February 20th, 2015
Dawn's Gate has closed down. At the request of hte owners I have closed down the chat for Dawns Gate. The Forums still exist where they were and players are encouraged to keep an eye out there for information about the chat possibly reopening in the future.
September 1st, 2014
Exodus Chats Members:
As many of you are aware I have been making efforts to modify the website here on Exodus and bring a more streamlined and user friendly interface to the chats. I am pleased to announce that progress is continuing forward. I have posted an image up of the new layout for the website here and that is only the beginning of the changes being made. However, there is a more serious need that I cannot accomplish on my own which must be addressed - and for it, I need your help.
Exodus has always existed through the use of website owners paying a light fee per month for the operation and existance of their site. This fee was used to pay for the hosting of the site on a server, and the license of DigiChat. As many of you are aware, DigiChat went out of business several years ago and has since become a more and more obsolete program. However, many of us would agree that DigiChat is still the best chat client out there. With all the right features in a clean and functional interface that we are quite happy with playing on. While there are bugs in the system, there are still many great features that we are used to and enjoy. With that in mind, I have contacted the former CEO of DigiNet Technologies and asked for the source code for DigiChat, which he has agreed to sell to me for the use on our website only at the price of $1500 USD - and simply put, I cannot pay that on my own.
Every Month, I spend $40 to keep the exodus site up and running. That money comes from the sites that are currently open on Exodus: Dol-Terias, Tel-Vinrae, and Ice-Haven have all been actively contributing. With the closing of DT and IH currently under a remodel, anything left from that fee will need to come from my pocket, from which I have already invested over $1000 in equipment and certainly more than that in time to re-code and re-build the site, and try to get it onto a less costly server solution - I had hoped to be able to save that money and save up for the DigiChat License, but frankly - I cannot hope that will be accomplished any time soon. So now, I ask for your help.
The Donate button on the left has been fixed to send you to my PayPal page so that I can start taking donations from willing players to begin pooling money towards that goal. I ask, respectfully, that if you are able to provide money of any sum - from $5 to $500, more, or less - that you consider clicking that button and sending what you can. When I achieve the $1500 goal I have, I will let you all know and begin the process of purchasing DigiChat from its creators - in the duration between now and then, that money will go towards helping me afford the server we are on and encourage me towards finishing this sites changes so more people can open their own chats on Exodus. I hope you all can understand why I've made this request and can appreciate the work I'm putting in to changing this site for the better, and that you see fit to donate what you can to help move this process along and get Exodus up to what it should be once again.
Sincerely, Lucas Petrie - Exodus Administrator
September 1st, 2014
Hello Players and DMs.
It is with great sadness that I announce today as the closing of Dol-Terias. For the last 9 or so years, DT has provided a realistic, gritty, difficult challenge setting for players to enjoy a world modeled after elements of the Game of Thrones, Warhammer, and other excellent sources. The owner, Daniele, has decided that it is time for him to close the chat down, for a variety of personal reasons and professional ones as well. He would like to thank all the players and DM's that helped him make DT a successful chat for so long and kept it going even when he wasn't available to oversee it, and would like to congratulate everyone on their contributions to the setting and its characters over the years. Truly, DT will be a chat that many miss, and many fondly remember, and its characters will live on in our creative minds for many years to come.
A cheer for DT - a great setting full of fun for all of us. -- Lucas (Exodus Admin)
July 18th, 2014
Hello Everyone. As you may have noticed, there's a new button on the left. I'm excited to announce the first new chat on Exodus Chats in a long time - Tel Vinrae! Well, they aren't fully open yet: but they are running a beta for the next few weeks! So hop over there, make up a character, and jump in the game.
Some of you may be wondering about the Server Move - well, I'm still working on getting it to happen sometime soon. Hopefully within the next few days. It's costed me a lot of money out of pocket already but we should be on the new server next week or the following at the latest. There will be a brief downtime when we turn on the new server due to the DNS changes, but that shouldn't affect anyone for more than 24 hours (note: it will effect our player from outside the US the longest)
I'll try to keep you all informed as to the progress over the next few days. Thanks for your support and enjoy playing.
-- Lucas
May 27th, 2014
I understand a lot of people are curious about the message that has been scrolling on the chats the last several days, regarding a server changeover. I had hoped this new message would first appear on the new site: unfortunately, that will not be the case for a few more days / possibly another week. So here is an update on what has happened in the last few weeks:
As many of you are aware, Joshua Woodruff was the original creator of the Exodus Projects chat site with the help of Tony P. The two of them worked hard to create an environment where the players could enjoy playing without the pains of certain various administrators from other locations we all used to congregate at. We also wanted to create new, fun, enjoyable environments that the creative minds of our chat heads and administrators had rolling around in their brains, and needed a place to put all of this. It has been several long years since Joshua and Tony originally created the site: Tony left some time later because he had real life commitments to engage on and Joshua maintained the site alone. Back in 2010, The Chats crashed completely and Joshua was unable to focus on the time and effort needed to bring the sites back up and running. At that point, I offered my services to him as an Assistant Administrator of the chats and the site to help him be able to focus on his real life issues and let someone who had the time, and energy, devote themselves to keeping Exodus Alive. As a player, I was a fan of Exodus - as a person, I knew there were a lot of others like myself that wanted a fun, enjoyable place to play where they could experience gaming on a familiar Chat Program with no dangerous repercussions. After some long months of tossing emails back and forth with the creators of DigiChat and Joshua, and moving the chats to a new server with new costs involved (which Joshua paid out of pocket hoping that all would come back to him from Chat Heads over the coming years) we finally were able to bring the chats up and running again.
Fast Forward to...now. Over the last several years Joshua has become more and more distant from the chats. I have been running things on my own in my spare time and keeping the servers up and going as best as I could. I've troubleshot Java issues, learned new programming languages...it's been a long road. Unfortunately, Joshua has decided that he can no longer afford the time, or costs, involved in keeping the site afloat. Note: this is NOT an indication of lack of payment from the Heads of the Various chats. Simply put, we never charged enough money to compensate an ADVANCED purchase of the Hosting needed for the chats. We charged enough to make back, in time, what was invested - that is all. Unable to front this cost on his own anymore, and unable to devote the time necessary for keeping the chats running that he would like to, Joshua felt it was time for him to step back - he has a life to sort out, finances to get in order, health issues to handle. He needs to focus on himself, and sadly, that means it's time for him to depart from Exodus entirely.
I've, of course, told Joshua that he should not hesitate for a MOMENT to come back to the chats and start playing. He will no longer have administrative access and so, no longer needs to worry about being the "Elephant in the Room" - and he has mentioned I am welcome to contact him if I have questions that need answering which he might have the technical know-how to accomplish. That being said, I have fully taken over the Exodus Projects. For all his hard work and dedication, we greatly appreciate Joshua's contributions and committment for this long to the chat, and I certainly hope, as I'm sure all of you do, we will see him online again soon.
Unfortunately, I was also left with a bit of a problem. The Hosting site we were at needed new payment for the hosting by May 16th, and I was unable to afford a full "large sum" deposit to keep the hosting going for years to come. Discussing this with a Co-Worker from my real job, he informed me that we could potentially host on the companies servers: a very pleasant and exciting thought, as it would reduce hosting costs again and make it possible for me to pay those costs up front and charge on the back end once more. We began work immediately on moving the site over, but ran in to a few problems along the way: first off - there is a LOT of work to be done on the sites we have up currently (Dol-Terias and IceHaven) - IH, as many of you know, has switched to Pathfinder and needs a new character generator which, bless him, Sean has been very patient with me in getting done. DolTerias has a very weak database and character generator of primarily text fields, and so needs a complete rehash of all the info present there, and a rebuild of its database as well. The sites themselves, were once updatable by the Admins, now that feature is broken and gone. I have a lot of work on my plate - but my primary concern is keeping the chats active and alive while I do this.
Now add a new issue: the chats won't fire on the new server. We're working this problem as best as we can but, I had met the May 16th Deadline and exceeded it, and was on "Borrowed Time" from our current host. Some of you surely noticed, the website went down yesterday for a while. You could not even load the main page. With no immediate resolution available, I fronted the cost for another month of hosting from our current provider to get the site back up and alive again so that players could continue to play, and the chats would remain active. Ideally, by this time next month, we can move to the new host and have the chats up and running on a new, more permanent host again.
I know that you've all had to be patient with me, and that these changes are sudden and behind the scenes, but believe me that they are necessary. I do not want to change the pricing structure of the chats, and in fact, I hope that by moving the host I can keep the pricing the same and encourage more chats to join. I'm working on building a chat "template" that will be usable by all chats on the site at the same time (different color schemes, but similar layouts) and trying to use WordPress with multi-site functions and access logins so that the chat admins once again can update their front pages with more news and events, as well as edit critical areas of their site with information like rules, links, background information, and more. FOR THE MOMENT: there will be no ACTIVE changes to the chat pages - the main site will get a pretty facelift but the chats pages will continue to look the same. Once I have the main site up, I will begin work on rebuilding the other sites that exist into the template.
Part of this will also include new Character Generators and coding for sheets in the databases. I will make an effort to keep any changes to existing sites to an absolute MINIMUM to prevent chat heads from having to rebuild their entire databases - however, new chats will have newer generators and sheets, and at the request of chat Heads, I can work on transferring data for you to get your existing database moved over to the new generator if you prefer.
CHARGES: It is very likely there will be new charges attributed with the site changes. I do not look to make money off of exodus projects, but I may need to charge for some of the work being done as that work may be billed to me by the hosting company (new databases, new sites, etc.) - if you're looking at opening a new chat and would like for it to be hosted by exodus, please stayed tuned. As soon as the site is moved and the current sites are fixed up, I'll be creating the templates and beginning the process of opening new chats.
So thank you all, for your patience and support as I am working on this as best as I can. I will give updates as time goes along, but for now, expect no changes until a week or two to come.
Lucas Petrie - Exodus Chats Administrator
