Unfortunately today we received the sad news that Ziff Davis, owner of the FileFront network, have decided to close the network as of 30th March 2009. This leaves us without a home temporarily, we are feverishly working to ensure no website data is lost.
This blog has been started to keep you in touch with the Forgotten Hope team during this time.
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Did you manage to retrieve any of the forum ? Maybe the Filefront people could give you a database dump of the forum before they leave for good ?
ReplyDeleteNo Barney, we have not managed to retreive anything. As I understand from talking to Admiral Donutz, even n0e, who was in charge of the entire forum, wasn't allowed to salvage anything.
ReplyDeleteDamn, the Official FH website, the FH Forums and the FH2 Wiki are heading south? I liked all those things... Will you fellas be able to save everything? Will this have an adverse effect on the development of the Normandy Patch? This sucks big time.
ReplyDeleteOn a different I now have a new desktop, teeming with Tigers.
Well Ionizer, we did back up the website, wiki and developer forums, but the public forums are gone.
ReplyDeleteAs for the effect of this on the progress of the Normandy patch, if there is any, I would say it is definately minor.
Well, this sucks. I hope it will all be back to normal by next year. Still, got to keep on marching...
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ReplyDeleteWell... I guess its time for FH to have its own forum! One of many things that depresses me about this is my Pic of the day thread is gone. :=\
ReplyDeleteSo is the new Website going to use the same template I assume?
Well that sucks.
ReplyDeleteOh and if your going for a new website anyways, update the background with FH2 screenshots instead of that FH1 one. ^^
Thing that depresses me the most is that U&R is now completely erased. I do think I lost the U&R toolbar now. Well maybe Ted got it saved :P
Anyways, praying for an April Fools joke.
Wow this is crazy! Who would of thought Filefront of all sites would go down!?
ReplyDeleteWell men, it's time to set up base camp and hope we're not here too long. We need to find plenty of firewood. All of the childrens will gather around Jumjum who is now taking over for general school teacher from now on. Von Mudra will continue to oversee the proliferation of the Lafette and Lighting must resume dream crushing in full strength.
We will live on!
BTW the above post is by Hockeywarrior... not quite sure why it said "Fred" instead.
ReplyDeleteSo these are the forums at the moment. I guess we'll survive... for now.
ReplyDeleteWell, as far as I can tell about what has happened, Ziff Davis Media had been in a modified form of bankruptcy since last year. In January of 2009 they sold FileFront and other stuff to the parent company of PC Magazine. So apparently the new owners have decided that they are not getting enough ad revenue (note to self: find out how much AdBlock and similar programs may have cost FileFront)to justify the costs of the huge bandwidth they are providing for free. Therefore, it's the end of a free ride.
ReplyDeleteYes, the new owners have every right to close down a free forum. But just because they have the right doesn't mean they are right to do it. It was chickenshit of them to shut down the forums with no notice whatsoever, and to give us 5 days to dl other files before we lose it all forever.
In effect this means there is absolutely no evidence that the Forgotten Hope forums ever existed at all. Worse ...sob.... there is no record of Off Topic! Nothing to show the beauty, the splendor, the wonder of my Off Topic. O, woe! for the world is the lesser for it.....
So. What now? Well, all we need is a specific point in the universe for us all to land, and for right now this is it. I'm concerned that we will lose people who either don't think to come looking for FH through its website, or just give up and move on. So it's important we hang in there and let the devs work their majick.
It is left to the rest of us in the meantime to stand together. To me! To me! Rally to me! We few; we happy few; we band of inbred cousins. Let us remember the stirring words of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth: "My whores! My whores! My kingdom for some whores!" If we keep his words in mind, our task should not be harder than we can bear.
Oh WTF! whats a girl gotta do to keep up with her pimp stylie?
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ReplyDeleteThanks for some clarification.. jum.
ReplyDeleteI already miss all of you.. :+[
*hugs myself*
Fear not Jummy,
ReplyDeleteA kindly, prevailing wind will blow us into a fair home port where I await your calls from the crowsnest of "thar she blows".
Maybe use the FH2 toolbox advert to let people know of our eventual new home.
The devs can also use the in-game news update tool to alert people.
ReplyDeleteAre there any files related to Forgotten Hope 1 and 2 that we should be downloading for preservation from FF before all is lost?
ReplyDeleteie: singleplayer maps, server files, soundpacks, etc.?
We have a thread up in the FH private forums dedicated to salvaging downloads of previous FH1 files, mappacks, texture/sound packs, as well as other BF1942 mods. It looks like everything is covered among all of us there.
ReplyDeleteIf there are any Singleplayer files hosted exclusively on FF, then someone may want to get those.
Well.. people did not had Internet in 200BC.. so its the death of noone.. i hope you understand too.
ReplyDeleteThis is like.. the death of a friend.. you killed him and im sad. But come on! im sure Lobo or Lighting will get a Site somewhere.. lets go to these awesome FH-Fan sites like FH Hamsters.. or Forgotten Honor!.. these guys are still there.. our last "Place" for FH is there.. of course we still have this Blog and "ze tiga kickin asses in a night map lal".. and yes.. i am torenico (Wonder why my name is Hector.. my father name)....
I think there maybe something deeper behind this. Think: what started the unrest behind Unite and Revolt? It was numbers! The old crowd versus, the, well um older crowd. This is an extreme attempt to stop any such thing from ever happening again!
ReplyDeleteBut yea seriously it's a big set back to everything our community stands for. The I pwn you thread, the epic picture threads, of course Unite and Revolt, and no more tromps into the Spam forum.
It seems that a page has turned in FH2 history and now we are all left to start things over again. Build it up block by block until it regains its former glory. For FH2! For the future! For Normandy!
I'm already going through withdrawal...I keep clicking my link to the forums, only to realize too late that they're not there.
ReplyDeleteJust too late.... :(
Ah, this all explains a lot. Guess it's definitely not an April Fools' joke.
ReplyDeleteWell, at least this will give me an excuse to post up the edited, updated version of the "French Weapons", along with a French uniforms one, once the new forums are up.
Keep soldiering! Hope is not yet Forgotten!
oh man.... I was hoping to finish my map and show to everyone on the forum.... but now there's no forum...
ReplyDeleteI heard that a bunch of the old Admins managed to salvage a large chunk of the website and are going to start it all over again. I have no idea where it will be located, but I hear some of the old admins talking about Strategyinformer.
ReplyDeleteApparently one person said that he will update his "twitter" thing with a link when the site gets off the ground:
http://twitter.com/mikouen
"Good news! If things go according to plan, we'll have forums for the new network up within a week, with a test site."
Here's another refugee site (not many people though):
http://forums.theexiledgamers.com/
-Lupin
To follow up on my previous post, the best source for information regarding filefront and the migration plans is to go to http://battlefield2.filefront.com/ and read the comments on various news updates. Namely the news updates "New Picture of the Month section", "FileFront Network Insider #140".
ReplyDeleteThe POTD comments are also a good place for updates.
-Lupin
I really hope they figure out something quickly. Not having a main website is never a good thing, even if it's only for a short time.
ReplyDeletethis is so sad! I honestly feel nothing short of shattered... Even though I didn't post much on the fh forums I still visited it like 3 times a day just to see what was happening. So everything is lost? nooo my "I pwn you thread" ..lost forever in the hollow cyber-realms of nothingness... even though I didn't really post pics there.
ReplyDeleteNow I'll just have to play FH2 a lot more to make up for this morale loss.
How dare you crush my Maus spam! :-)
ReplyDeleteAnyway nice to see plans are in the works to get the forums/website back up and running. Now a moment of silence for the threads we lost....
Damn! A tough times came upon FH community. I hope we'll stick together and overcome this soon.
ReplyDeleteAdn please make a Tutorials & Tactics sub-forum. Pretty please. It was near complition and suddenly poof - all forums gone. ;(
Hockeywarrior started me thinking. But I know something he does not. The Unite and Revolt spam thread, with it's endless long-form spam, led to a repeating overdraft of FileFront's bandwidth allocation. Do you undertsand what this means?! FileFront's budget was repeatedly blown because of the continued major waste of bandwidth caused by U&R endless babbling. And now we know:
ReplyDeleteUNITE AND REVOLT KILLED THE FH FORUM!!!
They did it. They killed us. Too damn much bandwidth waste. How do I know it was U&R? Because I have the evidence! It's the double-secret minutes of a special emergency disaster contingency ad hoc meeting of the Board of Directors of the new owners of FileFront, from the Fall of 2008.
Allow me to quote the relevant portion: "Gentlemen, we all know we could probably continue to fund the free forums. I particularly like that smart Forgotten Hope group. But there's also a major problem there with a huge waste of our bandwidth. They had some ridiculous thread called "Unite and Revolt" which was really just a spam thread. But the posters who pushed it just refused to send it to the Spam forum where it belonged. I'm afraid we simply can't afford to permit such open rebellion to go unpunished, much less let such massive amounts of bandwidth just spew out into the ozone. So our decision is final: we must kill the forums. It's a shame a few childish forum users ruined the fun for everyone. We'd better keep these minutes secret, because if anyone out there ever learns that the Unite and Revolt posters are single-handedly responsible for the destruction of the FileFront forums...well, those boys just wouldn't be safe anywhere on earth. If anyone ever found out they caused this, the U&R kids would be hunted down like animals and then torn limb from limb. Here, I'm giving this dangerous transcript to our Recording Secretary, Mr. JumJum, for him to find a safe place where these minutes will never be found I know we can trust him to find a safe place for it."
Yes. I can find a safe place for it.
Quick men - alert the peasants! Get your torches! March on the castle! Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war! Bring me the heads of the Uniters and Revolters!
Are you guys going to save all the screenshots and art of the old site?
ReplyDeleteDont worry guys, we will get new FH site and forums which are tied up to FH only, not being like a dead fetus joined to the living siamese twin like we used to be at Filefront.
ReplyDeleteOnly thing I miss is the POTD thread (original, not the crummy ripoff). But we can always restart once we get new place. It shouldnt take long, methinks. Also, all possible ways to inform people are in use. Blog, toolbox, ingame messages and even the steamgroup will keep you informed. Stick around!
So there really was something odd going on in FF. I was wondering why I couldn't go to forums. It sucks to lose Filefront as I've always liked it more than, ugh, Fileplanet... Oh well I hope you guys find a new home for FH.
ReplyDelete-Mokusaku
Worry not my friends, I have all my eggs backuped and ready for the new forums!
ReplyDeleteWe, the U&R revolutionary force, do not, I repeat, do NOT claim responsibility for the tragic, premature death of the Filefront forums.
ReplyDeleteWe yet believe that there are others who have to be accounted for what has happened. You know it brethren, I know it, we all know what kind of decadence spread or has been spread in all of forumdom these days. It was plastered with old, incrusted and pathologically intolerant and self-centered ideas, promoted by personification of those so called "old ideals". Strong they believed themselves, weak they were - and tried to conceal the obvious signs of decay by blaming all that was young, sprouting and prolific.
To all reasonable men out there, I ask you:
Wasn't it THEM, who gnarled drooling at the reform of the forum advertising agenda, that might well have been the only hope to salvage what now is forever lost?
Wasn't it THEM, who were reluctant of ANY natural metamorphosis of the forum culture in any way, may it have been oh so dovelike, good meaning and procreative?
And wasn't it THEM, comrades, that finally dragged our homelands down into the abyss of their abject bigotry and yet have the exorbitance to throw the first stone?
All proud men of the FH community, artists and warriors, intellectuals and workers, young and old, I invoke you! I call upon you in the struggles, that roughen up the water surface these times, not knowing which new powers they woke up in the depths of the sea!
Be strong! Fight on! For although our old home has sunken and is lost forever as atlantis was, we shall pass the pillars of hercules, as every end is a new beginning!
We are the fruitbringing seed, and this will be our virgin, fertile soil! Let our freedom, our culture, our ways flourish and overgrow what is old and withered!
Let us be as one! Unite!
Let us stand up! Revolt!
The end of an era. But with an end, there is always a beggining: There is light yet at the end of this tunnel we find ourselves in. If we can keep Jummy and the U&R's from each other's throats until we exit into the light, then all will be saved. United we remain strong; but if splintered our Hope will be truly Forgotten!
ReplyDeleteAnd when we do exit the tunnel into the green pastures beyond, we will find a familliar home made better.
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ReplyDeletePlease guys, don't spam this blog entry with all sorts of off-topic comments. We are doing the best we can to have a forum up again as soon as possible. If all goes as planned, we will have everything up and running even before FileFront closes down on the 30th.
ReplyDeleteJum, have a big cup of shut the fuck up.
ReplyDeleteIt was far from funny and if intended serious, it was pathetic.
That's awesome Lightning. Who will be hosting these forums? Some other community (F|H, PBF etc.) or a single person?
ReplyDeleteFrom what I gather via a link Invictus gave me, nOe and another guy are working on backing up the FF forum memory... for certain parts.
ReplyDeleteWell... ahem in light of this recent discovery and reveal by Jumjum, I do think it's worth mentioning that I was simply present for the Unite and Revolt thread but did not really egg on the spam, so to speak (though that sounds like a good food combination).
ReplyDeleteI'd like take some time to separate myself from this incident... all I did was go into a thread, post that it's interesting that we all have different numbers, and others took my idea and ran with it until it went waaaay too far. Kinda like the French Revolution!
Anywho, just wanted all of you to know that if the heads begin to roll outside the Bastille if you catch my drift...
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ReplyDeleteSorry, Lightning. Just trying to get the passengers to sing along to "Nearer My God To Thee" as the water rides up the Grand Staircase.....
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of terrible movies; some guy in Finland has announced that he will build an exact replica of the Titanic on land and fill it with resturants, pubs and stores.
ReplyDeleteHey guys!
ReplyDeleteJust returned from my short trip to Berlin yesterday night to see my beloved FH forum is down. :(
It's good to hear though, Lightning, that you'll probably get things worked out in such a short time. Nice tiger pics btw. :)
As always, the Forgotten Hope team doesn't fail us. I'm sorry to hear, along with roughly 99% of the Battlefield Community, that the Filefront website and affiliated websites are now indefinitely shut down. Let's not forget to hope for it to be reopened once we get the economy back up.
ReplyDeleteCan't wait to see what Forgotten Hope has in store for us in the future. Keep up the fantastic work guys!
I am glad our new home will no longer be attached to that great, tempting teat that was FF. That old hag has run dry and FH is grown up anyways.
ReplyDeleteJum makes a fair point IMO, upon landing on our new shores it is imperative that order be kept in our new forums (not pointing fingers per se). A new home means a new set of rules
for all of us, both young and old.
Keep us posted, and this year please cancel any April Fools' joke you had planned as I will suffer a massive coronary if any more bad FH news comes my way.
,cheers
I fully agree with shake on the order to be kept. Hence, as the mods will have free hand in designing the new forum, it would be a good think to have an Off-Topic board again ***which does NOT give anyone post counts***, which would mean that nobody should have any reason to cry if a fun thread would exist, just for people to chat. Post count ONLY for FH-related discussion, support, bug reports etc. pp.
ReplyDeleteThat would mean we could lie the childish and boring spam-discussion aside, I didn't read what was going on in these comments today, but I can well imagine what is was like.
Question, why does anyone care about post count. Us FHOT guys sure as fuck didn't.... Any spam in the U&R thread was just for fun. Otherwise, we wouldn't have cared when the groups thing comes around.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea why they do, but it was the only argument of those who hated it I could grab, the rest usually was fill-up blabberish. I don't really know whats up with post count, I actually wanted to make a new account in order to grab a shorter name, I don't give a fuck for if my post count is 20 or 1200.
ReplyDeleteThough some would call it blastphemy I did think U&R was a ton of fun... at times that thread was hilarious... it just spun off in random directions and it was fun to come back and see what random thing was being discussed!
ReplyDeleteWho gives a crap about post count?
Yep, U&R was contained spam, and fun at that.
ReplyDeleteAnd I do sorta care about post count in terms of seniority. It was very easy to see if a poster was an old vet, or a young guy. Hell, you could actually see people develop as their post count rose.
I honestly think that keeping a post count and rep system would still work great towards that, though at first it'll be hard to separate us old vets from the new noobs...>__<
awww, i almost made it to 400 posts
ReplyDeleteHonestly I only checked the U&R thread one time, and that was when it was first created. Am I missing something?
ReplyDelete-Lupin
I nevert felt the blues of U&R and for me it was spam with bowler hat and eyeglass sayin' 'good day sir' from time to time. But spam is spam in the end. I didn't participate in it as I fought it was a waste of time but I never was against it - there has to be something behind it's popularity.
ReplyDeleteAnyway we're going a bit off topic here. I hope devs will make a new forum really soon or this blog is gonna turn into a post mayhem. Only FH community can change topics rapidly from disaster discussion to really unrelated topic 'I like cheese'.
Let's forget the past and look forward to our new (independent?) forum where we can rebuild our society.
ReplyDeleteErr. Don't forget all of the past, just the occasional bad memories. :P
ReplyDeleteJust found another refugee site:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.therogueforums.com/opinions-welcomed-suggestions-feedback/85766-we-need-new-forums.html
There is talk of allowing the FH team to move to this website in the thread.
-Lupin
Hey guys how about you collect donations and buy a MYIS website?
ReplyDeleteYou know, a while ago I was on this Dutch forum and I loved it, it had no post count, no startdate Just the location, name and time the post was made.
ReplyDeleteNow I am completely with my Germanic friend here, away with the stupid discussion about so called spam.
LOL "refugee sites" you would think there's some sort of natural disaster or something...
ReplyDeleteI contacted Obama about our situation. So don't worry, good is to come.
ReplyDeleteWell, we are victim of a disaster Hockey. We lost the best site for downloads and the most fun forums out there.
ReplyDeleteAnd please, no Obajokesma. They no fun.
Btw, fileshack.com has always worked well for downloads.
ReplyDelete"Refugee site", huh? Well, might as well. We are "DPs" - displaced posters - aren't we?
ReplyDeleteHow about a Forum-In-Exile? It could be like Paris for the Romanov relatives in the 1920's; or London for the Free French, Polish, Dutch, Norwegian, Czech, and Belgian governments in WWII. Or maybe Casablanca!
Suddenly I feel a strong urge to put on a dinner jacket and go to Rick's American Cafe for cocktails with mon Capitaine Renault.....
Anyone else suffering from withdrawal symptoms? I keep feeling the need to check FHOT and have a good laugh at the endless debates.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I keep typing in "foru" into the adress bar, when I realize the forums are gone.
ReplyDeletehttp://forums.theexiledgamers.com/
ReplyDeleteThere you go Jum. The name even fits your idea. Well almost.
We will return with a great forum!
"Les sanglots long des violons. - De l'automne blessent mon coeur d'une langeuer monotone."
The first line has just been said. The second one will be the start of a new forum!
http://forums.theexiledgamers.com/viewforum.php?f=53
ReplyDeleteI'm currently working with the admins on getting this set up fully, and got some classic threads up. Even if this is only temp until the devs can get new forums for us, this will work for now :)
This is kinda like the situation the American colonists faced when they were on their own -- they had just separated from their mother country, Great Britain, and then were left to serve themselves.
ReplyDeleteWe shall rise again! To be honest FH has needed its own forum for a long time. It's too bad it had to end this way, but I guess there's always a silver lining.
Until then, do we get food coupons since we're all "homeless" now?
No, but I'll teach you how to make your own food in my new Snacks & Pastries thread 2.0!
ReplyDeleteBravo for the exiled gamers!! http://forums.theexiledgamers.com/viewforum.php?f=53
ReplyDeleteJust found something written up by n0e regarding the new site:
ReplyDelete"Hey all. I know many of you have eagerly been awaiting any sort of news as to what is going on and what we plan to do for the future.
To those that don't know I, along with a tremendous amount of help from folks like Phenix, and Ronnie are making backups of all of the network sites and we plan on moving to a new network of fan sites that will be open soon. For legal reasons we may not be able to include the items such as reviews, potd's and other various bits of information on the sites. However, with the permission of the modders we will retain all of the files. Those who do not wish to continue having their files hosted on the new network need only contact me after the first of the sites are online. I'll see to it that they are promptly removed per your request. We will not hassle you about it or tell you to '***** off'. Just remember that we're restoring a database so please don't get upset after seeing them initially. We respect your copyrights.
There will be forums up and running sometime hopefully next week. When they are up I will provide a link here so you know where to go from then on. I certainly hope to see many familiar faces and even new ones. There will be a clean slate for those coming back as well. If you were banned for whatever reason, you are allowed to return and given a second chance.
The new network and forums will have one more thing that I'm sure will make everyone happy. There will be NO corporate involvement. Things will be run by people who actually play games for people who play games.
I'll have more news for everyone as it's available. I wish to thank everyone for their continued patience and I'm certainly cannot wait to have the good parts of FileFront return while just trimming out the bad.
Thanks!
Jeff 'n0e' Mills"
I'll be sure to post a link here when the time comes.
-Lupin
Guys there's a way to recover some pages of FH's old forum. Just search for thread links and topic names you remember on Google and click to see it In Cache.
ReplyDeleteCurrently it shows the pages as they were on 23rd March. Try it and save as many as you can!
Here are examples
ReplyDeleteImportant info for FH2 Admins:
http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:PodZPqRysiAJ:forums.filefront.com/fh-help-support/321910-forgotten-hope-battlefield-1942-windows-vista.html+forgotten+hope+forum+vista&cd=1&hl=pt-PT&ct=clnk&gl=pt
FH and Vista:
http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:E4hDu1_A6E4J:forums.filefront.com/forgotten-hope-general-discussion/341547-fh2-server-admins-read-here-updated-very-important.html+%22forums+filefront+com+forgotten+hope+general+discussion%22&cd=2&hl=pt-PT&ct=clnk&gl=pt
FH 2.1 Problems & Solutions:
http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:Dpkia3Sih5oJ:forums.filefront.com/fh-help-support/362556-forgotten-hope-2-1-problems-solutions.html+forgotten+hope+shaders&cd=3&hl=pt-PT&ct=clnk&gl=pt
I've saved these. If you can remember other important threads do save them as well quickly before Google re-caches the pages!
Also set your browser to work "as offline" and browse your site visit history to save more pages.
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ReplyDeleteAlso if you can't find a page by the name of the thread try searching for the first general section, see its cache, look for the page you wanted to see (if you're lucky it was still on 1st page and in cache) and copy the link to it. Then just search for that link in Google.
ReplyDeleteUse "" at the start and end of your search to search for specific phrases. You can also go to advanced search and tell it to search only on page links. Doing this and searching for links and page names I remembered I managed to salvage a couple of stickies. Here's what I got so far:http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/12/7/1631495/Salvaged%20FH%20%20Forum%20Stickies%201st%20page.rar
Lol save the planet! save the trees! save the whales! SAVE THE FH FORUM THREADS!!!!
ReplyDeleteOh and one more thing (sorry for all the consecutive posts...) here's the salvaged pages that include the files (images etc) of the page besides the html: http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/12/7/1631495/Salvaged%20FH%20%20Forum%20Stickies%201st%20page.rar%20%28saved%20files%20besides%20html%29.rar
ReplyDelete