BotNet victory! EntropiaPlanets enters a new era!

As you sit down in the bar, you cannot help but wonder how the botnet conversion is going. The barkeep nods in your direction, but when you ask if there's been any updates, he just points at the TV. The screen shows images from the battle of Hadesheim taking place. A big red message scrolls along at the bottom of the screen notifying whoever is watching there have not been any updates yet. You sigh, and order yourself a stiff drink.

In a dark corner, you notice an odd man sitting all by himself. He has the looks of an intelligent man for sure, but there's something very strange about him nevertheless. You beckon toards the bartender and ask if he knows who the odd stranger is. He replies he doesn't exactly know him personally, but apparently the guy is an old-FBI agent by the name of Cale Dooper. The guy went bonkers after his girlfriend mysteriously dissappeared in the woods one night.

Then suddenly the TVs image changes. The camera is back on the presenter, who just gets some fresh papers handed to her. You urge the barman to turn on the sound. "..eaking news. Apparently the initiative that was launched by the private organisation MLP, and the goal of which it was to upgrade the EntropiaPlanets network has succesfully been completed. As the war against the bots still rages on at Hadesheim, we can now all be assured that a major victory for mankind was scored here. Mr. Jauer, can you please comment on the succesful operation?".

In a splitscreen image, the left now shows the anchorwoman, and on the right, an unshaved
Jauer who looks as if he's been up for 48 hours straight. Drinking. "Susan, thank you. Brave men and women have given their very best in order to make this happen. Some of them unfortunately lost their lives, but they went in knowing the risks fully well, and also knowing that their efforts would be for the greater good of mankind. I want to take a brief moment to dedicate to their memory". The anchorwoman agrees, and after a brief moment during which you respectfully hang your head, Jauer continues:

"Their lives have, however, not been lost in vain. Our scientists worked around the clock today, and they managed to complete their objectives. The network is now fully operational again".
Cheering bursts out in the news studio, and in the bar as well. You end up falling in the arms of a complete stranger sitting next to you. He accidently knocks over your drink, but it does not matter. The war might not be over, but a valuable victory has been achieved over the robots.
Jauer: "Apart from the Walruses, whose identities I cannot reveal for obvious reasons, and the scientists who finished the upgrade, there are a few additional names that I should mention".

"During the secret preperations for this operation, they helped to troubleshoot potential errors, and their input has proven to be invaluable. We will be honoring these heroes with a free 3-month premium subscription to all the goodies available on the network. Once again, people, well done. Thier names are: GeorgeSkywalker, Rockchick, narfi, safara, Deathifier, RAZER, MindStar9, Tass and Dalas".

"(I will admit, though, that after Rockchick and safara left, we did get a bit of a shock when we were presented with the bill from their minibar)".

"Today is a glorious day for mankind, and the EntropiaPlanets network. We are very aware that there might be some bugs remaining in the system, but if we all work together, it should be fairly straightforward to tackle those. Once again, everybody, a job well done. I hereby invite everybody to have a drink, and put it on Jenny Carramone's bill".

With that, Jauer is gone, and the network starts their normal routine with so-called experts analyzing every word of what was said, and offering their personal opinions on it. From the corner of your eye, you see the weird fellow raising his glass at the TV, on which a couple of recently defrozen members of the Woodstock generation are now complaining that rather than fighting, we ought to be singing songs with the robots instead.

You order a nice Laphroiag, and have the bartender put it on Carramone's tab, which he does with a big grin and a wink. Here's to you, Back Jauer. May you shoot many more robots in the face.




****

If you can read this, the forum is back online. It took almost 12 hours, but here we are. We have removed the old Yellow Pages system and the vBay system, and instead you will now find a system called Classifieds that will replace both.

The old Bug Tracker is also gone, and has been replaced with a full project management suite. This is currently extremely basic, but will be further enhanced during the next few days.

You probably see we also replaced the skin of the forum with a darker skin. At the same time, we also have a lighter skin available for those who are not well-tuned to the dark (and perhaps also not garlic).

The darker skin still has some issues, particularly in the Conquest and Arcade systems. These issues wil be addressed during the next few days. There are also some issues with drop-down menus that currently are a wee bit too dark. Again, this will be solved.

Also new is an even tighter integration with EntropiaPlanets wiki. It has a tab of its own at the top now, and at the same time, additional statistics are shown in user profiles, detailing the amount of edits made by a person. At this very moment, we have an open issue with it, and these numbers do not seem to fully work, but again, this should hopefully be solved soon.

Should you find any issues, please do let us know.

It might not really show, but today's upgrade has been in the works for months. The new forum engine has radical differences from the old one, and this meant that some systems has to be completely combed for potential upgrade issues and these issues had to be addressed. At the same time, we took the opportunity to change things around a bit to make them more intuitive for you.

The opt-out forum system, which allows you to select forums from which you do NOT wish to see updates when you check for new stuff (new posts has been replaced by the "What's new" tab, by the way, and your old User CP can now be found at the upper-right under Settings) has not been converted yet, but we hope to get this done soon as well.

There's a few other additions, but we're sure you will find them those as you start using the forum.

We truly hope that you will enjoy the new functionality offered. We know we will. EntropiaPlanets and its staff has some amazing upcoming things planned, so do stick around and keep watching this space.

We are not done by a long shot, but there are times when one has to call it a day. This is one of those times...

Well, how awesome is THIS.

Ohhh grats looks great XD

hmm it works for me? It's a quick reply ^^

About the little things around, please if you find any errors, post it in Razers post or in EP Tools (upper nav bar icon) -> Bug tracker :)

I too find it annoying that the first post entry is shown on every page, and suggest we fix that too ;)

Thanks for the nice words, people - it was heck of a lot of work, but we like the result :) With a little tweaking I'm sure we will soon have everything up running just fine!

... were you able to rebuild the bar? I'm a huge fan of in-game role-playing, and the H-Day event is really a good one. You're doing a great job on the storytelling ... I think both you and Peter missed your calling. :D

The idea with the first post being repeated on every page is to ensure discussions will remain on-topic ;) However, it's a mod I can easily turn off again if it is deemed to be annoying. Someone start a poll :D