"The Guild forum gone for good!" Topic

It seems The Guild forum has suffered a terminal event and can't be recovered. Apparently announced by the admins on the FB page. As of now there is no way of recovering what was there and the admins are not sure if they will start a new one from scratch.

Terrible loss, the Guild was a great place .

That is a tragedy. Was over 10 years of archive there which continued as a great inspiration around 20mm gaming.

I know some will say Facebook but it is crap compared to the nature of discussion and archive that a forum provides.

Certainly hoping there may be a Guild v4.

Richard

I was afraid something like that had happened. Was going to inquire here but saw this post first. I enjoyed the forum and hope that a new one will be established.
CB

Huge shame. The discussion, information and inspiration over there was fantastic.

How does something like that happen?

A real shame

No back-ups?

Oh, thats a real pity. I hope they can recovery – it was one of the best forums IMO.

No back-ups?

Bill, I am not privy to the full details. I am only going on what the admins have posted. Speculation is that it was a malware hit and the backups were corrupted too.

I hope they can recovery – it was one of the best forums IMO.

The information I have seen says no chance to recover. The only option is to start over. People could repost photos, but the extensive and informative discussion posts are gone.

Wow. What a waste.
Shocked they seem to have no back ups.

Wow. That is a terrible shame, The Guild was the premier resource for 20mm WW2 gaming. So many inspiring threads (Kampfgroup Wotan!) gone forever is a major loss.

This is the official announcement from the admins.

"After a rather confusing and sad week, "The Guild" admin team are now announcing that it appears that the forum has gone for good.

We share the sense of loss that has been circulating online for the last few days, and like you we mourn the loss of what was not only a great wargaming and modelling resource, but was for us a labour of love and place to hang out with friends online.

Between us we have run forums together for over 14yrs, first at Elhiem, then Showcase20 and most successfully with "The Guild" which ran for over 11yrs, our success based around treating others the same way as you would expect to be treated. A sign of this successful ethos was the fact that the forum pretty much ran itself as the 3500+ international membership were polite and encouraging. The reputation that the forum built up is an immense source of pride to us, and we thank those who helped foster that. We would also like to thank those of you we have met, travelled with, played games with, crashed at homes and generally been amazing friends with over the last few years. The friendships we have built I hope will endure beyond this.

With the death of the main forum, this FB page is redundant and the decision has been made to turn this off in the next two weeks also.

At present the admin team are talking about the possibility of starting again and creating a new space to hang out in, but 11yrs on we now have much busier real lives, with added demands from work, family and children and other hobbies, so nothing is yet confirmed….

We thank you all for your recent communications and we hope to see you at a wargaming show soon…"

Terrible loss to our hobby :(

Great loss.
Hopefully a new forum will arise so please no Facebook, that's crap

Why is Facebook crap? It gets the job done.

I am not fundamentally anti-Facebook, but it makes for a pretty weak searchable archive of past content and discussions, and you can't skim and cherry pick which topics you're actually interested in seeing as quickly.

And it's owned by Google who are pretty much the quintessence of corporatist evil on a quest to know, and therefore control, everything about you.

Agreed, a terrible loss to many of us.

The problem with Facebook is it is not navigable in the same way as a forum. If you are away from it for any period of time there is no quick way to see what's been discussed. It's fine for the ‘here and now', but very limited beyond that.

The Guild was a superb miniatures forum.

It had many of the strengths of this forum:
1) An extremely knowledgeable set of users, particularly but not only for the Second World War;
2) Some outstanding miniature painters;
3) Numerous excellent and inspiring game reports;
4) A well-structured and searchable list of topics.

It was also the 'home' of the Battlegroup rules, hosting the discussion group for those rules.

I agree completely with those like Brownand, Greebs and TacticalPainter who say that Facebook is not an adequate alternative.
A) Facebook offers only a single stream of posts: there is no easy way to scan, filter or search. If you happen to be interested in the most popular or most recent posts it's great. If not, it's rubbish. If you are looking for painting tips, or battle reports, or the Polish campaign, or plastic miniatures, or whatever, it's not easy to find them on Facebook. It was on The Guild and it is here.
B) It's hard to manage any type of sustained discussion of a topic on Facebook. Posts quickly get drowned out. I looked at the Battlegroup Facebook forum this morning. About a third of the most-recent posts are new players asking good questions, but they are often questions that have been asked 50 times before because on Facebook you can't see or find the previous answers – so it's entirely natural and reasonable to post the question afresh.

Frothers -- Facebook is not owned by Google, but many people share your concern about what both companies do with their users' data, and how little tax both corporations pay outside the United States. If it was part of Google, it would probably be much easier to find past Facebook posts!

PS Any way to cross-post this thread to 15mm too?

It was a good forum. Structured differently than this as it mainly focussed on warfare from mid 30s onwards and into the modern era.
I would be happy to subscribe again if it helps.

Facebook is owned by Google? Hmm…

AdmiralHawke expresses exactly my feelings about the fact that facebook cannot be used as a forum.I just don't hope they go that way.

I agree with Hawke about the uniqueness of The Guild. In addition I'd say that for me a great asset was the fact that it focused on 20mm historical miniatures but did not in any way exclude any other scales or non-historical miniatures.

Its a very sad day, one of the few civilised places on the net and a mine of useful info was The Guild. I think 'proper' forums are probably for a minority of gamers these days ( always were if I think about it) the sort of FB 'hit' style media better suited to the IPhone/GW generation perhaps.
L

Just wondering and assuming the worst case scenario. Should the Guild not be able to get back online , just wondering if we could make TMP the new home for Battlegroup . With Piers already posting on here from time to time for me it would be an obvious new home.

The guild gone is a huge tragedy. Countless man-hours invested on the BG forums by all the player community now lost. A huge blow. We must gather strength now to recover fro this.

Terrible and very sad news. Never imagine that this could happen! Regards, Quino

This is a massive loss for the 20mm side of the hobby, tons of tutorials, pictures, and just plain information to be had. As is said in these occasions. The Guild helped get my esoteric little blog off the ground as well, it was, a very special place.

Vaya Con Dios, Guild.

I am certainly going to miss it.

Never heard of it (I'm rarely on FB), but I wish I had known about it before it went down.

Some of the existing members have grouped together on FB . Whilst I am not a fan of FB , it affords us with a vehicle so we can communicate with each other. So don't write us off just yet.

All is not lost, come on over…….

The Guild 4.0

link

Cheers
Larry

Nice one Larry, thanks !

…and for those of Battlegroup bent…

link