25 Jul 2008

Forum and Killboard et al

The continued unavailability of our killboard and forum has had a detrimental effort on the group of pirates flying under Black-Flag. While we're continuing our successful recruiting efforts and flying in gangs and killing peeps, there are three (in my view) items that are absolutely crucial to the healthy well-being of the corporation, outside of the pilots. The items are a reliable voice communication server, a kill board and a well-designed forum / web-site. Last two weeks, we lost the kill board and our forum and it's thrown a dark pall over the corporation. While pilots have been logging in respectable flying hours and gathering kills and loot, not having a forum to exchange information or a board to pin our kills on, well - it's not good I can tell you and affecting morale.

Having our CEO (Viper Sam) going AWOL was un-helpful but this did not stop the corp from running and in some ways, expanding and improving as more pilots stepped up to fill the vacuum - Ndor, Jubes and Huaca should take a bow. Since nearly all Black-Flag pilots also work solo for periods at a time, not having a CEO online directing things at a tactical level was no real big deal.

Not having a forum to organise operations and roams has seriously hurt the medium term viability of Black-Flag, however. We can not connect with prospective pilots. Share information. Rant. Show off. Talk crap.

This can not go on any longer I fear.

Steps are being taken to address this: Both Sarvic and Psycho Penguin (love that name) have agreed to set up a temporary forum / kill board respectively. I would rather have two sites than none. They should be going online within the next few days. It's a temporary fix at the moment. Ideally, we would need to restore the back up files of the old forum and kill board and yes before any comments - no backups were made :-( so we're probably starting things from scratch. Repointing the Domain name: Black-Flag.Org is also required but this is not an immediate requirement.

So interesting times ahead for the pirate ship called Black-Flag, some stormy seas abound and the wind is not favourable at the moment. The Captain has gone overboard and can't be rescued. The crew are emerging from a drunken stupor and want to kill and loot but we're drifting and we just missed some rocks. However, the crew is good and there's a consensus amongst the mates that the ship is still sound and water tight.

Interesting times ahead indeed.

9 comments:

CrazyKinux said...

Even though we're on opposites sides of the EVE continum, I feel for you on this one bro!

Corp Forums are a MUST for any decent organization that calls itself an EVE Online Corporation. My corp, Phoenix Labs recently had some issues with it own forums also. No fun at all.

Good luck in the rough times ahead!

Doug Alcorn said...

our corp uses a google group instead of a forum. extremely reliable and has "pages" where notes and articles can be stored in addition to the ease of email.

Kane Rizzel said...

As always mate, interesting times.
You have a good bunch of pilots and I'm sure you guys will be fine.

As for a Faction Frigate op, might be something in the works for next month ;)

Anonymous said...

I'm not much in the Gus area anymore due to some Faction Warfare, but I wish you guys all the best. If I can be of some assistance don't hesitate to contact me.

RB

Anonymous said...

Update for all. The Black Flag boards are back up. WWW.Black-Flag.org. We are working diligently to restore all the info and kills for the past few weeks.

Snake

Jorge Belda said...

sweet! thanks for the news Snake Boy but my account is still inactive :( got all my kills and losses uploaded to the KB though

Anonymous said...

@Jorge and @CrazyC....I think I may have cracked it. I am finally in the administrators group so hopefully I will get admin emails now...including registration confirmation emails!

F

Anonymous said...

ach - blow that. I can't add users. I DO NOT have full access permissions. Who knows PhP 3.0 Admin??????

F

Anonymous said...

Ouch indeed Captain going awol = not good indeed. Good luck to the first mate and whoever fills the void.