will go towards keeping MMOBugs updated, MQ2 development and you'll get a cool little image by your username once I finish writing it (sometime in the next week).
The Big MQ2 Plugin Update
EQMule made some changes to MQ2 three weeks ago which broke pretty much all plugins. This was done to decrease crashes from using depreciated functions inside MQ2. The changes were a pain in the ass but long overdue for helping with stability of MQ2. Htw has been tirelessly working on fixing all 150+ of our plugins, which he finished doing last week. We have only released changes to Test Server so far, but nobody complained about problems, so we'll get this pushed out to live servers very soon.
The biggest benefit you'll see with the next update is the freeze time from MQ2Ic is barely noticeable any more and we should see far less crashes.
MQ2 Videos
Videos is something I've been meaning to do for a long time but always find a reason to put off. I feel the biggest problem users have with MQ2 is being overwhelmed with so many features and options, and not know where to start. A few years ago I did up a few videos on plugins, and I think they went over pretty well. I am considering going back to doing some more videos. I'd love to hear feedback from members on what you'd like to see covered so I can start planning a few.
Members Rewards
Many years ago we used to have a MMOBugs members reward system to reward those helping out around the site. This is an idea that I'd love to see rebooted. None of the MMOBugs development team are active EQ players, the only time we log in is normally to fix bugs. We need active players to help out with fixing problems, coming up with ideas, and helping direct our attention to issues. Stay tuned to see some sort of reward system for those that help. If you want to lend a hand with being a moderator or developer on MMOBugs, please shoot me a message as we are on the look out for fresh blood.
MMOBugs Community Marketplace
In our marketplace, we have always limited people from viewing and posted to only be paid members due to reasons of fraud. It's been about 7 years since we did any sort of overhaul to the marketplace system. Fraud has become far less a problem than it used to be, hence time to re-visit the marketplace system.
Many new marketplaces has popped up since that allows paid and free members to buy and sell on it. I'd like to know what members think about opening up the marketplace to unsubscribed members. I have allowed free members to see marketplace listings this week but I have not allowed posting by them.
We would see a huge increase in ads posted if the marketplace was opened up, but we'd also see fraud increase too, and added competition to current members. We could add some perks for members to make them more noticeable and could do something about verifying people. I'd love to hear some feedback on what you'd like to see.
There are some other topics I'd like to discuss, such as the truebox server, active hacks, lifetime membership and our free MQ2 Lite version, but I'll leave those topics for another post.
My goal for MMOBugs has been to give one easy to download package of MQ2 and plugins, ready to go, to cut out the tedious part of coding/updating/compiling plugins. 90% of our users come from word of mouth. If you think we are doing a good job, please let your friends know. If you are not happy with something, please let me know so I can attempt to resolve the problem.
Thanks for reading and please let me know your thoughts.
Cheat Smarter!