Who Maintains the Forums?

It was probably my fault. Just before it happened I caught myself thinking "gee, I haven't been logged off the forums in a whi..." *BOOM* "...le."

Just posted this in the other thread too.

**********

Okay, did a little digging into the cookies. Because the 24 hour logout is getting to be a pain in the *BEEEP*.

Now, the vBulletin board doesn't just drop ONE cookie with all your data on it (at least not for firefox).

It drops several.
It drops a randomly named session cookie. (expires with the session)
It drops a bbthread_lastview. (expires with the session)
It drops bbsessionhash. (expires with the session)
It drops PHPSESSID. (expires with the session)

And for me at least, it's also dropping:
vbulletin_userlist_hide_avatars_incomingreqs
vbulletin_userlist_hid_avatars_buddylist

Now it's ALSO dropping two final cookies:
bbpassword
bbuserid

Both these cookies are set to expire 24 hours after logon.

With IE, I'm getting a single, unified cookie that holds the data for both bbpassword and bbuserid. And, again, set to expire 24 hours after logon.


Now, what can you do about this? Not a whole hell of a lot.
You could find a tool that allows you to edit the cookie, but that doesn't work unless you know what you're editing. It's not as simple as opening it up in notepad and changing 11/11/2010 to 11/11/2020.

And, I understand why the timeout is set so low.

People may be accessing from public computers (and too stupid to check the public computer box). So they limit the damage by keeping the timeout reasonably short (stupid-short would be 1 hour, which is probably the setting on their public computer cookies).

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Ditto, except, that's not my name.

Communication between PS and the players has been an increasing problem for a while now. Maybe it is more "professional" but I liked back when things were friendly and helpful...

It has been ever since NYCon. Something there must've really scared them...

Honestly, I was unhappy with the changes to the comic sub-section, but I accepted it. I was unhappy with the lack of communication concerning the Partly Pack fiasco... but I coped. I'm increasingly growing tired of the lack of communication concerning the MM bug, but I can deal with it.
What I can't accept is this new 'Corporate approved communication only'
approach that OCR is being forced to tow.

We used to have a vibrant, diverse and friendly atmosphere around here. We've been praised for years and years by the gaming industry at large for how well the communication between Devs and players was. We had an established and thriving community that shared a wide range of interests.

Then some corporate big wig got all uppity and put the clamp down.
ACTUALLY telling us to go away. Let me repeat that.
They literally told us, their forumites, to go away if we want to talk about anything that isn't COH productive threads.


Since then I've been patiently watching, waiting to see what the fallout would be. In the last few months I've seen the amazing community start to crumble, at a time when the game should be reaching new heights.
We've been split up between various forums for all sorts of media simply because someone at PS is afraid we could be lured away.
The inability for them to see the ramifications of this action is truly heartbreaking.

As sad as it sounds. The ongoing forum problems might be the last straw for me, as I've not been ingame for about a month now, the forums used to be the reason I'd stay subscribed during the burnout months I take off.
I doubt I have that same reason this time.

Still, I'm the same ol' Tony that I've always been, so things can't really be that bad.

what communication was needed?
they had a pack, they chose a price, a bunch of people didn't like it, they still moved plenty of units.

Happytalk from the rednames wasn't going to change any of that.

The forum bug is annoying but they've said they're working on it, not sure what else they're supposed to do. Daily "uh still not fixed" updates wouldn't help anyone.

Nethergoat: Voice Of Reason.

As part of the service, NCsoft is expected to keep the forums functioning properly. They haven't done so, and haven't made any formal comments on the issue, which says to me that they're ignoring it for whatever reason; hoping we'll deal with it until such a time that they get around to fixing it.

It's a problem, and one that I partake in. And I will continue to pester and be obnoxious until I am certain that it's their problem too.

Okay the rest of your post I can understand. It's how you feel. Kudos to you.

But the issue with the forums logging people out every day is not a "problem". It's a "WAI" security measure that happens to be inconvenient for users. It doesn't mean this behavior is wrong or broken, any more than requiring you to change passwords every X-number of months, or requiring Admin logon privs to perform certain tasks are in Windows.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Huh, where's it say that?

I mean, it's a good idea for a game to have 'official' forums, but it is in no way obligatory.


Well, except for the part where they said "hey sorry about the bug, we're working on it".

*rolleyes*

City of Heroes User Agreement

Section 2, paragraph 1:
The Web Site (note the capitalization) is part of the Service (capitalized again), which is what we pay for.

Section 2, paragraph 3:
Which shows that the Message Board (once again capitalized) is part of the Web Site, which in turn is part of the Service. And if you want to get technical, that means we PAY for access to the forums (Section 4(d)).

I'd expect that it wouldn't continue to log me out, though I don't suppose that's technically required for NCsoft to stay true to their word. It does affect access, though, which is convenient enough for this argument since I'm paying for access and not getting it reliably. It's not to the severity where I don't get something at all that I pay for, which is why I'm only bumping a thread rather than climbing the ladder through the tiers of customer support.


Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I checked the Announcements section of the boards, but found no reference to this forum bug. Are you by chance thinking of something some redname may have said in passing? That's not the same as NCsoft formally acknowledging the issue.

I guess it helps to know what you're talking about, huh? *rolleyes*

I don't interpret that as supporting your belief that forums are some kind of sovereign right, but interesting to know they mention the forums specifically in the EULA.

Learn something new everyday!

Yeah, it sure does.

um... wow. Are we visiting the same forums? I'm not seeing any of that. The forums seems as vibrant, active and friendly as ever. Certainly there is some (justified) complaining about the logout bug, but I don't see that, or anything else, crippling the community.

No, it's a bug. This was confirmed by one of the community reps. Definitely a bug.

Being logged off once every 24 hours is a WAI security feature.

Being constantly logged off, even after logging back in; losing thread read status; losing the boards COMPLETELY for 15 or so minutes several times a day where either it just refuses to let you log in, or sometimes just spits back a DNS error, is not WAI.

Comic forum got more traffic in an hour a year ago than it gets in a day or two now. Maybe more...

Your expectations are wrong.
Moreover, it behooves NCSoft to secure access to their services.
And simply because you get logged out of a WEB FORUM doesn't mean you aren't getting reliable access. Merely that you have to re-authenticate periodically. BIG difference.




Again, being logged out periodically is NOT a bug.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Again, if you check the "remember me" box when logging on, you are NOT being "constantly" logged off. Only once every 24 hours.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.