After hours and hours of prepping, tweaking, massaging content - we launched the new MMORPG.com site around midnight EST last night. The site itself was ready, if needing a bit of polish. What wasn't ready? The code base and the infrastructure. For now, we're back to the old site, but not for long!
The new site's main flow, back-end, and core functionality all work. Evan and Ben had gotten the forum themes set for the white them, and were moving onto other CSS and theming issues. But it was all stuff we could do after the new site went live. Sadly, the site was just not at all ready for the traffic presented by you guys. Ergo, around 115am EST, we made the call to revert back to the old site while the hosting team makes some changes.
So close, yet so far!
What does that mean for the new site and its launch? Mainly, it's just a matter of time. Everything's ready. We'll keep massaging content on the staging site, and the Amazon guys and gals will work on the hosting. When they feel confident they've got a good setup, we'll try again.
For now, sit back, relax, and enjoy the comfort of the old-fashioned MMORPG.com. Oh, and yes we know - the forum theme is too white, and the text editor has white text. Evan is working on that, and it may be fixed by the time some of you read this. It was changed on the new site, but didn't make it to this one. Bear with us!
UPDATE: I was just told by Craig and Ben, the new site will now launch on July 1st. Why? We have to go when advertisers haven't bought site skins, so we're not robbing them of their money. But the extra week plus is good, because it gives us more time to polish known issues, and to give Amazon time to get their configuration right. I'm not certain we'll have a whole 24 hour down period then, but when I know more about how that day will go I'll keep you all posted.
UPDATE 2: We've decided to push back again to July 25th. This gives the devs ample time to fix what went wrong this week, polish the site's other areas more, and no one has to worry about tons of issues over a Holiday Weekend in the US and Canada. One month now!
So like they say... launching a new MMORPG really is hard. Here's hoping the new hotness can run better on Take 2.
