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As the thread title says, I'll be taking the forums and RebirthWiki offline for needed system/software upgrades.

This will only affect the websites mentioned and will not affect gameplay in any manner. In short, just performing upgrades on the forum software and wiki. If all bodes well, all existing threads will remain as will the Wiki.

The downtime is planned to start TOMORROW @ 8 PM EST and will take about three hours. During this time, both sites will be offline and inaccessible.

- retched

Evening everyone. Just to give everyone a caution, there will be a planned system outage that will affect both the PTS and Live servers at our network center.

During this downtime, no game account registration will be available and all game faculties will be down.  The web forums, wikis, and even PPD Drone will remain online. (Their maintenance took place last week.)

The servers are going offline due to some much-needed hardware maintenance on our dedicated server boxes.

The total time of this outage shouldn't be longer than three hours but anything is possible.

Please try to complete all gameplay before September 10, 2024 at 3:00 PM EST as we won't have access to send our usual warnings. If everything works well, we can turn the boxes back on with little more than flicking the switch.

- retched

[FUNDING GOAL REACHED!!!!!]

FUNDING GOAL REACHED!!!!!

Attached below is proof of payment for the Rebirth servers main server costs.

The next bill will be due on March 1, 2025 and generated February 18, 2025. (I'll try to post the bill up sooner rather than later. Sorry for the pinch everyone.)

[Planned Bills (for six months)]

It's now the fall and once again the servers bills are now due. Nothing fancy this time around, there were no back charges or credits made. (Everything from the Spring/Summer bill is coming over to this bill.) Again, this is the normal price of the server going forward barring any form of price increases. (So far we're not in line for any)

Planned Bills (for six months)

• 2x $456.00 : These are rented baremetal servers that hold the Main Live server and the public PTS server. (as well as some web components, like our manifests)
• $240.00 : This is the staff's internal PTS server (Beta). This server pretty much lets the staff make changes to the code and test internally before we push it to the public PTS. We tried to run two servers on one box by toggling which one you log in to but that caused issues when people consistently tried to log in on the PTS server outside of the test times. So this server was bought to accommodate a change.
• $30.00 : This is currently being used to host the web forums, wiki, main website and the beta ground for the new web page.
• $120.00: This is the new Alpha shard, hosting the new game world for internal testing to not disturb the PTS with our changes. Additionally, this server hosts all of the git repositories that we use to power, code, and make changes the game in a collaborative manner.
  
• Grand Total: $1302.00

How to Donate:
Currently PayPal is being used to collect donations via "PayPal Fundraisers". Additionally, a few people have reached out to donate via Wise (f/k/a TransferWise) and while that is possible, will need to be handled privately. If you are an international player and wish to donate in Euro or GBP, you can reach out to me (retched) via Discord and I'll provide details on how you can donate should you choose not to use PayPal.

FUNDING GOAL REACHED!!!

I also, cannot stress this enough:

!!!PLEASE DONATE ONLY IF YOU ARE FISCALLY ABLE TO!!!

Most times we always end up with a bit of overflow. If you miss the cut, do not stress it. We still enjoy you and thank you for your time that you spend playing on COH: Rebirth!

The bill is due on September 1, 2024. Any extra funds will be used to prepay the next six months in March 2024. Any questions, feel free to reach out on the Discord in DM or Forums in DM.

Please remember that donating does NOT grant any additional benefits or rewards in game and any donations received are final, not subject to a refund.

As always thank you for your consideration and donations!

- retched

As noted on the Discord, at 3:05 PM EST on 2/26/2024, the players of City of Heroes Rebirth have successfully funded the Rebirth game and dev servers for the next six months. Posted below is the Proof of Payment for the bills. Again, thanks to all who contributed! Even if you weren't able to help fund the servers this time, thanks again for playing here on Rebirth.

- retched

[Funding Goal Nearly Reached!! Only $20 Short!!]

Funding Goal Nearly Reached!! Only $20 Short!!
Attention @Rebirth Players !

We are closing in on the deadline to keep the servers active for another six months. We're only $20 short from reaching the goal!

FUNDING GOAL REACHED!!!

[Planned Bills (for six months)]

It's spring time and once again the servers bills are now due. Nothing fancy this time around and there were no back charges or credits made. This is the normal price of the server going forward barring any form of price increases.

Planned Bills (for six months)

• 2x $456.00 : These are rented baremetal servers that hold the Main Live server and the public PTS server. (as well as some web components)
• $240.00 : This is the staff's internal PTS server (Beta). This server pretty much lets the staff make changes to the code and test internally before we push it to the public PTS. We tried to run two servers on one box by toggling which one you log in to but that caused issues when people consistently tried to log in on the PTS server outside of the test times. So this server was bought to accommodate a change.
• $15.00 : This server will be retired. (it was originally planned for the self-hosted but it needed more room.
• $30.00 : This is currently being used to host the web forums, wiki, main website and the beta ground for the new web page.
• $120.00: This is the new Alpha shard, hosting the new game world for internal testing as to not disturb the PTS with our changes. Additionally, this server hosts all of the git repositories that we use to power the game.
  
• Grand Total: $1302.00

How to Donate:
Currently PayPal is being used to collect donations via "PayPal Fundraisers". Additionally, a few people have reached out to donate via Wise (f/k/a TransferWise) and while that is possible, will need to be handled privately. If you are an international player and wish to donate in Euro or GBP, you can reach out to me (retched) via Discord and I'll provide details on how you can donate should you choose not to use PayPal.

FUNDING GOAL REACHED!! NO MORE DONATIONS!!

I also, cannot stress this enough:

!!!PLEASE DONATE ONLY IF YOU ARE FISCALLY ABLE TO!!!

Most times we always end up with a bit of overflow. If you miss the cut, do not stress it. We still enjoy you and thank you for your time that you spend playing on COH: Rebirth!

The bill is due on March 1, 2024. Any extra funds will be used to prepay the next six months in March 2024. Any questions, feel free to reach out on the Discord in DM or Forums in DM.

Please remember that donating does NOT grant any additional benefits or rewards in game and any donations received are final, not subject to a refund.

As always thank you for your consideration and donations!

- retched

(Copied from the Discord...)
Good evening Rebirth Players!

Myself and the Rebirth Dev and Mod teams wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that we are aware of the Homecoming team's latest announcement this morning.

This news will have no impact on Rebirth nor any of our ongoing operations and development.

We are continuing development on our next issue and will have more news to share on the Rebirth Issue soon :SOON:.

Meanwhile, have fun and happy hunting!

- retched

By the sounds of things, it seems more people are getting this one which means the email configuration works and is money well spent.

Next step will be getting this configuration over to the Wiki and possibly unlocking more accounts.

At some point before the next bill due date, the game accounts will be tied to the forum accounts. (Meaning that you will log in to the forums here and be able to create and manage your game accounts. More details on that soon.)

We're going to go ahead and probably p*** off the new mail router, but an "all hands on deck" email was just sent out. This email will probably take a few hours to get to everyone as there is a hard limit of 300 outgoing emails per hour (So we're sending out 250 per hour just to give wiggle room for registrations).

If you get the email, check back in here and let us know if it was in your email inbox or spam. If you don't get it by Monday (yes, THAT SLOW), let retched know by DM here or in Discord.

[Proof of payment from DataCenter]

After almost a day, I'm calling an end to the donations pool for this go around... REBIRTH IS FUNDED FOR THE NEXT 180 days! Any overages will be applied to the next full bill (The normal bill $1317.00 unless any increases/decreases happen.)

Thank you all for your funding! Services receipts will be posted to the forums soon.

Also don't forget about the poll! We want to know if we should keep these donation pools up indefinitely or if we should stick to only posting them up when the bill is due.

Once again thank you all for donating to keeping the game servers up and for playing with us on COH Rebirth!

As always here are the receipts showing that the bills have been paid with the funds raised:

Proof of payment from DataCenter


Proof of payment from new MailService Provider (MXRoute) (getting this one set up now)

[Planned Bills (for six months)]

Morning all! Once again, the bill for the COH Rebirth servers are now due. There are a couple of line items that are different this time and one new charge. First here's a break down of the line items being charged:

Planned Bills (for six months)

• 2x $456.00 : These are rented baremetal servers that hold the Main Live server and the public PTS server. (as well as some web components)
• $240.00 : This is the staff's internal PTS server (Alpha). This server pretty much lets the staff make changes to the code and test internally before we push it to the public PTS. We tried to run two servers on one box by toggling which one you log in to but that caused issues when people consistently tried to log in on the PTS server outside of the test times. So this server was bought last time to accommodate that change.
• $15.00 : This is a VPS server currently hosting the Discord PPD Drone and log viewer. Late this year, we'll be moving away from this to another ticketing solution while trying to get the in-game petition system to push to the Discord. (We had this working at some point but it broke when the Docker config we previously used broke down.)
• $30.00 : This is currently being used to host the web forums, wiki, and the beta ground for the new web page.
• A credit of $342.58 was applied because we shut down an extra server that was no longer in use (our old Git server which we migrated over to the new Beta box flawlessly).

The new item that hasn't been billed is a $99.00 flat charge for our webmail server. We're going with MXRoute for our webhosting. This will allow us to get all of the email functionality (Wiki activation and Forum activation emails and possibly even game world password reset emails) off of the boxes (which are being blocked somehow) and moved over to a separate web instance. Once this is paid for, we'll swap our DNS configuration to THAT particular email service and drop the Postfix and other failed SMTP configs from the VPS systems.



Poll Question:
Many will notice that there is a poll question attached to this thread. The question is asking should we keep the donations open year round or keep it to being open during the two week(-ish) billing period. Some may find it a bit of a squeeze to donate with such little time.  If you feel that the option to keep it open for longer might help things, this would be the option for you. Nothing would change as far as access to the server. There will be NO microtransactions or benefits received in-game or on Discord for donating to the server. (Edit: This was brought up on the Discord but I wanted to clarify, even if we switch to the open donation pool, the bills and payment receipts of the same will still be posted up here and to the Discord as well. Nothing will change about that.)

How to Donate:
Currently PayPal is being used to collect donations via "PayPal Fundraisers". PayPal is no longer fronting the cost of credit card fees, however and any incoming donations sent in will have their processing fee removed automatically. (PayPal removed the pools functionality which allowed free "donations".) Additionally, a few people have reached out to donate via Wise (f/k/a TransferWise) and while that is possible, will need to be handled privately. If you are an international player and wish to donate in Euro or GBP, you can reach out to me (retched) via Discord and I'll show provide details on how you can help.

DONATION POOL CLOSED - GOAL REACHED!!

I also, cannot stress this enough:

!!!PLEASE DONATE ONLY IF YOU ARE FISCALLY ABLE TO!!!

Most times we always end up with a bit of overflow. If you miss the cut, do not stress it. We still enjoy you and thank you for your time that you spend playing on COH: Rebirth!

The bill is due on September 1st, 2023. And any extra funds will be used to prepay the next six months in March 2024. Any questions, feel free to reach out on the Discord in DM or Forums in DM.

Please remember that donating does NOT grant any additional benefits or rewards in game and any donations received are final, not subject to a refund.

As always thank you for your consideration and donations!

- retched

As the email suggests, this thread is being used to survey the 2nd email general test I performed using our new emails server. If you DID NOT get the email at all (Neither in Spam nor Inbox), please respond stating such. If you did get it, let us know if it went to your email inbox or caught in a spam filter.

Second test went out starting from here.

This one ignored the "Newsletter" flag in the profile settings.

Recieved your email and it came into my primary inbox folder :-). I just noticed at the bottom of your email the unsubscription link shows up with a small bit of broken html.

Code Select Expand

<br /> also the unsubscription URL appears to be non-clickable for me at least.

That might be normal as it was sent as a plain text email. (The signature auto-appended the HTML line break.)