Important Status Update About UOGuide's Future

Post all your Ultima Online and UOGuide related discussion topics here.
User avatar
JC the Builder
Site Admin
Posts: 428
Joined: Fri Mar 11, 2011 2:52 pm
Contact:

Important Status Update About UOGuide's Future

Postby JC the Builder » Wed Oct 05, 2016 5:05 am

October 8 Update: UOGuide will not be shutting down. As I stated earlier, I was letting everyone know what my thoughts were. After what has happened with the Stratics Wiki launch it is clear more than ever that the community needs UOGuide as a resource. I thank everyone for their messages of support, both public and private. If you want to help out there is plenty of stuff to create and update on UOGuide.

See Also: Stratics Wiki Administrator Copied Content from UOGuide

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the past 10 years we have come a long way with UOGuide. Back in 2006 there was no website providing current and detailed information on UO. Players were wandering a wilderness of forum posts and second hand knowledge on how game mechanics worked. It was a trying time.

Starting with Mondain's Legacy and continuing on through Stygian Abyss and High Seas, UOGuide provided the information players needed to play UO. We had hundreds of contributors with some even becoming site staff members. Every day thousands of people looked up topics from peerless bosses to crafting materials. The article on that Stygian Abyss puzzle was especially popular before the loot nerf. Basically, if you needed to know something you knew you could find it on UOGuide.

Unfortunately things have changed over time and not in a good way. The Time of Legends expansion released last year has barely been documented. There is an enormous backlog of articles not updated to reflect publish changes. The UOGuide staff has decreased over time to just myself for these past 2 years. But worst of all, recently there has been an enormous amount of misinformation and drama directed at UOGuide.

In the past 10 months there have been 3 major incidents. This is unprecedented in the history of this site, in which I don't recall even one previous similar incident in the preceding 9 years. There seems to be a concerted effort to perpetuate complete fabrications about UOGuide and myself. I have spent a lot of time correcting them.

The fact is I don't want to be spending my efforts defending against such ridiculous assertions. Most recently I have been devoting my time to improving role playing and events on Atlantic shard using the governor system. All this nonsense has taken away from that the past few days. I'm tired of it. And if the past is any indication of the future it will only continue to get worse.

To put it simply, the captain can't be in the engine room shoveling coal and cleaning toilets when the ship needs steering. While I would love to spend all day editing articles as I used to, I have too many responsibilities to run every aspect of the site. The same goes for correcting false information. This is literally a one man show and has been for a while. I can't focus on the things only I can do when the Main Page is terribly out of date.

With that said, my only option at the moment is to shut down UOGuide. I have never once thought about closing or giving up on the site. But things have just gotten so bad this past year and it is causing me too much trouble. I always thought I would keep the site going no matter what. But the recurring attacks on what I've worked here to create is too much.

This letter was written to inform everyone about what is going on and my current thoughts. Closing down UOGuide is not set in stone. Also, this does not mean I am quitting UO. I will continue working on projects such as the Atlantic Shard events and my news service at www.jcthebuilder.com.

Normally I would wish you to have a nice day, but that does not seem appropriate here.

Sincerely,
~~~~~ JC the Builder ~~~~~
~~ UOGuide Administrator ~~
Atlantic Governor of Moonglow

CakeForge
Neophyte
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2016 1:09 am
Contact:

Re: Important Status Update About UOGuide's Future

Postby CakeForge » Thu Oct 06, 2016 1:37 am

Greetings JC,
terrible news and It's huge lost for Ultima Online community and for Ultima fans.
I hope there is way to keep UOGuid a live at least the website content.

Thank you for putting so much effort to this website and keeping website that long time. Defiantly is a hug lost for UO.
Before you made decision about UOGuide.com please get in touch https://nicegoodies.wordpress.com/contact/ or Twitter: CakeForge, Skype: CakeForge


I wish you all the best.
(Hope see you in Atlantic shard.)



yours sincerely,
CakeForge

Merion
Neophyte
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Mar 31, 2008 2:12 pm
Contact:

Re: Important Status Update About UOGuide's Future

Postby Merion » Thu Oct 06, 2016 5:17 am

This is bad!

UOGuide was my go-to site for information. I was more of a casual editor at best and also noted the lack of current information. So while sad, your decision might be the right one.

It would be good though, if at least the current state could be preserved as an archive. Maybe just deactivate editing.
So much work went into it, it would be a major shame to just pull it offline. If it stays online as read-only, at least some information could be migrated elsewhere. There is a lot of info not to be found elsewhere, letting it disappear would be horrible!

FrejaSP
Neophyte
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Jul 31, 2013 7:09 am
Contact:

Re: Important Status Update About UOGuide's Future

Postby FrejaSP » Thu Oct 06, 2016 6:23 am

Even when a lot is not updated, I use the side almost every day. There are so much good info and I would not know where to go find it.
I understand it is harder to keep it updated now, where all new changes are added on uo.com.
Even without updates, I hope you can keep UOGuide up as it is a great help to both current and returning players.

Kayhynn
Novice
Posts: 21
Joined: Sun Dec 01, 2013 12:25 am
Contact:

Re: Important Status Update About UOGuide's Future

Postby Kayhynn » Thu Oct 06, 2016 9:31 am

I'm sorry that you're going through the things you're dealing with and the flack you're getting. However, shutting the site down would be a loss to the UO community as a whole.

Even though my time is limited, I'm willing to help update things to the wiki. If people don't know how to update, if they send me content to update with, I'll be glad to update the wiki on their behalf.

Tell us what we can do to help keep it going. And if there is anything I can personally do, let me know.

User avatar
JC the Builder
Site Admin
Posts: 428
Joined: Fri Mar 11, 2011 2:52 pm
Contact:

Re: Important Status Update About UOGuide's Future

Postby JC the Builder » Thu Oct 06, 2016 11:10 am

I posted this elsewhere to give an idea on why the site can't just be left alone.

Pappy wrote:You could simplify things for yourself and still allow people whom use UO-GUide to do so.

It isn't that simple.

I just pulled up the server invoice history for UOGuide and it stands at little over $11,000. The other expenses I incurred over the years brings that up to $15,000-20,000. If I am super conservative and say I spend 1 hour per week maintaining UOGuide at my currently billable rate of $35/h for the past 5 years that comes out to over $9000 (ha ha).

From a most basic level it has cost at least $25,000 to run UOGuide in the past 5 years. These figures should not alarm anyone because the server host fees are paid for with the advertising and I happily donate my abilities to keep the site running.

This gives you an idea of the real money costs involved to run such a large website. It takes hundreds of dollars a month just to keep the lights on. It cannot be left alone.

Kayhynn
Novice
Posts: 21
Joined: Sun Dec 01, 2013 12:25 am
Contact:

Re: Important Status Update About UOGuide's Future

Postby Kayhynn » Thu Oct 06, 2016 12:17 pm

JC the Builder wrote:From a most basic level it has cost at least $25,000 to run UOGuide in the past 5 years. These figures should not alarm anyone because the server host fees are paid for with the advertising and I happily donate my abilities to keep the site running.


Does the ad revenue really cover that cost? I'm sure some months it doesn't and you have to kick in some money. I know how little ad revenue really kicks out - I hope you're getting more since you do get more hits, but at the same time - yeah it costs a lot of money and people dont' realize that. Even just to keep the lights on, you have to pay bills and do maintenance on the software itself.

As I said on Twitter, I want to help where I can with updates - it won't be a lot, because of my real life problems going on, but if i can help, I will.

ArrothThaiel
Neophyte
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat Jun 01, 2013 12:16 pm
Contact:

Re: Important Status Update About UOGuide's Future

Postby ArrothThaiel » Thu Oct 06, 2016 12:22 pm

Sorry to hear this JC.

Put as much time as I could into the Quests/Artifact sections a couple of summers ago, but just don't have the capacity to do much more at this point in time.

Thank you for everything you did to setup and maintain UOGuide.

And even though you've obviously been burned by doing so, thank you for giving so much money to the UO community to save Stratics.

No good deed goes unpunished eh?

User avatar
JC the Builder
Site Admin
Posts: 428
Joined: Fri Mar 11, 2011 2:52 pm
Contact:

Re: Important Status Update About UOGuide's Future

Postby JC the Builder » Thu Oct 06, 2016 12:26 pm

Kayhynn wrote:Does the ad revenue really cover that cost? I'm sure some months it doesn't and you have to kick in some money.

Yes it covers everything. No, there hasn't been a month in the red that I can remember. I increased server capacity to match the revenue.

This is also why it puzzles me how Stratics has not been able to do the same. It isn't enough to pay a person full time. But they should easily be able to cover the server costs. I don't even put ads in the coveted spot at the top of the page which would increase revenue a lot.

Ads bring in $200-600 a month. It varies a lot depending on the time of year and what is being advertised.

User avatar
JC the Builder
Site Admin
Posts: 428
Joined: Fri Mar 11, 2011 2:52 pm
Contact:

Re: Important Status Update About UOGuide's Future

Postby JC the Builder » Thu Oct 06, 2016 12:36 pm

ArrothThaiel wrote:Put as much time as I could into the Quests/Artifact sections a couple of summers ago, but just don't have the capacity to do much more at this point in time.

I remember seeing your contributions. Thanks for that.

I see people talking about how I should just let people update the site. Maybe they don't understand how a wiki works. I accessed a couple individuals to update the Main Page in the past couple years. Only Andrasta, bless he heart, has been doing so. If it was not for her the news feed would probably be a year old or worse.


Return to “UOGuide Bulletin Board”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 5 guests