Is it time to close Druchii.net?

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Calisson
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Is it time to close Druchii.net?

Post by Calisson »

I hoped that D.net would revive with the coming of T9A's Dread Elves.
It turns out, it did not happen.
What purpose serves Druchii.net nowadays?
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Bobba Looba
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Re: Is it time to close Druchii.net?

Post by Bobba Looba »

It's true that the forum is pretty much dead. People have moved on to other formats, such as Discord, where the WH Fantasy community is thriving. However, Druchii has it's value for me as a source of tactical information. I often look at the the old threads to see how people used to deal with different armies and threats. It functions as an archive of knowledge of sorts.

I don't know how, but if I could I'd download the entire website and store it somewhere...
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Re: Is it time to close Druchii.net?

Post by Darkspear »

Have tried to start a few topics in the AOS thread. But have not been really successful in that.
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Red...
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Re: Is it time to close Druchii.net?

Post by Red... »

On the one hand, it's pretty clear that D.Net as a thriving active community hub is basically dead. It's been dead for a long time, sadly.

On the other hand, it does possess significant archival reference value. It would be a shame to lose that. Imagine if it was deleted tomorrow and then you wanted to look something up on it in two years time, you would be saddened by not being able to do so. It would be hard to change the format of the site to be more archive-like though, I imagine, and it might lose some of its accessibility if the format was changed too. Really the best way to keep it as an archive would just be to leave it untouched.

So, I guess the real question is whether the repository role of the site justifies the costs of keeping it running. I don't know how much it is per month, but at some stage whoever pays that bill may decide it's not worth it to keep a basically static archive up.
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Calisson
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Re: Is it time to close Druchii.net?

Post by Calisson »

Red... wrote: Wed Aug 17, 2022 4:56 pmwhoever pays that bill
That's Daeron.
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Re: Is it time to close Druchii.net?

Post by Daeron »

The cost is acceptable. The software running the site will need the occasional upgrade, but for now the phpbb platform is still supported so the upgrade path should be manageable.
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Re: Is it time to close Druchii.net?

Post by Blondshade »

i hope it stays alive lots of good infomation here and had good discussion with many people here , if you know what i mean
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Re: Is it time to close Druchii.net?

Post by Golan »

"What purpose serves Druchii.net nowadays?"
Calisson, the purpose for me was mainly to read your and others spots on DE tactics forum.

I hope current year will be better for druchii.net ;)
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Re: Is it time to close Druchii.net?

Post by Cthelthmoore »

I think it serves as a place where people can chat about a niche warhammer fantasy topic with an expectation that whoever joins in will have at least a rough idea, or quite possibly be an expert, in that area.

For example, I'm hugely into Dark Elf middlehammer models. If someone started a topic on here about trying to figure out where a bit from a kit came from, and that bit was an early citadel plastic, I'd stand a pretty good chance at being able to tell where it came from. I'd likely know this because I spent a small fortune over the pandemic lockdowns buying up preowned warhammer online, and for warhammer fantasy I decided that I wanted all of the boosk from 6th edition, and for my fantasy armies to only use bits from that era. I have a few dozen itemised boxes of bits separated by faction and era now. This allows me to do things like convert a model that I really like using only era-appropriate bits as well, and allows me to help out people on here who could avail of it. Perhaps they want to make a 6th edition Lord/Hero using only bits from that time period, which I did for my Dark Elf Sorceress. I ended up using skulls from the chaos marauder kit, a dark eldar knife, plastic Tyranid scalp-chitin (for want of a better term) and jewellery chain, which overall would have been a pretty exceptional conversion for the time I think. Well compared to the white dwarf studio conversions at least! (Not the golden daemon ones! Those people were/are nuts!)

I'd say that there are plenty of others who can do this on here as well, but for their own niche (e.g. someone who's great at figuring out what valid canon lore there is vs. what has been retconned, what are all of the oldhammer and most current dark elf kit bits, what sculptors created model line XYZ, who was running this system at whatever time and why was it changed/shut down, etc).

A friend in one of my RPG groups (Hello AJ if you're reading this!) was big into 8th edition and recently rejoined another old Vbulletin website (I'm not sure if this is one of those, but "another older website" isn't an amazingly accurate descriptor) and he's more than happy to contribute what he can for his faction for the Old World. I can see people like him and myself posting or at least lurking around these websites more often nowadays. Retained it wouldn't be a revival in terms of new visitors, but it is a possible new avenue of growth/knowledge archival for others to use down the line.

For what its worth, I've crawled over the oldest tactics section's topics to find out how best to use my Dark Elves in 6th edition fantasy and found this place to be pretty much THE place for finding such information. The Facebook group for 6th edition fantasy has plenty of nice people online who will gladly spend their time on you, but the topics on here from twenty years ago were made by people who ONLY played warhammer fantasy 6th edition. I can imagine games were easier to come by, people would have known the rules better, the meta changed and evolved, etc, so I think this place is the best website to visit if you need very specific information. It certainly still has its own niche to fulfill.
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Re: Is it time to close Druchii.net?

Post by Cthelthmoore »

I think based on what I just posted, if people do really fear/desire that this website be shut down, a collation of all of the most important data/information should be created. A torrent of all of the Druchii Monthly is also needed (I think I already have them all on my Google Drive or on a USB somewhere... I must print them out and I enjoyed reading them in the past year or so!)
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Re: Is it time to close Druchii.net?

Post by Cihan »

With the rise of The Old World I started playing again and am really sad to see that Druchiii.net is in its current state. Id love to help bringing this awesome community into 2024. It might be a great idea to complement this forum with a Discord server and to gain some buzz, organize tournaments. If you guys need any help with that, hit me up.
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