Bolter & Chainsword and The Waaagh! offline until further notice

First saw this announcement about the B&C over on Dakka, but then saw that B&C and The Waaagh! share the same server and thus are equally affected.

Very sad news about their outage and about Brother Argos, who has been a pillar of B&C for so long.

The Waaagh! was my first home online in the 40K universe some 6-7 years ago and throughout has been a fantastic community. I have already donated to help get them back up and running.

Bolter & Chainsword and The Waaagh! wrote:

The Bolter & Chainsword is currently Offline.
www.the-waaagh.com is currently Offline also.

On Friday 12th the Bolter & Chainsword appeared to suffer a hard drive failure, replacement drives were purchased but failed to remirror correctly when added to the server. Eventually after much testing it was discovered the server hardware was causing the problem and it appears we will need to purchase a new server. Given the age of the server (10yrs - it was installed in 2003) this was expected to some degree and we have some funds from previous donation drives saved for this.

However the timing for this event is not good, Brother Argos who pays for the B&C and is also the technical admin has for the last 6-9 months been fighting severe proliferative diabetic retinopathy, had numerous operations on his eyes and unfortunately has lost a significant amount of his sight. We had hoped he would be recovered enough after his last operation to help us move to the planned new server, however given the timing of the current scenario this will not happen.

We have found a technical resource, who can rebuild and move the B&C to a new home, however this will be chargable. As it currently stands the Bolter & Chainsword needs to raise around $800 - $1000 in addition to the funds we currently have put by to make this happen.

Brother Argos has funded the B&C to the tune of $18,000 dollars over the last 10 years, so that we could all enjoy our community, he is not in a position given his illness to rescue us now.

It is your community, if you wish it to survive you need to raise around a $1000, if we raise more it will all help get a better server for our new home.

There is a paypal button below which sends money to donations@bolterandchainsword.com, if you have enjoyed visiting the Bolter & Chainsword click the button below and show us.

As and when we get more information you can find us at Our Facebook page we will also update this holding page.

Remember the words of Roboute Guilliman Primarch of the Ultramarines - "to admit defeat is to blaspheme against the Emperor"

If you are here because of www.the-waaagh.com, it is because we have shared our server with them for the last 7 years or so suffice to say when we come back, so will they.

I wouldn't wish anything bad on any other forum, I hope they get back online soon and best wishes to the B&C member with ill health.

I guess this is the positive to hosting on a free forum service.

I've donated in the past to their server appeals so I'm a little unsure why they no longer have enough money for a server to replace one that was installed in 2003. What was the money spent on previously?

Very sad news. I love Bolter and Chainsword, and after TDC it's my favourite 40k forum and it's unfortunate for it to be in this state. I love the community there and I hope it gets back up and running soon.

I wish Brother Argos well in these tough times.

I've read somewhere on their facebook page that they've gotten ahold of 4000$, so they will definately get a new server.

The problem and reason why they need more money is explained here:
http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/

They mention that they have some funds from 2003 saved but it won't cover the costs for the new one. Also that their technical admin is sick and can't help B&C, so now they have to pay someone to fix their servers. I guess that's why they need more money, new server and pay for install etc.

EDIT- Never mind. I think I'm reading too much into this.

Wish Brother Argos well and hope B&C is back up soon.

It is a shame, B&C was like a dream come true when I stumbled upon it, It was the first GW site I had found where 90% of the posts werent "I hate GW"

I think the more 'dedicated' the forum, ie race specific, the less GW hate you will see.

After all, everyone on this forum is here because they have collected/play Dark Eldar at some point and were passionate enough to register - Dark Eldar are solely a GW product.

You don't get the people who have 'moved on' to Warmahordes who spend day and night trolling 40k News and Rumours. Luckily we only have a few naysayers here.

Sky Serpent wrote:

Luckily we only have a few naysayers here.

Thankfully we torture most of those, eh Sky?

Wait, I thought my nay-saying was considered cute and desirable...

In other news - probably GW crashed the server.
This has been reported by unverifiable sources close to GW that I have.

Thor665 wrote:

In other news - probably GW crashed the server.
This has been reported by unverifiable sources close to GW that I have.

You mean that guy in a 40K t-shirt lying on a Florida beach drinking mojitos?

As facelessabsalom mentioned, they have already received an amazing response to their plea from the 40K community as a whole, and not just B&C and Waaaghers.  This was posted last night on their Facebook page:

Brother Argos wrote:

Brother Argos here ... I have spent most of the day trying to organise a new server and the tech team who will configure it and get our data back. I ended up feeling a bit useless not being able to do the work myself and was getting frustrated.

However as I was just about to go to bed I decided to check the donations@bolterandchainsword Paypal account to see how we were doing and was completely amazed / stunned.

We have raised just over $4000 in less than 18 hrs or so.

This will let us get a very good server for our new home and help considerably with our running costs. We can now afford the linux server guru I want to use to do the work I cannot. After a pretty bad weekend with no server and diminishing hope, my faith in the basic good nature of humanity (gamers especially) is restored.

Looking at the results, I think we need to thank you all for your contributions. No matter how big or small you stood up and were counted. We got donations as large as $500 - $1000, all the way down to $1 or $2.

I am going to leave the donations page up, as the more we get will help with further costs. In the morning I will purchase a new server for us, and let the Techmarines who don't require bionic eyes get down to work.

Well done everyone who donated ...

The Emperor Protects!

- Brother Argos