Welcome back!!!

Well, it took a lot longer than I'd hoped, but we're finally back.

Long story short: the structural damage from a transformer explosion and fire in our hosting facility kept turning out to be more extensive than expected, so it was a long time until anyone was allowed back inside by security... and our offsite backup was corrupted. Since the community is what makes this site worthwhile so I decided it was better to wait a few extra weeks than try to relaunch the forums from scratch with no archives or users.

I've put measures in place to address the DB issue which will hopefully prevent downtime like this in future... the offsite bakcup will be monitored, incremental, checksumed routinely and tested manually on our testing instance every few months. I'd hoped to get some upgrades and repairs done as part of the restart (new phpBB version, skin updates/repairs, voting features) but those will have to wait... it's been long enough that I'm just glad you're back.

Moreover, the RC hasn't been idle in the meantime. We've had some really interesting discussions about the future and philosophy of the format, and some changes may be coming to the banned list in a few weeks so it's important to have these here so we can (A) distribute the update and (B) give you guys a place to discuss it and give feedback.

Finally, to thank everyone for their patience I'm planning to resurrect an old tradition from the forums' early days... contests with judge foil prizes mailed out to the winners

You guys are a great community and I really am sorry for the damage this downtime has caused. Thanks again!

Gavin

So, would this explosion and fire happen to have occured anywhere in/around Calgary, Alberta?

Yep

It happened just a few blocks from my house. They had the whole block closed off for a day and a half. Pretty crazy stuff.

Yay for being back from the dead!

MTG Commander forums... RISE.

Undeath is good.

Then my assumption was correct. I understand it happened right around the time of the Calgary Stampede and one of the servers connected to it was the only Country music station in the entirety of Calgary, so the city had to do without said music on the radio during the biggest Country event in possibly all of Canada.

Haha that's pretty funny. Thanks for getting the forums back up though.

Thanks for sticking it out and getting the forums back up with all the old threads still intact! Some of my old decklists are saved here, I was wondering if I'd ever be able to see them again. Additionally it feels so much nicer to be able to discuss EDH decks on the official EDH website.

...and then they tapped five fine Canadian Swamps, cast Patriarch's Bidding and lo! The website arose from the grave!

Proof that tech wizards are really actually wizards. Or very possibly planeswalkers.

Super glad the forums are back.

drool .....

I had completely missed this. Sounds sweet.

And yeah, it's great to have these forums back. MTGS was a bit of a mess.

Back at last!!! Yippee! I had truly given up all hope! Faith in humanity is now slightly restored.

The forums were down for so long I got married in the interim. However thank you so much for waiting the extra time for the archives and users, it is very much appreciated.

Hey, I can actually post on this topic now! Woot! So yes, glad to see that the forums are back and running properly.