[Sanek]

The whole duke4 chain of websites was down for more than a day, and it seems like no one so much as blinked.
I guess there was just some maintenance work or some minor issue since everthing is OK now, however...whenever it happens I you really can't help but think how fragile our community really are.

What I mean is that every time something happens to Duke-related forums, it becomes a tremendous blow for a community. DNR forums shutdown was unfortunate, as well as decline of AMC and CGS forums. I remember the old timers tell stories how grand Dukeworld forums was, and when it went down it basically wiped out like 90% of the community up to that point.

So everybody's here in one place right now, which is great I guess because you can get the biggest possible amount of discussions/feedback/content here, and there's sites like MSDN that have semi-regular updates. I don't have anything against it, but it's sad to realise that if Duke4 will be down for good, it'll be the end of community as we know it.

Just think about it.

[Danukem]

Sanek, on 07 November 2019 - 12:28 PM, said:

and it seems like no one so much as blinked.

That's not true, we blinked a lot on Discord.

[oasiz]

A lot of people got the news from duke4 discord and there were questions raised about this.

In a cynical way, forums are getting more and more obsolete as the days go by as a discussion medium since the whole principle is based on BBS-like "connect-download/post-offline" mentality with no real time aspect. Instant messaging / group discussions have largely replaced that.
For publications, articles, insightful discussion on a certain topic forums still do rule, however a lot of the chitchat and such is/has moved to such chatrooms. I expect this trend to continue.

But yes, of course these forums have a place for me, having frequented the community discussions since around 02/03 3DR days.
It's just that today there is a secondary channel for a quick chat.

[The Battlelord]

This forum is always on my screen when am away from keyboard, hands down.
Usually i don't use Discord for this, but in these situations you should if you care, when i read TX's reply "rip" i undesrtood he was trolling .

[Sanek]

@Trooper Dan oops my bad, I should visit discord more often


@oasiz Yeah I know that forums is viewed as some relics of the past by some (doomworld is still huge btw) but still, the fact we all here discussing the game for so many years must mean something. It just won't be the same if it'll be some Facebook or Discord group.

[Danukem]

At least with a privately owned website operated by people who have an interest in maintaining and curating discussions, I can be reasonably confident that the content won't disappear. I'm not so sure about platforms like Discord in the long-term.

[Tea Monster]

Yeah, if TX and Yatta own the server, nothing is going to suddenly disappear into the ether like it was threatened to with the 3DR forums.

To be honest, the site's relevance has faded recently. Mod projects are waning and it's not like you are waiting with baited breath for the next instalment in the series from GBX. We missed a day or so of '4Chan-lite' antics from the usual suspects. Meh.

[Radar]

I remember when people said the same thing about email. Avid Discord users always talk about how they think forums are becoming ancient history. Not sure why they feel the need to reinforce the mentality so publicly. Just use whatever is convenient.

Anyway, if the situation ever arises where the site owners no longer wish to maintain this site, they should simply transfer ownership to surviving members. Just suddenly pulling the plug would have to be an intentional dick move.

[Mark]

I mostly avoid Discord except for the 2 servers where I am involved with projects. Otherwise I avoid them because I can't stand the constant chatter from fanboys. More power to them if thats what they like so much. Its just not for me.

[MusicallyInspired]

I forgot all about the Discord to be honest. I contacted Hendricks on Facebook to ask what happened.

[Zaxx]

I tried joining the Duke4 Discord server once but it said that I was banned even though I've never been there.

[Mark]

I guess you've built a rep for yourself.

[Zaxx]

Now that this thread reminded me about it I tried again and it worked now. I don't know how banning on Discord works but it happened to me once that my IP or previous IP or whatever was identical to someone else's on a forum and I got accused of having an alternate account. Anything can happen even if it's based on IP.

[NY00123]

It's good to see that the Duke4.net and eduke32.com forums and websites are back after a short while. Hearing certain bits about the downtime in the Duke4.net Discord probably hasn't hurt.

On platforms like Discord putting an end to forums, this seems to occur with various platforms; Not just Discord, but also with other alternative means of communication, like Facebook and Reddit. Well, Reddit itself has its share of discussion forums. There are also the Steam Community forums.

For me, it possibly already occurred very long ago, with IRC. Even beforehand, I wasn't really the individual who'd bother to register to differing forums. Even after registering, I tend to not post without having a good reason. Guess that it's just more convenient for me to use IRC, and in the last 2.5 years, Discord, for quickly sending messages. Forums are still good places to make announcements of sorts, say about projects, and then handling feedbacks about these.

As for IRC and Discord, it does look like Discord has generally displaced IRC for most relevant users during the last ~3-4.5 years; IRC is indeed an open communication protocol which can be implemented by anybody who sufficiently desires to, and there are IRC servers that you may connect to without registering, I believe. But, it looks like Discord has generally been considered way more convenient. The fact that it makes the same data accessible from different devices must have its impact, just for one example. It's also way easier to join a Discord server when you know there's one specific app to use, and it also isn't hard to create a new Discord server.

[Tea Monster]

That dosent change the fact that Discord and it's contents are stored on their servers, which you have no control over. Discord could sell out to fucking Oath or MS tomorrow and everyone and everything on it is completely boned

[oasiz]

People don't care ... sadly
But yes, like I said, forums of course have their place for proper releases and such, not saying that discord is a one-stop replacement. It (along with slack, etc..) simply re-invented the wheel (IRC) and made it more accessible.
IRC in many communities served the exact same role that discord has now for many years, I don't think forums will die away because of that, simply that the PRIMARY outlet for updates and talking about current events tends to happen over such chatrooms.
It's just that now since IRC-like features are finally accessible to all (more importantly, persistent sessions so that you're always "reachable" / backlog without resorting to bouncers/shell accounts) that it's just more prevalent than it used to be.

If anything, it's a good thing to have even more redundancy like this.

[ck3D]

I kind of pondered the same thoughts as you Sanek (I also don't use Discord), but then remembered, no matter how crucially they're being used, whatever their format is - message boards or otherwise - platforms are just platforms, they are tools, i.e.. means not ends; the real importance is in the base of the individuals using them and those would exist and create for the game no matter what. The energy of the community has had no problem moving on from, say, AMC to DN-R to here before; obviously, emotionally it felt like the community took a hit every time but in reality it was merely signs of time passing, and certain (key) individuals just moving on in life, but in general the fanbase of the game has always been passionate enough to save the essence of everything I'd say. I feel like even if thousands of message board posts technically got lost, it wouldn't matter much to the state of the community so long as creators move onto another public platform and start anew, because it's the really present energy that keeps things going. Sure it's cool to have those monumental memorials around, but I'm not sure they are an absolute necessity to the survival of the community.

I'd say a sign that might be more representative that 'the community is dying' (which honestly I think I've always heard since 2004) than technicalities (not that I'm detached, but I'm downplaying the possible emotional projections on purpose as considering subjective sentiments in the equation would be erroneous) would be the amount of release and project threads and overall participation in the mapping section (or the What Are You Working On threads), if you're willing to look at numbers, but in reality people are still consistently working hard for, on and around the game (thinking of the eDuke32 team etc.). The original fanbase of the game which comprises some of the most experienced mappers is getting older, too, which means less time to publicly announce projects and more fundamentally, to work on them - and whoever's been at a craft for 20+ years is bound to have a vision so sharp and specific, they most likely won't release anything that isn't ambitious, which means more work in the shadows and less public activity. But those sections of the boards still do get some action, and I even find video playthroughs of new user maps I've never seen from completely unknown authors quite regularly, on YouTube.

TLDR; I'm not too worried, people always will keep doing what they do and finding ways to connect whilst doing so.

edit - oh yeah, since all of Duke4 was down, I was most especially worried about the map hosting websites e.g. MSDN and whatnot for half a second, then I realized I trusted the passion of anyone still running such websites at the dusk of 2019, at least enough to assume they have everything backed up. Reviews are a shit ton of voluntary work, so I don't think any author is completely careless about all the time they've put into their archive.

[Jimmy]

I memed the outage into existence with my last post in the Outhouse.

Jim Rockford, on 06 November 2019 - 11:13 AM, said:

This site is dead anyway lmao

[Sanek]

@ck3D yeah, people will find a way to communicate with each other, as long as there's a passion for a subject.

ck3D, on 08 November 2019 - 03:52 AM, said:

The original fanbase of the game which comprises some of the most experienced mappers is getting older,

It's great that there's such dedicated group of people, but it's also noticeable that there's the same faces over and over, and the new mappers is a rarity these days. Basically, the ones who started mapping since the game's release or early 2000s is the fans for life by now; I don't expect anyone discovering Duke today and start making maps of the same quality.

On a side note, it kinda strange that there's also smaller, but still active Blood community which makes awesome stuff as far as Build engine is concerned, but Blood mappers is not making maps for Duke, which is just wrong imo. The only mapper I know who made maps for both games is Quakis. I think that both Blood and Duke communities must have a synergy of sorts, when Blood mappers make content for Duke or vice versa. Sure, I don't expect that a guy can like both games, but 9 times out of 10 if you play one game you're aware of the other.

ck3D, on 08 November 2019 - 03:52 AM, said:

edit - oh yeah, since all of Duke4 was down, I was most especially worried about the map hosting websites e.g. MSDN and whatnot for half a second, then I realized I trusted the passion of anyone still running such websites at the dusk of 2019, at least enough to assume they have everything backed up. Reviews are a shit ton of voluntary work, so I don't think any author is completely careless about all the time they've put into their archive.

There's still gamers.org FTP, which have tons of the 90s stuff.

There's no forums as big as this one unfortunately, but if anything happens to Duke4, we all know where to go.

[oasiz]

Yes, Blood is on the build engine but that doesn't mean that the people have the same feelings towards Duke3D. The same way Duke mappers aren't really interested in Blood or SW mapping in general, aside from some exceptions.
Blood itself stands on it's own and in many ways is superior to duke. If that was your game back in the day then there is simply no need for revisiting Duke3D the same way.

In the end both are just old outdated shooters with nostalgia keeping it alive for most. Blood recently was made accessible for the first time since 15+ years and I'm sure that is the big reason for a lot of people revisiting that game as of recent.
Aside from maybe Ion Fury bringing some new guys in "directly", Build games are just a second class citizen in the current 90s FPS wave that's going on, most of the new users are generally a splinter off from doom communities where this current trend is the most active.

Duke is dead, community ain't. Gotta keep the spirit alive.