Forum / Website Maintenance Update

[Tolero]

Updated 11:09 AM Eastern (-4 GMT) May 15th: Good morning! At this time we have completed our code deployment to repair disassociated forum accounts and players may log into the forum.

• If you had an existing forum name, but the site didn't hook you up to it or prompted you to pick a different name, you should be all set. Log in normally and the name will already be associated.
• If you already picked a throw away/temporary name, your original name will already be hooked up for you when you log in.
• If you hadn't yet gotten past the intial login process, you should now be able to progress barring any of the known issues that will be fixed with next week's web patch, as detailed below.
• SPECIAL NOTE: IF after this morning's maintenance the site still asks you to pick a different name, you are one of our edge cases that we will need to do one more step to help! Please submit a support ticket with the subject line "Need Final Migration Step" so we can compare your forum account against our list-o-helping.

We are aware of a smaller subset of users who for a variety of outlying reasons didn't get caught by our code fix. We're working on these by hand now that the number is down to a managable level. If you happen to be in this state, you can use the subject line "Need Final Migration Step".

If you already have a ticket in with us, you do not need to resubmit in order to receive help, and we will be sending out an email shortly to update you.

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*Emerges from the demonweb* whew, here's where we stand with the latest fixes and updates for the website/forums! This is a lengthy update as there are a lot of moving pieces to go over...

First off We have identified an issue that caused existing forum names to get into a bad state where it either didn't correctly associate you with your original forum name, or it misidentified the country of the accounts that were migrated, causing strange errors during initial sign in. Due to the volume of names impacted we're deploying a code-level fix tomorrow morning, May 15th from 10:00 AM - 11:00 PM Eastern (-4 GMT) to properly associate the impacted forum names. During this window the forums will be visible but players will be unable to log in while we complete this work.

Secondarily, even if your forum account migrated properly, we've identified some web UI issues that can trigger a log in error. We have pulled these errors together to be fixed in a website patch (which is tentatively slated for early next week). Fortunately many of these login errors can be worked around until our fixes are deployed using the following methods:

• (For players with a strange forum name state, tomorrow's maintenance will resolve the issue of being decoupled from your original forum name. However, note that there are a couple web UI issues that may still trigger a login error since the web UI fixes will be rolling in next week, so these work arounds can help you as well until that point).
• NOTE: Before attempting any of these work arounds, please note that it's very important to "save" your myaccount profile, even if all the information in the profile looks correct at a glance, as this causes the system to reconcile. Don't just view your myaccount profile then close it when everything looks right, save the profile.
• There is an error where the site does not offer the full country list for players. This has been causing issues that manifest as a time out or an authentication error when you first try to log in. In some cases you can work around this by temporarily setting the country in your myaccount.turbine.com profile to US or Canada, logging into the site, and then changing your country back to the correct one afterwards. This is particularly true in cases where your country is showing as "Select Country" in your myaccount profile if you never had a country selected in myaccount before the site migration. This UI error will clear up with next week's web patch.
• We have detected issues with exceedingly long passwords. A fix is coming to prevent players from making passwords longer than 16 characters, as that is the max character length that is valid. So in the meantime, ensure that your password is only between 6 and 16 characters in length.
• If you attempt to log in after the maintenance tomorrow morning, but are prompted to select a display name, this means that your existing forum name still needs a little extra help from us to migrate properly. You may go ahead and select a temporary name (such as Name2) to post with until we hand-fix you. Tomorrow's maintenance takes care of the bulk of impacted forum names, allowing us to more quickly assist any stragglers. Posts made under the temporary name will still be available in the forums, but won't be accessible by your corrected/original forum name.

Other Web Thingies:

• Some players have been getting a maintenance page for all DDO sites. We have so far found this to be happening for players who had modified their host file on their computer back during previous DNS issues with our sites. We recommend that players comment out such changes and perform an /ipconfig flushdns, along with rebooting the computer in order to correct the issue. We'll try to get the word out to as many players via support tickets & social media, but please feel free to tell friends if you know a friend who may have modified their host file at some point and who is stuck getting the white "turbine maintenance" page.
• We received a few reports of an error message that claimed the password matched the forum name and was therefor invalid, even though it was not the same. We have identified what was throwing the false positive and will be making adjustments during the web patch to take care of it.
• We have resolved several white-on-white and white-on-yellow styling issues, but the web folks are looking to re-do the styling options entirely to eliminate lingering alignment and font issues that aren't playing nice (aiming for a more black + dark gray, rather than brownish-gray). We will likely relegate the current gray scheme/font styles as an optional style choice for those who liked it.
• The web team will be configuring a "stretchy" (aka liquid) format as well, though it may come in after the basic style changes are implemented.
• The return of dev tracker is imminent (also targeting next week's web patch).
• We've identified the issue with the rep system, and positive rep will be back after the web patch.

If you have tickets in already, you do not need to resubmit them or take any action yet, as we will be sending back notification once we've completed our work. Thank you again, and stay tuned as we'll have more updates on our fixes and a free gift for the forum community for being so patient while we correct these issues!

[~Meetch72]

Effort appreciated.

I'm looking forward to being "myself" again on the forums.

[~Garrus]

I'm gonna take two guesses based on what i've seen:

• There is no current intention of 'rolling back' the fourms back to its original style.
• The dev tracker wont come in until next week

Am I right?

[~Otsegolation]

Some players have been getting a maintenance page for all DDO sites. We have so far found this to be happening for players who had modified their host file on their computer back during previous DNS issues with our sites. We recommend that players comment out such changes and perform an /ipconfig flushdns, along with rebooting the computer in order to correct the issue. We'll try to get the word out to as many players via support tickets & social media, but please feel free to tell friends if you know a friend who may have modified their host file at some point and who is stuck getting the white "turbine maintenance" page.

Who called it? I know someone called it.

[Cauthey_No_CCInfo]

Honest question:

How many "Bothans" "died" to bring us this information?

[THAC0]

Thanks T.... I had just vented in another thread about this very subject. :/

[BOgre]

Thanks for the info and good job.

No mention of "remember me" options, longer certificate duration (that is, fix to being logged out after 5-40 minutes), and prior 'class-prefix' threads migrating to their new 'class subforum' homes. Are these in the worx, is there any word?

[~kruemeli]

Honest question:

How many "Bothans" "died" to bring us this information?

71.

[~Lorien_]

Thanks for the info and good job.

No mention of "remember me" options, longer certificate duration (that is, fix to being logged out after 5-40 minutes), and prior 'class-prefix' threads migrating to their new 'class subforum' homes. Are these in the worx, is there any word?

In another thread they said we will never get remember me back because its a known security vulnerability (they removed it from LOTRO who had this setup first after their database was hacked due to that feature)

[~CD_]

.... select a temporary name (such as Name2) to post with until we hand-fix you. ....

Other Web Thingies:

• ....

Can we volunteer for hand fixes?

Love it when ya talk all dirty to us like that. *Hides from Mr. T.*


...
Seriously, thnx for taking the time for the write-up.


edit: Seconding a couple questions already posed above, and adding one more that I probably already know the answer to: Are there any possibilities to have our account re-associated to our current chosen names?

[ozrabal]

For me personally, biggest problem are the broken links.
Will it be addressed?

I know the workaround but it is really annoying after a few times especially on a mobile.
Thanks for the update.

[Tolero]

Thanks for the info and good job.

No mention of "remember me" options, longer certificate duration (that is, fix to being logged out after 5-40 minutes), and prior 'class-prefix' threads migrating to their new 'class subforum' homes. Are these in the worx, is there any word?

Yeah the length of the message was getting epic, but for clarity the certificate duration bug is also part of the web patch. Class prefix threads we do want to get to (because I presume anything that has a prefix would appreciate being in the new sub section), but the rest of the web issues kind of derailed us from getting to those just yet. But it is something we plan on doing for folks once the dust settles. "Remember me" is an on-going topic, as there is some work being done to make a safer version of such a feature, but I don't know that it's done in time for the upcoming web patch.

[Tolero]

Good morning! At this time we have completed our code deployment to repair disassociated forum accounts.

• If you had an existing forum name, but the site didn't hook you up to it or prompted you to pick a different name, you should be all set. Log in normally and the name will already be associated.
• If you already picked a throw away/temporary name, your original name will already be hooked up for you when you log in.
• If you hadn't yet gotten past the intial login process, you should now be able to progress barring any of the known issues that will be fixed with next week's web patch, as detailed in the original post of this thread.
• SPECIAL NOTE: IF after this morning's maintenance the site still asks you to pick a different name, you are one of our edge cases that we will need to do one more step to help! Please submit a support ticket with the subject line "Need Final Migration Step" so we can compare your forum account against our list-o-helping.

We are aware of a smaller subset of users who for a variety of outlying reasons didn't get caught by our code fix. We're working on these by hand now that the number is down to a managable level. If you happen to be in this state, you can use the subject line "Need Final Migration Step".

If you already have a ticket in with us, you do not need to resubmit in order to receive help, and we will be sending out an email shortly to update you.

[Yskuma]

Fixed here. Thanks Tolero!

[BOgre]

Yeah the length of the message was getting epic, but for clarity the certificate duration bug is also part of the web patch. Class prefix threads we do want to get to (because I presume anything that has a prefix would appreciate being in the new sub section), but the rest of the web issues kind of derailed us from getting to those just yet. But it is something we plan on doing for folks once the dust settles. "Remember me" is an on-going topic, as there is some work being done to make a safer version of such a feature, but I don't know that it's done in time for the upcoming web patch.

Really great news.

[Paryan]

Thanks and nice to have the account linked again!

[Phoenix-daBard]

And I am back!

[Arnhelm]

Worked for me. Thank you very much.

[tigerlilli]

Yay it actually worked!

[MrkGrismer]

Yay, it is fixed for me as well.