BioBoards going down permanently

[Tybae]

I read on the Bioware forums that they are permanently shutting down the BW boards and moving over to their social networking site. 

This will in no way affect the AME or the way we do things. 

[Andarian]

I read on the Bioware forums that they are permanently shutting down the BW boards and moving over to their social networking site. 

This will in no way affect the AME or the way we do things.

To be exact just for the record, they're closing the old Bioware forums to new posts and then putting everything in the archives. Bioware has archived old forum posts before, so this isn't an entirely new procedure. All the existing posts in the old forums will be preserved in the archives, but the community is now moving over to the Bioware social site.

The Social Site has a lot of interesting new features and is kind of like Facebook for Bioware gamers. Incidentally it was launched at the DA Builder's Event that I attended last July, so I had the opportunity to get one of the first dozen or so non-Bioware employee accounts on it. It started out very primitive and has developed incredibly since that first Beta version.

[Olivier Leroux]

It should be noted that the guild forums on the old BioWare forum site will also be shut down (not necessarily on Monday 19th but any day after that without further notice) and that their content will NOT be archived. So if you want to keep certain parts of a guild forum, it's advised to start copying them.

[Invisig0th]

I received the following e-mail today regarding the old Bioware forums.

Yesterday (June 14), we learned that a hacker gained unauthorized access to the decade-old BioWare community server system associated with the Neverwinter Nights forums.  We have taken appropriate steps to protect our consumers' data and launched an ongoing evaluation of the seriousness of the breach.  We have determined that no credit card data was compromised, nor did we ever have or store sensitive data like social security numbers. However, hackers may have obtained your user account name and password, email, password, country and date of birth.  As a result, we have disabled your legacy Bioware Account.  To create a new account please visit social.bioware.com.

We take the security of your information very seriously and regret any inconvenience this may have caused you.  If your username, email address and/or password on the Neverwinter Nights forums are similar to those you use on other sites, we recommend changing the password at those sites as well.  We advise all of our fans to always be aware of any suspicious emails or account activity and report any suspicious emails and account activity to Customer Support at 1-866-543-5435.

If you have questions, please visit our FAQ at http://support.ea.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5367 or contact Customer Support at the phone number above.

Aaryn Flynn
Studio GM, BioWare Edmonton
VP, Electronic Arts

Not really a big deal from my point of view -- I use a throw away password for things like that, and those inactive boards were only there for archival purposes anyway. That is not the reason I am posting here. I still do refer to those forums a lot when looking for answers to building or custom content questions, but you don't even need to be logged in for that.

HOWEVER, it looks like while trying to resolve this problem, Bioware chose to remove the old NWN forums entirely.  As of the time I am writing this post, all links to threads or pages on the old site at nwn.bioware.com just redirect to the www.bioware.com home page.

Even worse, considering the extra hassle of trying to prevent hackers and the cost of maintentance, it is unfortunately quite likely that they may not find it worth the time and money to put those old forums back online.  It is quite possible that all of that valuable information is offline *permanently*. In which case, we have lost an enormous amount of collective knowledge.

I really hope I am wrong and  those old NWN forums are put back online at some point -- but personally, I wouldn't bet on it. Anyway, thought you folks should know.

[Andarian]

HOWEVER, it looks like while trying to resolve this problem, Bioware chose to remove the old NWN forums entirely.  As of the time I am writing this post, all links to threads or pages on the old site at nwn.bioware.com just redirect to the www.bioware.com home page.

Even worse, considering the extra hassle of trying to prevent hackers and the cost of maintentance, it is unfortunately quite likely that they may not find it worth the time and money to put those old forums back online.  It is quite possible that all of that valuable information is offline *permanently*. In which case, we have lost an enormous amount of collective knowledge.

I really hope I am wrong and  those old NWN forums are put back online at some point -- but personally, I wouldn't bet on it. Anyway, thought you folks should know.

Fortunately, it looks like the prospects for a return of the old Bioware forum data is quite promising, based on Aaryn Flynn's follow-up post from earlier today:

(c) What's happened to the legacy forums,  postings etc?
We turned off public-facing access to the legacy forums for reasons of safety and expediency but are currently working on a plan to bring them back in a way that ensures your information remains safe.  Look for more information on this in the near future as our plans develop.

By the way -- good to see you again, Invisig0th! Hope everything's going well.

[jml]

I was really shocked when seeing such a library with thousands of words written by thousands of people killed in one shot.
Words might die, by themselves, but should never be killed by any human being.
I must say, I found it a little hard to believe an haker being responsible for such a crime. Possible but not certain.
A fine way for Bioware to show his honnesty in the matter would be to restore the old site... as long as it's technically possible. 
The only way to remove any doubt...
We shall see.

Those words were written by us. They now belong to us. Not to any company in the world. Even a loved one.

[Olivier Leroux]

I must say, I found it a little hard to believe an haker being responsible for such a crime. Possible but not certain.

They didn't mean to imply that the hackers were directly responsible for the shutdown of the forums, of course it was BioWare taking them offline - but as a consequence of the hacking assault that made the account data connected to the forums vulnerable. And that's something I find very believable, seeing how often it has happened to others recently (see Sony etc.).

[jml]

Damn, you're right again  
That is what they say has happened, and probably how it has. Even if, from what I know, an hack attack strikes in one shot, so why saying nothing was stolen... if they succeeded preventing the very attack itself by removing everything before?
Still, they can put it back online soon enough then.
Now, about the only real matter at stake, roleplaying: shall we?  

[Olivier Leroux]

That is what they say has happened, and probably how it has. Even if, from what I know, an hack attack strikes in one shot, so why saying nothing was stolen... if they succeeded preventing the very attack itself by removing everything before?

They can't guarantee that nothing was stolen, so appropriate measures should be taken (e.g. change your passwords if they're similar to those you use for your mail or other forum accounts). But at least the CD keys don't seem to be affected by the spy attack.

Now, about the only real matter at stake, roleplaying: shall we?  

Sure, if you want to make a nomination, go ahead. 

[Invisig0th]

Six weeks later and still no legacy Bioware boards, and no updates from Bioware as to whether or not they will in fact ever be restored. Unfortunately, I seriously doubt we will ever see them again. Bioware has no compelling business reason to spend extra money finding a way to put these forums online again in a way that guarantees that member information will not be compromised. It simply does not make financial sense. Better to leave them offline and cut their losses.

As a solitary hobbyist builder who has been intensively puttering around in the toolset since the day it was released, I can honestly say that not having the legacy Bioware boards online (particularly the Custom Content and Scripting sections) is the final nail in the coffin for my interest in NWN as a platform.  When these old boards were online I could frequently find some previous discussions regarding most of the obscure questions or problems that I ran into. Those old boards were my primary resource as a builder, far more useful that everything else combined.  That vast archive of collected NWN community knowledge is now gone, most likely for good.

I'm sure people will continue building and creating custom content for NWN, but without having the legacy forums online it is going to be a HELL of a lot more difficult. This game engine is absolutely riddled with limitations and bugs and quirks, most of which were only documented and discussed in threads from the legacy forums. Without that information, builders will have no choice but to rediscover for themselves the problems and show-stoppers of the past, over and over again. Sorry, but building was already painful enough when the legacy forums were available.

So I guess it's time to finally say goodbye to our dear old Neverwinter Nights. Well, I guess we had a good run while it lasted. Best of luck to the hardy few of you who still remain.

[QSW]

I saw this on the new BioWare social site, you can also download it on the Vault. I think it will prove useful for many, here is a bit of the info provided on the Vault page...

NWN Omnibus

An ENORMOUS collection of searchable NWN reference material in one place!

What is the NWN Omnibus?
It is an attempt to gather the majority of NWN reference material together in one place and allow very quick keyword searching against all of the documents at once. It includes reference documents as well as forum threads.


What information does this release of the NWN Omnibus contain?
2DA 169 - All 575 .2DA files, current to the 1.69 release

3DS Max Export Scripts - BioWare 3DS Max export scripts documentation, which includes a good deal of information on NWN Custom Content in general. Downloadable separately here

BioWare For Developers - All 22 documents covering NWN file formats (and other things) from this page

BioWare Forums - Offline archives of the following forums from the old BioWare website, each thread in its own .HTML file. The following full forum archives from the old BioWare site are included in this release: NWN Custom Content (ARCHIVE), BioWare News Discussion, Custom Content, For Developers, Scripting, Server Admin & Toolset. Also Stickied threads for every forum were included.

Custom Content Guide 3.0 - The "Bible" of Custom Content. Downloadable separately here.

GMax & Maxscript Help - Help files for GMax (3DS Max 4) and Maxscript, downloadable separately here

Lexicon 169 - The "Bible" of NWScript (and many, many other things as well!), downloadable separately here

Tileset Construction - BioWare's NWN Tileset Construction Tutorial, downloadable separately here. I don't include any of the files, just index the information.

TXI - Every TXI officially released by BioWare as part of their content, segregated by the bif they were found in. Extremely useful for looking up how certain TXI commands were used by BioWare and whether other commands or setting were typically paired with them.

[Invisig0th]

Yes, I also noticed this submission. Extremely promising for those still active int he community, if this offline archive is as described.  Even so, it is very sad that this is suddenly the only remaining archive of this information.

[QSW]

Well nothing official has been said that the information on those boards won't become available again in the future. it was only a month ago that the BioBoards rep said they were working on a solution, sooooo....

I've e-mailed Aaryn Flynn and asked her for an update (if there is one) on the legacy boards issue. Hopefully, she'll be able to shed more light but untill then I'm not going to believe for certain that they are going to allow such a massive amount of valuable info to fall by the wayside.

Optamistic dragon here 

[Invisig0th]

As of this moment, the Omnibus submission on NWVault is the only known source for this information. That's simply a fact. And of course it is not impossible that Bioware could restore the old NWN forums -- which is exactly why I clearly stated that several times above (maybe you missed it?). Unlikely, but possible.

However, apparently you are still unclear as to why Bioware has no compelling business incentive to restore the forums. Allow me to explain.

There will be an actual, monetary cost to restoring these forums. Someone would have to stop doing other, probably more important work in order to get that work done. There will also be an additional (and likely substantial) cost for adding the enhanced security required to prevent user information from being compromised again in the future. On the other side of the equation, Neverwinter Nights generates basically no revenue at all at this late date.

It does not take a genius to see which decision makes the most sense from a business standpoint. If you think it's likely that Bioware will invest in the added cost of restoring and upgrading the forums and also expose themselves to the future legal risk of additional hacks just to placate you and a small number of users (who collectively generate absolutely no revenue), then it's safe to say you don't know much about how businesses are actually run.

So feel free to personally believe that Bioware will review all these facts and then decide to put the forums online anyway out of the goodness of their hearts. But please don't act like that is a likely outcome based on the facts of the matter. It is not.

[PJ156]

It does not take a genius to see which decision makes the most sense for Bioware's business. If you think it's likely that  Bioware will invest in the added cost of restoring the forums and also expose themselves to additional legal risk just to placate you and a small number of users (who collectively generate absolutely no revenue), then it's safe to say you don't know much about how businesses are actually run.

Sadly you may be right. I live in hope that a client base, which is what we are, is worth maintaining. From that comes goodwill and perhaps cross selling and good reference. All of those things are of value to a company.

My fear is that we are too small a community for our presence to be of value.

One might also hope that Bioware might cherish it's roleplay roots, though again, that hope may be vain.

Don't diss the Dragon for her being an optimist though, those are the people that keep us smiling

PJ