Guildwork - The Future of MMO Guildhosting/Networking

[pingpong]

I do not even run a script engine in my browsers by default actually Therin.

For the topic of progress I do work as a web developer and the first thing you pretty much always do is build the basic layer so it works period then seperate client-reliant input (script engines and so fourth) on top of that layer so it works seperate from the basic layer.

And there are only one server I always run scripts on in my browser by default; my own local test server. Unless I am creating a system for a client or I browse my test server or I am bugchecking code I made live script functionality is always off in my browsers.

You don't know what you are talking about.

1) Stan's web site is a web application, and for a web application where the main advantages against competitors is through the use of javascript, requiring javascript is completely acceptable.

2) Nothing stops him from developing a no-script version of the site separately. If you use Gmail, you'd know that they have 2 completely separate versions of the site, not one version that works with and without javascript. It simply isn't feasible and becomes a maintenance nightmare if you try to make the exact same site work the same way with and without javascript, then try extending javascript functionality. Also, to cater to the 1% of users or less unwilling to turn on javascript like you is a bad business move this early on, or even later.

3) Plenty of applications require javascript turned on. I guess you don't use Google Maps then. Too bad, you are missing out. More and more sites require javascript b/c this is now 2010. What you've brought out is an argument from 2003 and it's laughable.

4) You are a retard if you think he should strip javascript and make this one site accessible from all mobile. The correct way is to create a mobile-lite version of the site, with a user interface customized for mobile users. It's about re-using content, not using the same HTML over and over again.

5) Javascript comes with every browser defaulted to ON for a reason. You have to make a conscious choice to turn it off, and it takes all but a few seconds to turn it back on for specific sites.

Within the context of his competitors and current technologies and what current people are actually using by default (javascript), he absolutely made the correct move. Whether you are for or against it, I can tell you that the fact that javascript is required to use the site will not be a deterrent.

Either you are terribly misinformed about the state of front-end development today or you just have bad motives, but your arguments are pretty weak for why somebody shouldn't use this site. In fact, API integration for Facebook, Goog, Flickr, and any of your popular social networking sites wouldn't even be possible without the use of javascript.

Just so you don't pull the "I'm a developer card", I've worked on sites for Disney, House of Representatives, AIG, Seagate and NONE of them required the site work without javascript, zip, zero.

[Stanislav]

This looks pretty nice, but I do have a question for you:

How tired is your cock from Therin riding you all day?

<3

Considering I never talk to him and he found out about this 3 hours before posting, not that hard =(

On another note, something that I forgot to mention, but the above post reminded me. We have all optional integration with your other favorite social networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc) =)

[pingpong]

As a web developer, it hurts when I have to write a page compliant with IE6.

Seriously, the internet needs to move on, already.

Instead of offering degrading content, you could detect for old browsers or missing functionality and tell them to upgrade to Chrome/Firefox/IE8 and so on. I'm sure you've already thought of this. And I'm sure the seasoned developer knows that even some very popular sites refuse to work without the proper browser (I'm looking at you, microsoft.com).

Perhaps all the developers demanding graceful degradation can offer some support and assist Stanislav in writing the properly formatted code.


*EDIT:
Bug: Added a character, then went to Guild. Still said I needed to add a character. Had to refresh for it to recognize I made a character. I'm running Chrome.
Bug: Guild Members section not working with 1 member (me) in guild. Not working as Normal or Admin.

The internet has moved on. Gmail won't be supporting it, 37signals already doesn't. The main argument for supporting IE6 is that some people can't upgrade b/c of their work environment (network that won't let them install Firefox and their company relies on applications that only works on IE6). It's a weak argument unless your site has is something that must be used at work, and even then, I'm still not sure I buy it.

My company moved away from IE6 like 2 years ago, and haven't lost a single customer because of it.

[pingpong]

Questions:

1) How has Tornado been working out? I've thought about it, but it was so new at the time I didn't quite trust it. Any issues so far?

2) Are you serving everything on nginx or just static content. How are you serving dynamic content? Site seems damn fast right now btw, but wondering about scalability in the future.

Good job on the site, I think it's well done. I do think the UI could be a lot better (and possibly brandable by each Guild), but I believe that would come in time if you guys get funding and hire template designers, which you should if all gamers jump on it. Marketing it as "Facebook for MMORPG players" is intriguing and would get a lot of people interested. I look forward to using it

[Stanislav]

Questions:

1) How has Tornado been working out? I've thought about it, but it was so new at the time I didn't quite trust it. Any issues so far?

2) Are you serving everything on nginx or just static content. How are you serving dynamic content? Site seems damn fast right now btw, but wondering about scalability in the future.

Good job on the site, I think it's well done. I do think the UI could be a lot better (and possibly brandable by each Guild), but I believe that would come in time if you guys get funding and hire template designers, which you should if all gamers jump on it. Marketing it as "Facebook for MMORPG players" is intriguing and would get a lot of people interested. I look forward to using it

1. Tornado is the probably the thing I have the most pleasure working with next to MongoDB. It is powering our web servers, our chat servers, and some things in the backend, and it all works well together in an async manner. I definitely recommend working with it, however I won't lie we have recoded some of it to match our needs.

2. Nginx is load balancing 6 Tornado instances at the moment for web, 1 chat server, 1 chat ajax interface, so 8 servers total. It is also serving the static content, however we are in the process of setting up a CDN. The site is built in a modular fashion and will scale simply by adding more servers to the mix without any change in code, and the database does not have any JOINs (No sql) so we can easily have different collections/tables on different databases, Mongo also offers the ability to shard, which will help us scale the feed and dkp. What I just listed is our testing setup, however it will be completely different once we deploy, however it is holding up well, the machine has been at 0% load this whole time.

3. I'm not a designer, so I tried my best to create what we have, we tried to find a designer to join the team, but it is hard to find a designer we like who is also a gamer so we will leave that till later.

[Deimos]

Couple more random questions:

Are you keeping full histories for things like bank/points/etc? Eventually, some LS leader/officer will flip out or get their account broken into, and everything they have access to will get wiped. Will this be able to be reversed easily?

Looking through the guild/characters lists, I don't see any duplicate names of either type. Is this currently not supported? It's definitely going to be necessary, and I'm not sure how you'll handle the URLs for duplicates.

Any plans for in-game verification? What stops people from "squatting" on character/guild names that they don't actually own in-game?

[Liquidedust]

Trying to find if I can find an option for date formatting somehwere but seem to fail to do so. Personally I use 24h clock on standardized ISO date formats where I live so I would obviously prefer to set my defauly display mode as such.

However I cannot seem to find an option for changing this format (or am I blind?).

Also is there any plans to directly view all events as a timeline instead of in calender format?

[Stanislav]

Couple more random questions:

Are you keeping full histories for things like bank/points/etc? Eventually, some LS leader/officer will flip out or get their account broken into, and everything they have access to will get wiped. Will this be able to be reversed easily?

Looking through the guild/characters lists, I don't see any duplicate names of either type. Is this currently not supported? It's definitely going to be necessary, and I'm not sure how you'll handle the URLs for duplicates.

Any plans for in-game verification? What stops people from "squatting" on character/guild names that they don't actually own in-game?

We are going to be doing daily backups of all the data.

Character/Guild names are unique to a server, we have a system we will be putting in to keep people from squating and we plan for ingame verification in the future.

As for usernames at the moment you can't have duplicaets and probably won't be able to, but we are dabbling with the idea of allowing display names.

Trying to find if I can find an option for date formatting somehwere but seem to fail to do so. Personally I use 24h clock on standardized ISO date formats where I live so I would obviously prefer to set my defauly display mode as such.

However I cannot seem to find an option for changing this format (or am I blind?).

Also is there any plans to directly view all events as a timeline instead of in calender format?

There is currently no way to set the time format in the settings at the moment, the settings tab on the bottom of the bar will be completely reworked in the future, sorry that is not in yet.

[Liquidedust]

There is currently no way to set the time format in the settings at the moment, the settings tab on the bottom of the bar will be completely reworked in the future, sorry that is not in yet.

Ok no biggie I suppose then, I assume same goes for which day the week start on as well then?

(not all countries starts the week on a Sunday, a lot of countries has for example Monday as the starting day of that week)

[BardonGaruda]

Will there be some kind of tool for linkshells to migrate their current points system? I can see the idea of having to manually input information, already held in a customer system or google docs, being a stumbling block to some Linkshells using this.

How will the system handle server transfers and linkshell transfers. Will the server be a one of choice you make at the start or will it be updateable? Will history from previous linkshells follow a player?

How about linkshell mergers? One thing that would be great would be a facility to merge two linkshells, members, dkp, drop history etc.

Will the selections upon sign-up be cleaned up for the final version. e.g. currently if you pick FFXI as the game you still see the Aion and WoW servers in the server list.

[Stanislav]

Will there be some kind of tool for linkshells to migrate their current points system? I can see the idea of having to manually input information, already held in a customer system or google docs, being a stumbling block to some Linkshells using this.

We will be providing a way to transfer all data from eqDKP & exDKP into Guildwork, however we didn't really plan on supporting Google Docs, however we can probably implement a CSV file import.

How will the system handle server transfers and linkshell transfers. Will the server be a one of choice you make at the start or will it be updateable? Will history from previous linkshells follow a player?

We will allow you to change your server on the site, and any changes you make to this will be posted on your feed, so everyone is notified of the change.

How about linkshell mergers? One thing that would be great would be a facility to merge two linkshells, members, dkp, drop history etc.

Even in current situations this is a very hard task to tackle, the easiest way to handle this is to either create a new guild on Guildwork, or rename one of the guilds and have everyone transfer over to that guild. Most guilds have different point systems and ways of running so such a task would be very hard. I would like to point out that loot received by players on Guildwork is forever attached to the character rather then the guild itself, so no data will be lost by creating a new guild.

Will the selections upon sign-up be cleaned up for the final version. e.g. currently if you pick FFXI as the game you still see the Aion and WoW servers in the server list.

This screen is not the one that you will see on the final version,the final version will have a step by step process to setup your guild/character, with special options based on the game you choose.

On another note we started a Twitter account for those who wish to follow @ http://twitter.com/guildwork

[Eanae]

Can't wait to see this completed. Love it already.

[tymora]

Very well made.

Suggestion:
A public web-service API (WSDL, XML-RPC...etc) would be useful to those technically inclined.
-> Automated updates of guild information.
-> Guilds themselves can extract information for use on their own portals.

[Stanislav]

Very well made.

Suggestion:
A public web-service API (WSDL, XML-RPC...etc) would be useful to those technically inclined.
-> Automated updates of guild information.
-> Guilds themselves can extract information for use on their own portals.

We will have JSON&XML API, however on on release and it can be used to extract data onto a personal site, however the goal is to make Guild work your new site.

What do you mean by automated guild updates?

[Kohan]

This is rather exciting. I, too, was very impressed upon visiting this site, and also look forward to its completion.

[Stanislav]

Screenshot privacy is something that I am considering at the moment.

I am wondering should the screenshot functionality allow private albums? I personally don't see the point, but I want th public's opinions.

Personally I believe if people are uploading screenshots they want everyone to see them?

[Yugl]

Screenshot privacy is something that I am considering at the moment.

I am wondering should the screenshot functionality allow private albums? I personally don't see the point, but I want th public's opinions.

Personally I believe if people are uploading screenshots they want everyone to see them?

It depends on the level of global censorship you plan on instituting. Since this website may be used by anyone, you have to consider that some people are more sensitive to images than others. Hence, it might be a good idea for you to have tight policies on public images (EX: Maybe make certain types of images come with a warning) and allow private images to float.

[Stanislav]

Well there is moderation on images, I was more refering to should screenshots have Facebook level privacy, I feel its a little overboard for an MMO.

Aka only show it to friends, or show it to your guild only hmm

(Keep in mind FAcebook only has privacy on images on the actual site, they have no privacy if you get a direct link to an image.)

[Yugl]

I would do it just in case someone wants to keep LS-only photos on their website for some reason (Possibly after a clean timed HNM kill or something). More options for this type of stuff is usually better.

[Severance]

Public

If you don't want a rival LS to know you killed something yet, don't upload the screenshot yet.
If you're just going to post it on your news feed, rivals can read that anyway, no?