V8 Pregame Planning & SOTF Main Server Migration

[SOTF_Help]

Attention, everyone:

With V7 nearing completion, the time for more dedicated planning of V8 is at hand. As such, we have opened a planning board to allow for better discussion of character relationships, groups, etc.

We are also at this time releasing some information regarding the V8 pregame setting and school to better allow handlers to ready their concepts and draft profiles.

Students for V8 will be enrolled at John Endecott Memorial Academy in Salem, Massachusetts. All chosen students will be in the senior class and must have been enrolled at JEM since their freshman year. The current State of the World can be found here.

As with previous versions, the start of pregame will not be directly tied to the progression of Endgame, and may occur before or after the completion of the version. Further details and guidelines will be released as the start of pregame approaches.

[+] School Information

Founded in the mid-nineteenth century as a private school funded by several wealthy Salem and Boston benefactors, John Endecott Memorial gains its namesake from John Endecott, the longest-serving governor of the colony of Massachusetts. While the school has a tradition of longevity, what it lacks definitively is a tradition of academic or athletic success. In the aftermath of The Great Recession in the early 2010’s, the school has shifted from middling private school to upstart public school— still awaiting an opportunity to definitively make their mark.

Caught between modernizing and preserving tradition as it tries to expand, the school currently lacks facilities and funding for many staple high school sports such as football, hockey, and baseball/softball, but they do offer track, soccer, volleyball, and basketball, and boast fairly successful lacrosse teams. The fine arts department recently had its funding cut in order to divert more money to the school's STEM fields, but success in this area has so far been limited. School clubs and extracurriculars retain a good amount of support from both current students and staff and alumni, including the unofficial Quidditch team. The school colors are royal blue with gold and white accents, and the school mascot is a Boston terrier, represented both by the costumed mascot "Johnny the Boston" and a real dog named Diamond.

[+] City Information

Salem, Massachusetts is a historical New England city that enjoys strong waves of tourism, mostly in the summer and in autumn and especially during the month of October. Settled and consistently inhabited by Europeans since 1626, Salem is one of the nation's most historically rich towns and many people make trips to take historical tours. The bulk of the tourism, however, centers around what Salem is most famous for: witchcraft, the occult, and all things spooky in relation to the infamous Salem Witch Trials.

Salem is approximately 22 miles from Boston by car, and has a population of 41,340. Its weather is very temperate, with cold winters and mild summers. Its racial demographics are 77% White, 6% Black or African American, 4% Mixed Race, 2% Asian, and 11% Other. The primary employers in the town are the medical sector, the tourism industry, the local government, and Salem State University. The town has a median income of 55k for a family. Politically, it is moderately liberal, with 58% of the population voting Democrat, 35% of the population voting Republican, and the remaining 7% voting Independent.

Additionally, we wish to announce that SOTF Main will be undergoing a server migration and URL change tentatively beginning in early February 2021 (this date is subject to change). The new URL for the Main boards will be posted as a reply to this thread on the date of the move. The current boards will be locked on the day of the move, and will remain up as an archive for the foreseeable future. This server migration will be occurring concurrently with the opening of V8 pregame applications, the relevant information for which will be posted on the new Main boards. We understand that you all may have various questions/concerns regarding the specifics of the server migration/URL change. To that end, we have gathered and addressed what we believe will be the biggest concerns below.

Why is this happening?

Shortly after Zetaboards was purchased by Tapatalk and it was decided that SOTF needed to move to a new host, MurderWeasel provided Main with space on a server that he set up originally for Mini (hence why the URL has been "sotfmini.com" all this time). Main staff quickly accepted this arrangement in order to prevent disruption to V7, but intended for Main to get its own URL and server space at some point in the future. With V8 on the horizon, now is the best time for a server migration to occur.

What exactly is happening to the current board?

The current board will remain up as an archive of SOTF versions 1 through 7 for the foreseeable future, and will be locked to prevent further posting to the in-character sections. These versions and all their content will also be available and archived on the new boards, and that is where all future posting to any of these versions (such as in V7's Meanwhile, Endgame, and Epilogue) should take place. Sometime in the future after the server migration, this board may also be refitted by MurderWeasel to host a new game, set in a different universe (stay tuned).

Will everything need to be ported again?

No, all posts and threads currently on the boards as of the day of the data backup (which will occur shortly before the migration) will be preserved and will be available on the new Main boards. Posts made after this date may not be preserved, and may need to be manually ported. Staff will attempt to port over any posts made during this transitional period, but if you notice that a post or thread is missing, please contact a member of the staff team in order to have it addressed.

Will we have to change all the links again?

The staff team will be updating links that lead directly to the main site (such as the links on the front page of the Wiki and the TVTropes page), but links between a character's threads and links on character pages on the wiki do not need to be updated. These links will still link back to the current boards, which will remain up as a fully readable archive, and will be preserved on the SOTF Wiki as archival links (so as not to undo the work that was done updating them in the first place). New links that go to the new boards may still be added to the wiki at a later time.

Will my account still be there?

Yes, your account will still be available on the new boards. You will not have to re-register, and should be able to log in as if nothing occurred, though password resets may be required post-migration (we are currently unsure if this will prove to be an issue or not). The only major change you will notice is that your PM inbox will be empty, so if you have any PMs that you wish to save or back-up, please do so as soon as possible.

What about endgame?

Beginning on the day of the server migration and ending one week (168 hours) after that date, activity timers for all handlers currently in endgame will be put on hold. They will not be required to post during this transitional period, but will be expected to resume their activity after the migration is complete, on the new Main boards.

If you have any questions or concerns that haven't been addressed here, please contact any member of the SOTF staff team as soon as possible with your questions or concerns.

Thank you.

-The SOTF Staff Team

[SOTF_Help]

Attention, everyone:

Due to unforeseen technical difficulties, the timeline for the server migration has been pushed backwards to some time in late February/early March. We will do our best to continue to keep you all updated as progress is made.

-The SOTF Staff Team