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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

[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

[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

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.

[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.

We're about to send out a test email with the forums' email/newsletter function to test whether our email functionality is testing. If you get that email, please come back to this thread and let us know!

[Planned Bills (for six months)]

Afternoon all! Once again, the bill for the COH Rebirth servers are now due.

Planned Bills (for six months)



Changes are abound!

As you may have noticed there is a number of changes to the pricing of the services we buy from the datacenter. This was largely due to the Coronavirus pandemic as well as a series of upgrades they performed on their infrastructure. Many of these have caused rolling outages but many of those were fixed and correct in a matter of hours. The total uptime of the servers (game and web) were roughly 98% to 99%.

A new charge is added onto this bill in the name of the new Beta server so that we can keep the live shard operating and all allow for an ongoing PTS server. The Beta server will be used internally by the programmers and developers to test new content. PTS will be used for the purposes of, as the name implies, public testing of the forthcoming patches and changes. This new server (+$240) will cause an increase in the total bill temporarily as we plan to shut down the server box we use for our Git repositories and merge it back into the Beta shard. In the Fall bill, you will see this reflected with the decrease (-$360) of the bill. (So in short: this bill will go up $240 compared to the last bill and will drop $360 in the next cycle when we remove the other server, for a total savings of $120.)

Additionally, another server had to be put back into service as Heroku, which was powering PPD Drone, removed their free service. Rather than pay for the lightest Heroku tier, it was decided to put the small box back on instead. Later this year, probably in the next month or two we will be starting, we'll be testing out a bot that will once again send petitions in game to the Discord server to notify our mods and admins of any issues in game. Plus one additional status service bot will be researched to report on the status of the shards.

The final total for all fees and additions is $1677.

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.

DONATIONS ARE CLOSED!!! GOAL REACHED, SEE POST BELOW

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 1st, 2023. And any extra funds will be used to prepay the next six months in August 2023. Any questions, feel free to reach out on the Discord in DM or Forums in DM.

As always, please note that donating does NOT grant any additional benefits or rewards in game.

[Planned Bill (for six months)]

Evening all! Once again, the bill for the COH Rebirth servers are now due. (Again, generated late but that was because of changes I had to make at the admin level.)

Planned Bill (for six months)




No new charges being added to this bill. One charge is actually being removed due to its inactive use, and that would be the $9.00 server charge. (The server's usage didn't make sense in the long run since the newer VPS can host multiple sites. This is actually part of the planned maintenance in two weeks to change around the DNS hosting for the wiki, forums, and main webpage plus storage of the manifest files.) This makes the total of all charges only $1434.00

How to Donate:
Currently PayPal (still) is being used to collect donations, but with a twist. PayPal is no longer fronting the cost of credit card fees. Any donations sent in will have their processing fee removed. (PayPal removed the pools functionality last year.) A few people have reached out to donate via TransferWise (aka Wise) and while that is possible, will need to handled privately.

DONATIONS ARE CLOSED

The bill is due on September 1st, 2022. And any extra funds will be used to prepay the next six months in March 2023. Any questions, feel free to reach out on the Discord in DM or Forums in DM. 

[GAME SERVERS WILL STILL BE AVAILABLE]

Starting on August 28, 2022 after the reset of the Rebirth Game Server (~9:00 PM EST Sunday), all forward facing web services will go offline for maintenance.

Meanwhile, GAME SERVERS WILL STILL BE AVAILABLE. (Bolded for emphasis. We've already performed the maintenance that they needed weeks ago.) This only will affect the public facing websites and as such, gameplay is still possible.

During this downtime, this means that the following will not be available and some alternatives:

• Account Maintenance and Creation via play.cityofheroesrebirth.com. In the event you lose your password, you can always contact the PPD Drone on our Discord and request assistance. Be prepared with the name of your account and the name of at least some of your characters. Anyone wishing to create a new account during this downtime are suggested to reach out via the same Discord for basic account creation.
• Community Forums. During this time, we welcome you to join us our Discord and chat with us there.
• Wikipedia access. While outdated, by several years and fixes, we recommend using the archived ParagonWiki during this downtime.
  

These servers are being taken down temporarily so that we can perform necessary maintenance and optimizations (ie. upgrading the forum software, making changes to the registration form to allow for email identification or the like, and others.) so that we can continue to maintain the accounts. Additionally, the servers themselves need a bit of reformatting as well so that our internal tools can work correctly.

The total downtime will be no more than 24 hours as we also have to wait for a DNS change to propagate everywhere but its likely it will also be done within the first 12 hours or possibly sooner. We'll provide updates throughout the coming days as to what else the changes will entail.

Our datacenter has just informed me that they will be performing maintenance on our routers and switches today. During this maintenance, there may be disruptions to all facets of the game. (Forums, account maintenance, game world)

If you experience any of these disruptions during the time frame, they're estimating about 9 PM EST and onward, please do not open a new ticket via PPD Drone. Instead use rebirth-help and keep an eye on this channel for updates.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

- GM retched

Evening everyone. After a series of Windows Updates and running the backups to the server. We gave out a total of 512 tokens to all players in the server who logged in during the last week.

Nothing major to report this week while we continue to maintain and develop the changes to the server.

We'll be back next week to do another reset next week.

Happy hunting all,

- GM retched

Evening/morning all. After a bit of a misstep, the server has been restarted successfully and the hotfix deployed. Patch Notes will be published later. Additionally, the 1.5x/1.3x modifiers have additionally been turned off and gameplay is back to normal.

Thank you for all that were participating in the event and I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday event.

With regards, enjoy your time on the server!

GM retched

Evening Rebirth Players!

Maintenance has concluded on the servers as they are coming back online. (AuctionHouse will forever lag behind because of it's two-minute clock.)

After the maintenance, we've given out 501  tokens AND as a bonus to the holidays, we've give out 5 bonus  Winter Super Packs to start the holiday season off! Hope everyone had a happy holiday! (There is a 2% chance, everyone might have got 10 instead but I'm saying five to cover my bases.)

As a reminder, our holiday event schedule is listed below.

HOLIDAY SCHEDULE
12/3 - 12/5/2021 - Double XP Enabled
12/12/2021 - Planned release of Ri2.3 (Rebirth Issue 2, Update 3)
12/12 - 12/19/2021 - "Fright Before Christmas" Enabled
12/20/2021 - 1/3/2021 - Winter Event Enabled

As of now, hope everyone has a happy and safe holiday season. Good hunting.

- retched

Afternoon everyone, earlier this morning I reported that there was a connection issue over at our game server's data center. The datacenter crews reported back to me that evidently that outage was caused by a downed fiber cable. After working with their bandwidth providers, they did manage to get all servers (not just ours but the WHOLE data center) back up and running.

The game server seems to be functioning fine as I go through the box myself at this time. (It's as if the box didn't get cut off except for the several error messages I see from forced disconnects on the AuthServer to the game worlds.)

For anyone wanting to play on, you're welcome to do so but exercise caution. During the financial call out for the 2022-2023 years, I'll be working with a few members of the admin team and possibly reaching out to other game servers for recommendations on other hosts. We're prepaid up until August 2022, so I can't ask for a refund (even a prorated one) and I'd rather not move us to another host until we're all paid out.

For now, once again, happy hunting. And I hope you have a safe holidays.

GM retched

Evening.

This was a pretty uneventful restart tonight. We do have some changes listed in both #live-patch-notes and #pts-patch-notes going out today. Feel free to stop off there.

Additionally, Halloween has finally come to a close here on Rebirth. Hope everyone had a happy time. (I did hear of some complaints that the event did drag-on a bit. We're having internal talks about the length of future shard events (Halloween, Christmas, Summer Blockbuster, etc.). Speaking of, there will be a Christmas/Holiday event soon. (We're just trying to nail the date down... but it will definitely be in December with at least one 2XP weekend thrown in.)

This week a total of 554 Paragon tokens have been issued out. (As a reminder, we are now back to normal scheduling and are now THREE weeks to the next bonus token.)

Have a safe week everyone and hope to have more news about the server throughout the days ahead.

- GM retched

@Rebirth Player : Evening all! A lot of updates this week.

First, as a reminder. Our Halloween event is wrapping up on the NEXT reset (11/7/2021). So this is the last chance to get those salvage and trade them in for the extra slot or for extra All Hallows Eve superpacks. Speaking of which...

As a holiday bonus, I went ahead and gave all accounts five BONUS packs of All Hallows Eve for logging in the last week. You can see them on your "Special" salvage tab in the inventory screen as shown below. (These will be on the LAST character you logged in with.) Simply double click or right click on it and it should open. Anyone not getting them... be honest... can send a PPD Drone DM and we'll grant you them.

@GM Loriean has also asked me to remind you that our spelling bee contests are still going. There are over EIGHTY tickets that I'm going to be sorting through and running through a spell and syntax check before pushing them out to PTS and then live. Loriean will be back with the full count later on.

And lastly, the weekly counts. This week 564 :paragon: point tokens were given out for those that log in on the weekly basis. And due to the calendar adjusting as mentioned by @erpmario last time... 860 ADDITIONAL :paragon: tokens were also given out to make up for the faulty distribution of them. Going forward, we should be back on our normal four-week (28 day) distribution schedule.

That's all for this week. I hope everyone had a safe holiday. Until next week, happy hunting.

- GM retched

Afternoon everyone, hope all is well. This afternoon I was made aware of a bug regarding the tallying of the Paragon Points given to new accounts. Evidently we were supposed to be giving out EIGHT Paragon Points to each new account but AccountServer was still only granting five. I tracked down the configuration file needed to adjust it and will be making the adjustment on Sunday/Monday during our normal reset. After Sunday's reset, all NEW accounts will be granted the eight paragon points while all (Yes, ALL) current accounts will be granted a +3 bonus. (This +3 will be on top of the normal reset grants.)

You will see these totals reflected on Monday AFTER the reset has concluded.

With apologies,

- retched