The forums have finally died
By
BanzaiBadger,
Posted on: 2010-12-25 09:21 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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You know, I don't want to argue phpBB vs. vBulletin, but why was it ever necessary to switch forum software in the first place? I mean, the old forums had their problems, obviously, but so what? What did we gain that hasn't been disabled already?
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Originally Posted by bAss_ackwards
Just got logged out. Rargh.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Forums that at least can be maintained and upgraded. The old software was just a custom mess with no way forward.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
You know, I don't want to argue phpBB vs. vBulletin, but why was it ever necessary to switch forum software in the first place? I mean, the old forums had their problems, obviously, but so what? What did we gain that hasn't been disabled already?
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Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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Which I would have believed, if the new forums had not turned into an EVEN BIGGER mess pretty much the day they went online. The new forum software has never, ever, EVER been able to track my unread posts, always bringing me back either to the start of threads or to posts I read days ago, tagged as read yet are still showing up as new, or otherwise marking all posts in all forums as read, even the ones I've never seen.|
Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
Forums that at least can be maintained and upgraded. The old software was just a custom mess with no way forward.
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Furthermore, the old forums were far less likely to destroy my posts if my page failed to load, apparently because quoting doesn't so much put text in a text field as load a page that assumes text in a text field. I've lost far too many posts for stupid reasons here it's not even funny.
I mean, I don't know what the back end of the thing is, but I know that, as a user, my experience with the forums degraded SIGNIFICANTLY with the change, because both the features and the outlook of these forums simply don't work as well as those of the old forums. I don't know who or what is at fault here, but the reason I ask "why" is it seems the change has brought us nothing but trouble, with the possible exception embedding images now being allowed.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Never had any real issues with the forums other than the babies whining and crying until they got the rep and rep comments removed. Practically needed ponchos for all the tears the children were spraying.
Blue: ~Knockback Squad on Guardian~
Red: ~Undoing of Virtue on [3 guesses]~
Sammy was a Tow on the east side of Europe
Not in the U.S.A. In a land very far away
In the chill of a winter night
In the land of the dollar bill
When the forums of CoH died
And they talk about it still
When a man named Samuel_Tow
Tried to make that forum his own
And he called his OP's to war
With the moderators who were law
I heard my post cry
I heard it pray the night forums died
Brother what a night it really was
Brother what a fight it really was
Glory be!
I heard my post cry
I heard it pray the night forums died
Brother what a night the people saw
Brother what a fight the people saw
Yes indeed!
And the sound of the battle rang
Through the pages of the old east side
'Til the last of the forum's gang
Had surrendered up or died
There was shouting in the street
And the sound of running feet
And I asked someone who said
"'Bout a hundred threads are dead!"
I heard my post cry
I heard it pray the night forums died
Brother what a night it really was
Brother what a fight it really was
Glory be!
I heard my post cry
I heard it pray the night forums died
Brother what a night the people saw
Brother what a fight the people saw
Yes indeed!
And there was no sound at all
But the clock upon the wall
Then the door burst open wide
And then Sammy stepped inside
And he saved my post's place
And he brushed the flames away
The night the forums died
Na-na na, na-na-na, na-na-na-na-na
The night the forums died
Brother what a night the people saw
Brother what a fight the people saw
Yes indeed!
The night the forums died
Na-na na, na-na-na, na-na-na-na-na
The night the forums died
Brother what a night it really was
Brother what a fight it really was
Glory be!
The night the forums died
Na-na na, na-na-na, na-na-na-na-na
The night the forums died
Brother what a night the people saw
Brother what a fight the people saw
Yes indeed!
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All I can say is that your experience is NOT universal among users. As such, it's less likely that the problem is the forums themselves and more likely that it's either something on your end or on one of the hops directly in front of you. As has been noted, flaky proxy servers at your ISP can easily explain the bizarre behavior you're experiencing.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Which I would have believed, if the new forums had not turned into an EVEN BIGGER mess pretty much the day they went online. The new forum software has never, ever, EVER been able to track my unread posts, always bringing me back either to the start of threads or to posts I read days ago, tagged as read yet are still showing up as new, or otherwise marking all posts in all forums as read, even the ones I've never seen.
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If that's the case, this has nothing to do with the forums.
At worst, you've got a nasty confluence of minor board issues being exacerbated by your own system/network issues.
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| Furthermore, the old forums were far less likely to destroy my posts if my page failed to load, apparently because quoting doesn't so much put text in a text field as load a page that assumes text in a text field. I've lost far too many posts for stupid reasons here it's not even funny. |
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| I mean, I don't know what the back end of the thing is, but I know that, as a user, my experience with the forums degraded SIGNIFICANTLY with the change, because both the features and the outlook of these forums simply don't work as well as those of the old forums. I don't know who or what is at fault here, but the reason I ask "why" is it seems the change has brought us nothing but trouble, with the possible exception embedding images now being allowed. |
Again, while these issues are not unique to you, they're not happening to everyone. Please keep this firmly in mind.
As for people who're getting intermittent...transient errors of a similar flavor, please note that similar things happen on PBPBB, SMF, UBBThreads, and various other board software as well. I've run PHPBB and SMF for years. I see the same intermittent behavior (logffs, loss of posts, timeouts, etc) on these platforms as well.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
It is my belief that turning off rep and comments is what broke the forum. It was only after that happened that everybody started having the logging out problem.
Don't count your weasels before they pop dink!
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Your translation is incorrect. The old boards NEVER destroyed posts on me unless I accidentally closed the tabs in question or the entire browser. I've only ever lost posts on the old forums when using Internet Explorer, because IE7 wouldn't remember text fields between page loads. Ever since I started using Firefox, I never lost a post on the old forums, simply because navigating back to the "create a post" page caused the browser to refill my text field with what I had before.|
Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
Translation: The current board destroys posts on occasion. The old one did to, but you're supposedly noticing it more now. And you're frustrated enough that the rose-colored filter is now firmly in place on the old boards.
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This is not true on the new boards, because the new boards fill in the post text fields by default. Right now, my link to make this post is http://boards.cityofheroes.com/newre...eply&p=3398192, which essentially means "make a new reply and put post 3398192 in the text field." Firefox still remembers what I wrote in my text field, and would attempt to restore it for me, but the forums will wipe out what's in the text field and replace it with the quote. My only other recourse is to quote someone, copy the quoted text, back up, start a new unaffiliated reply, paste the copied text in that and work off that. Under these circumstances, even if I were to accidentally navigate away from the post I'm making, it will still be in the text field when I come back.
The old forums did not "default" any of my text fields to anything at all. I'm not sure how they worked exactly, but I know that if I quoted someone, wrote text and accidentally hit one of my Firefox quick links, then returning to my post would see the text box written to where I'd gotten it to. This includes even instances where I've lost power to the building, and upon restoring my tabs, Firefox will also restore what I've written in the text fields. Because of how the new forums are set up, this does not happen if I quote, which is what I do most of the time.
The new forums are, in fact, VASTLY inferior for retaining posts than the old ones were.
And they are completely incapable of tracking what I've read, whereas the old ones were almost always spot on. I have long since given up using the "take me to the latest post" function here because IT IS WORTHLESS. It has always been worthless, and it continues to be worthless now, to the point where I wonder why read posts are even tracked when that tracking is ALWAYS wrong. In fact, I can guarantee you that about half an hour after I make this post, the boards will insist it's a new post that I haven't read before, despite being MY OWN.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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"Never" huh?|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Your translation is incorrect. The old boards NEVER destroyed posts on me unless I accidentally closed the tabs in question or the entire browser.
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On the old board I had timeouts that I couldn't back-button from (and thus, lost posts). And that was using Firefox. I don't use IE. Period.
As of right now we have dueling anecdotes. Huzzah!
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The old forums did not "default" any of my text fields to anything at all. I'm not sure how they worked exactly, but I know that if I quoted someone, wrote text and accidentally hit one of my Firefox quick links, then returning to my post would see the text box written to where I'd gotten it to. This includes even instances where I've lost power to the building, and upon restoring my tabs, Firefox will also restore what I've written in the text fields. Because of how the new forums are set up, this does not happen if I quote, which is what I do most of the time. The new forums are, in fact, VASTLY inferior for retaining posts than the old ones were. |
I've been on multiple vBulletin systems that function this same way.
Is it different than how the old boards handled it? YES.
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| And they are completely incapable of tracking what I've read, whereas the old ones were almost always spot on. |
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| I have long since given up using the "take me to the latest post" function here because IT IS WORTHLESS. It has always been worthless, and it continues to be worthless now, to the point where I wonder why read posts are even tracked when that tracking is ALWAYS wrong. In fact, I can guarantee you that about half an hour after I make this post, the boards will insist it's a new post that I haven't read before, despite being MY OWN. |
Again, I'm sorry that you're having such issues with the boards. And I acknowledge some of it may be tweaks made to the server software itself. But I still maintain that at least some of it are problems from your end.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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I've seen the time-outs. Hitting back on my browsert restored my post every time. Reloading the page would also restore my post. Every time.|
Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
On the old board I had timeouts that I couldn't back-button from (and thus, lost posts). And that was using Firefox. I don't use IE. Period.
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I've been on multiple vBulletin systems that function this same way. Is it different than how the old boards handled it? YES. |
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| The boards DO have a new search cutoff. Usually it's a 10-20 minute window. I don't remember what the longest cutoff time I've seen on this board. This cuts down on server load by caching the last search for a specific amount of time. It makes it more inconvenient for heavy users. But you aren't directly footing the hardware and bandwidth bills for the board. |
And again - how is this a problem with my ISP if this has been going on with this forum software from the day it was introduced, whereas I NEVER EVER had that with the old boards? I did not change ISPs overnight when the boards changed. Hell, I haven't changed my ISP in years. The difference between easy and reliable forums and difficult and unreliable once occurred when forum softwares were swapped over, not when anything on my end happened, unless you want to talk about unlikely coincidences.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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If you are getting into a 6 minute submit loop, chances are that no matter what you post would get lost.
Most browsers/forum software/servers will drop/end the connection after a sensible time where there is NO response from either end.
BUT seeing as you *so far* appear to be the one who seems to suffer the 5-6 minute loop it could be hard to pin down on the server side.
Now I am NOT denying that there are problems with the forum software, some of which are liable to be tied in the interface to the NCsoft account back end (ie the inactive account/unable to login setup).. whilst some others shouldn't necessarily happen (ie the new post marking being accurate, and taking you to the correct post).
The timing out on submitting a post, that can be down to several things that may or may not be trivial to resolve (due to various nips and tweaks that they have done to the board software, it can be messier to resolve).
Note: for me, if a webpage EVER takes more than about 45-60 seconds to resolve, especially on a submit, i restart from scratch. This is because sods law there will be a problem, and the page will just crash out. I then try back 5 minutes later. Hell, due to how the old forums were, i still out of habit write the majority of posts in notepad++ and then C+P them into here...
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You know, I keep expecting to get timeout errors, myself, but I've clocked a page load taking over six minutes on a stopwatch. Practically the entirety of that time is spent "waiting for boards.cityofheroes.com" And the worst part is that once my browser "hooks on," the page loads just fine.|
Originally Posted by Gangrel_EU
Note: for me, if a webpage EVER takes more than about 45-60 seconds to resolve, especially on a submit, i restart from scratch. This is because sods law there will be a problem, and the page will just crash out. I then try back 5 minutes later. Hell, due to how the old forums were, i still out of habit write the majority of posts in notepad++ and then C+P them into here...
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And I do not know why.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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for me the old forums were a laggy nightmare of post-devouring madness.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
And again - how is this a problem with my ISP if this has been going on with this forum software from the day it was introduced, whereas I NEVER EVER had that with the old boards? I did not change ISPs overnight when the boards changed. Hell, I haven't changed my ISP in years. The difference between easy and reliable forums and difficult and unreliable once occurred when forum softwares were swapped over, not when anything on my end happened, unless you want to talk about unlikely coincidences.
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even with all the annoying quirks the new ones kick the old ones up and down the block.
I'm with you on solving issues with the new forums, but the old one were awful and needed to be put down.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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This. I'm surprised how many people have forgotten how problematic they were.
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
for me the old forums were a laggy nightmare of post-devouring madness.
even with all the annoying quirks the new ones kick the old ones up and down the block. I'm with you on solving issues with the new forums, but the old one were awful and needed to be put down. |
Thank you, Champion.
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Good for you. Again, how the forums performed (and how they work now) FOR YOU is a function of how the forums are supposed to work + quirks on the server end + quirks on your end.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I've seen the time-outs. Hitting back on my browsert restored my post every time. Reloading the page would also restore my post. Every time.
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| Hey, if these boards can be made to STOP DESTROYING MY POSTS, I wouldn't complain. At work, I have a "back" button on my mouse. More often than not, I'll accidentally squeeze that with my thumb when I attempt to use the mouse. A lot of times I'll open a new tab to look at a dictionary or do a google search, only to accidentally do that in the same tab I'm posting in (I've set Firefox to not select new tabs as I open them). I've had a few instances when Firefox actually crashed on me, too. And recently, I've had instances where hitting Submit sends me in 6-minute page load, followed by a blank page, forcing me to hit "Back" and resubmit, only to find my post no longer exists when I back up. |
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| And again - how is this a problem with my ISP if this has been going on with this forum software from the day it was introduced, whereas I NEVER EVER had that with the old boards? |
wait for it...
wait for it...
DIFFERENTLY.
If the current board is using post tracking methodologies not transparent to a web proxy, or that run afoul of an add-in, you are going to get different behavior than the older board system.
Again, the fact that not everyone is having YOUR issues with YOUR level of severity and frequency points out the fact that YOUR issues are at least partially on YOUR end. Otherwise the user experience would be uniform for everyone.
Since this is NOT the case, and everyone is NOT having YOUR issues with YOUR level of severity and frequency.
Feel free to argue with Occam and his razor.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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Yeah, this is starting to irritate me. I'm like, "You silly board... I ALREADY READ THAT!"|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
And they are completely incapable of tracking what I've read, whereas the old ones were almost always spot on. I have long since given up using the "take me to the latest post" function here because IT IS WORTHLESS. It has always been worthless, and it continues to be worthless now, to the point where I wonder why read posts are even tracked when that tracking is ALWAYS wrong. In fact, I can guarantee you that about half an hour after I make this post, the boards will insist it's a new post that I haven't read before, despite being MY OWN.
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Sam is right, the quality of the boards have degraded terribly.
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I have to put myself in this camp as well. They definitely need to fix the problems with the new forums, but it is much better than the old forums. Those were... um... "problematic" at best.
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
for me the old forums were a laggy nightmare of post-devouring madness.
even with all the annoying quirks the new ones kick the old ones up and down the block. I'm with you on solving issues with the new forums, but the old one were awful and needed to be put down. |
We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)
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Well, one thing I can't deny is there were a lot of people coming down on the old forums, and the whole time I was like "Huh? What? Where? What are you guys talking about?" Yes, we all have different experiences. I'll concede to leaving it at that.|
Originally Posted by TonyV
I have to put myself in this camp as well. They definitely need to fix the problems with the new forums, but it is much better than the old forums. Those were... um... "problematic" at best.
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However, the forum issues still irritate me, and they really have seemed to be going downhill pretty much the whole time. In fact, it feels like they'll develop some new intermittent bug about every few months.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I haven't had any loading problems myself, or at least not in the way you're describing. I get the occasional long wait, but everything runs smoothly most of the time (I actually have more issues loading the main page, than the forums). My biggest problem, is I get logged out at least once every other day or so.
Freedom
Blueside: Knight'Hawk, lvl 50, Scrapper
Yellowside: Dark'Falcon (Loyalist), lvl 20, Blaster
That Stinging Sensation #482183
I've run into the 'waiting for boards.cityofheroes.com' wall of suck fairly often. Usually I just go and read 20 or 30 webcomics while waiting, since it won't even give me the decency to time out and say this page cannot be displayed.
Also I've taken to highlighting and copying my messages because more often than not I'll be logged out and the post destroyed.
I'm playing around with Google Chrome (Loading images takes far longer than it does in IE for some reason for me so I'm not really enjoying it) but part of the reason I tried Chrome was because of all the problems I've been having with the city forums.
Weight training: Because you'll never hear someone lament "If only I were weaker, I could have saved them."
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There were things about the old forums that have improved for everyone under the new ones.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Well, one thing I can't deny is there were a lot of people coming down on the old forums, and the whole time I was like "Huh? What? Where? What are you guys talking about?" Yes, we all have different experiences. I'll concede to leaving it at that.
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When was the last time the devs purged old player posts on this forum? Try doing a search on threads only and see how far they go back. The old forums had to have old threads completely purged that every few weeks, or they got slow and unstable for everyone.
There are definitely problems here, but they seem to be more intermittent. Assuming they're anything the CoH team can actually fix themselves, that intermittent nature may be why they can't find and fix the problem. If the problem is somewhere in the vBulletin software itself, I would hope they could get support for it, since it's commercial software.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
I sometimes experience the slow loads also. But I had wondered if it was someone's avatar because I have the same issues on websites that have more advertisements than content.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
Yes the old forums would destroy posts. I remember this because I got in the habit of doing a ctrl-c on any long post I created before submitting it.
And it's been another day now that I haven't experienced any log outs here. I'm actually keeping track of it so I know that it's not just my memory playing tricks on me.
Don't count your weasels before they pop dink!
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some people do have ridiculously massive avatars.
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Originally Posted by SwellGuy
I sometimes experience the slow loads also. But I had wondered if it was someone's avatar because I have the same issues on websites that have more advertisements than content.
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The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Just got logged out. Rargh.
Playstation 3 - XBox 360 - Wii - PSP
Remember kids, crack is whack!
Samuel_Tow: Your avatar is... I think I like it