Closing down the forums [update]
Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2023 5:52 pm
Hi all,
Unfortunately I can no longer maintain this website due to a certain Chinese spammer who has been harassing me for the past 4 years going to lengths to find my home address, phone number etc. This all stemmed from a copyright claim to the game "Dark Blade" which is a Chinese knock off version of Blade of Darkness, which in itself was abandonware at the time. Basically the Chinese spammer stole mods from members of this site and included them into his version of the game which he is selling in China then claimed copyright against the original mod creators. He also demanded that the members who created the mods be deleted from this site and the BOD forums shut down. I refused and then got continually harassed.
Fast forward a couple of years and the rights to Blade of Darkness was picked up by a British company SNEG who "Mr China Man" believes I work for and this site is a massive conspiracy to defraud him and his company. He demanded it be removed from steam and despite explaining I have nothing to do with the game and this is a Drakan fan site not BOD, harassment continued including legal threats and official paperwork from courts in China. Seem as these were all in Chinese and sent to a UK address I could not take them seriously. Nothing ever came of it and I made all attempts to block "Mr China Man" but he relentlessly keep tracking me down. I sought help from Codemasters who originally published the game and they were quite helpful and said basically I have nothing to worry about legally. But "Mr China Man" persisted. Without going into too much detail this, along with personal IRL issues I can no longer run the site as it is.
This along with repeated hacking attempts and spam registrations from Chinese IP addresses (which may or may not be related to him) has broke the straw on the camel's back. I came home to hundreds of emails sent from the web server about blocked IP addresses from users who have tried to brute force the admin and moderator account passwords.
I have disabled registrations on the forums and they will be placed into read only mode at the end of the year. To the members of the Blade of Darkness forums this gives you plenty of time to set up another forum elsewhere and archive some of the posts. Unfortunately I can't send a partial copy of the database files and due to GDPR rules I can't send a copy of the whole database either. After that all of the forums will be archived somehow - I don't know yet but Ill get to that later.
So if you want to keep anything from this forum please do so BEFORE 31st of December 2023.
For Drakan fans the discussion has been moved to our discord server which you can join by following this link. https://discord.gg/nCMrU4p
I know this site has been going for 22 years and as much as I hate to admit it, I think it's time to put it to bed. However at this time it is limited to the forums only. The main website will continue for now but I will ditch the mirrored domain, Arokhslair.com as that is not used.
Thanks for all your support over the years.
Adrian
Unfortunately I can no longer maintain this website due to a certain Chinese spammer who has been harassing me for the past 4 years going to lengths to find my home address, phone number etc. This all stemmed from a copyright claim to the game "Dark Blade" which is a Chinese knock off version of Blade of Darkness, which in itself was abandonware at the time. Basically the Chinese spammer stole mods from members of this site and included them into his version of the game which he is selling in China then claimed copyright against the original mod creators. He also demanded that the members who created the mods be deleted from this site and the BOD forums shut down. I refused and then got continually harassed.
Fast forward a couple of years and the rights to Blade of Darkness was picked up by a British company SNEG who "Mr China Man" believes I work for and this site is a massive conspiracy to defraud him and his company. He demanded it be removed from steam and despite explaining I have nothing to do with the game and this is a Drakan fan site not BOD, harassment continued including legal threats and official paperwork from courts in China. Seem as these were all in Chinese and sent to a UK address I could not take them seriously. Nothing ever came of it and I made all attempts to block "Mr China Man" but he relentlessly keep tracking me down. I sought help from Codemasters who originally published the game and they were quite helpful and said basically I have nothing to worry about legally. But "Mr China Man" persisted. Without going into too much detail this, along with personal IRL issues I can no longer run the site as it is.
This along with repeated hacking attempts and spam registrations from Chinese IP addresses (which may or may not be related to him) has broke the straw on the camel's back. I came home to hundreds of emails sent from the web server about blocked IP addresses from users who have tried to brute force the admin and moderator account passwords.
I have disabled registrations on the forums and they will be placed into read only mode at the end of the year. To the members of the Blade of Darkness forums this gives you plenty of time to set up another forum elsewhere and archive some of the posts. Unfortunately I can't send a partial copy of the database files and due to GDPR rules I can't send a copy of the whole database either. After that all of the forums will be archived somehow - I don't know yet but Ill get to that later.
So if you want to keep anything from this forum please do so BEFORE 31st of December 2023.
For Drakan fans the discussion has been moved to our discord server which you can join by following this link. https://discord.gg/nCMrU4p
I know this site has been going for 22 years and as much as I hate to admit it, I think it's time to put it to bed. However at this time it is limited to the forums only. The main website will continue for now but I will ditch the mirrored domain, Arokhslair.com as that is not used.
Thanks for all your support over the years.
Adrian