Topic: A bittersweet rememberance

[TechPro]

It was one year ago that the Descent community lost a cherished friend and a long time mainstay.  As far as I've been able to determine, it was April 19 of last year (2010) that planetdescent.com was turned off.  It wasn't our choice, but it did happen. 

In a way, it was a serious loss to the Descent community, but in another way perhaps it was a blessing in disguise.  Planetdescent.com had been ... well ... how can I put this ... dying.

Planetdescent.com had been around for several years (since around 2000 or 2001) and had often been the forum of choice for many Descenters.  Many had come, and much had happened in those almost 10 years of it's life.  Sadly, like many things in this world, age wasn't being kind to PD.com.  Fewer and fewer users were actively posting, a number of sections of the site were no longer working, and the site's code was having problems which the few users who were still posting and learned to deal with as best they could.

As PD.com was slowly dying, other Descent related sites seemed to be doing well, in fact they seemed to actually be growing and more Descent sites were popping up (including this place, planetdescent.net).  When PD.com went dark, Descenters simply shifted to the other sites ... and if I may say so ... actually became a stronger community, more active and more vibrant.  Just before PD.com went dark, new posts were infrequent and maybe only a couple a week (if that).  At other Descent related sites, the post traffic was fairly low for most of them.  Now, when I come to PlanetDescent.net and I see how many posts have happened since I was here last, see how many new posts there are at descentbb.net and at other Descent sites, it occurs to me it had been a long time since there was this much activities on the Descent related forums.

Today, the Descent community is stronger and more active than it has been in some time.  Descent, Descent II, and Descent 3 may be just games, but the community of people who came together because of those games, they are (for the most part) good people with creative talents and interesting minds.  This is a community I'm proud to be a part of.

May PlanetDescent.com rest in peace.  The Descent community lives on, strong and vibrant.

[Pumo]

Very well said. Indeed PD.com was a dying community with a LOT of technical problems,
like the HTML
 tags you needed to put on your posts to avoid problems and stuff like that, as well as some inactivity on it, and thus I definitely think that the dead of PD.com was for the better.

PD.net is waay better than PD.com ever was and it indeed is a very active community now and with a very nice and friendly ambient on it.
I'm really happy to be a part of PD.net and I conisder it one of my favorite forums ever.

Long life to PD.net!

[Kaiaatzl]

PD.net is waay better than PD.com ever was and it indeed is a very active community now and with a very nice and friendly ambient on it.
I'm really happy to be a part of PD.net and I conisder it one of my favorite forums ever.

Long life to PD.net!

x2

[Scyphi]

x3! 

[SaladBadger]

speaking of pd.com does anyone have a listing of the files available on checkor's dfiles mirror so we can recover lost programs that were hosted there and the like?

[VANGUARD]

April 19th huh? that's my sister birthday.

Descent is quite the game, and this is quite the forum. Sometimes I am amazed I am still here, talking in this forum. But other ones, like linux based ones, have faded.

[Matthew]

:tear:

[TechPro]

speaking of pd.com does anyone have a listing of the files available on checkor's dfiles mirror so we can recover lost programs that were hosted there and the like?

http://www.planetdescent.net/index.php?topic=301.0

Some items that were listed on PD.com shortly before it went dark... you might have to contact Do_Checkor to get a path to because there is a chance those items are not listed on his site.  Other than that, ALL items that were downloadable through the DF links at PD.com are still obtainable through the site referenced in that thread I linked.

Also, you can use the Internet Wayback Machine to look up PD.com (as it was roughly two to three years ago) and get the links/path to whatever file/mission you're after... and all those paths still work (assuming the path worked back then).  That is the method I've used to re-obtain many items, much of which I've uploaded to this site.

[VANGUARD]

oh goodness, yikes. I tried to get on here a few times and it wouldn't connect. "Happy Anniversary", then the site goes down. I'm trying to think if I remembered any email addresses from anyone.

[NUMBERZero]

I still have the old link saved on my tabbed homepage. It keeps going to IGN, but it's still there. I feel like that I am keeping the light on for it to come home.

[Scyphi]

I did that for awhile myself, but eventually I decided there wasn't much point in keeping a link around that I never clicked on anymore, and didn't actually lead where it should be going.

[karx-elf-erx]

It was a change for the better, and PD.net has risen from the ashes of PD.com like the proverbial Phoenix.

[Alieo]

I still have the old link saved on my tabbed homepage. It keeps going to IGN, but it's still there. I feel like that I am keeping the light on for it to come home.

Now that's too cool! I've done that in the past for some favorite sites I've been to. Way to go!

And yeah this community of people is awesome. I've been a long time Descenter, but have stayed away from the forums for the past 10 years. A voice inside my head one night whispered, "Cooommmeee baaaacccckkk..." so I decided to come back to the community, resurrect my old pilot name and I'm even playing it more now! Sometimes I believe events like this happen because it's in the stars. Things happen in circadian rhythms, so to speak, collective unconscious, etc.

[Crash]

Whoever chose this CMS did a damn good job because it seems to fill all the needs that the Gamespy or IGN or whatever software didn't.
It certainly seems to have had a positive effect.

[Kaizerwolf]

The saddest part is, even though this page is my homepage, and the .COM address was my homepage before this, I don't seem to post, at all. I rarely play Descent as it is. I've been so swamped with life, and really, I need to start getting back into these forums and the game.

You guys are like a family to me. And I've basically ignored you all.  :'(