The Story of The Vagabond Community Forum

[Legend]

In 2007, a vagabond, destined to become a True Vagabond, was born in the land of Bardo. He called himself "Legend" and wanted to become what his name means - A legend.

2008, Legend met Vagrant, the most highest vagabond in the land of Bardo. After some chats with him, Legend learned a lot and was surprised about the kindness of Vagrant.

In one chat, Vagrant told Legend that he would like to see once a vagabond army in Bloody Plains, cleaning everything. Legend had since a long while an idea to form a vagabond guild, and so Legend used Vagrant's words as name, Vagabond Army, and created the first vagabond guild ever in the story of 9Dragons. Just at this moment, after Vagrant knew that Legend wants to form a vagabond guild, and before Legend started it, Vagrant left the land.

vagabond.kilu.de - this was our first forum website. Legend has met already some other vagabonds, indeed weaker than Legend, but clanless none the less. And so he gave the link to them all, and every new vagabond he met.

The Vagabond Community, which was actually the forum of the first vagabond guild ever, grew day after day and became bigger. 2009 we changed the forum website.

vagabond.spacequadrat.de - this was our second forum website. On the old webhoster we put an index with a link to the new forum, and on the new forum we imported everything from the old forum - posts, topics, users, etc.

The move was sucessful and perfect, and the first Vagabond Community ever, still a forum for the vagabond guild Vagabond Army, grew more and more. And soon, even clan members and unregistered people knew about the Vagabond Army and their forum. But not only that: Also vagabond players from other 9Dragons versions in the world visited us, like for example from the Vietnamese version.

One day, Vagrant returned back to the land and was very surprised on what Legend was able to achieve. During the time of Vagrant's absence, Legend learned about the new and useful for vagabonds content, and so he had to teach his master from the past.

In the first Vagabond Army event on Bardo, a person, who we don't want to name here, thought it would be cool to be a vagabond, and he wanted not to help other vagabonds, but only to be better than Legend. He called his vagabond Sword, in signs. --------]--.

On the first vagabond event made by Acclaim, a simple boss spawn event, Legend helped Sword to get the epithet Killer of True General Wei. For Legend it was clear, that he could never get it alone. He also knew, that Sword could never get it, even with his hunderds of Gingsengs in his bag from the Item Mall.

And so, Legend helped Sword to get it. He wanted to show him, what it means to follow the path of The Nameless One, The Vagabond. But he didn't understand it. He made himself always as Legend's rival, and he never changed. The so-called "neutral" even joined Acclaim's VGM team as [VGM]Shaman.

In 2010, Acclaim made a second vagabond event. This time, there wasn't any boss killing or something cool like that. Almost all event steps were about collecting stupid items. If it would not be for the rewards, the most participants would have stop it.

Some months before this event started, Ravenclaw, a 9Dragons GM back then, asked Legend what would be the best minimum level for a vagabond to participate it. Legend answered "Elemental Crown 4, level 100. When you reach the level 100 as a vagabond, the first level with 3 numbers, you will know if you are a true vagabond." And so, Ravenclaw made EC4 to the minimum requirement of the event.

The best part of the event was a quiz, where one had to think about it. But, ironically, it was a copy from the very own vagabond guide from the only person who was refused to participate on this event: Legend.

Sword, at this time in the Acclaim staff as [VGM]Shaman, even had his own event part. So Legend tried to talk with Sword and with some others. But, even if Legend was the reason why Sword get the Killer of True General Wei epithet, he refused to help Legend. And Fugen and The Hermit, the so-called "game-directors" on Acclaim's 9Dragons staff back then, refused to accept Legend's registration.

Just a few vagabonds tried to help. Almost no one from the vagabond event participants tried to help Legend for the unfair declining of his registration. Legend didn't take it personal that the vagabonds, especially the veteran ones, didn't help him. So he expects the same, when he doesn't help them anymore. Legend quitted 9Dragons, but kept working on the vagabond forum.

The new webhoster was good; No more offline times, no ads, fast loading... And that was for free. But then, the hoster changed something on his servers, and as soon one tried to visit the vagabond forum, one could only see a white website.

We tried to fix it, but we could do nothing. The files on the FTP server were correct. So we contacted the support from the hoster...

The E-Mail support didn't answer at all. So we tried to get support from the Live Chat. But that was also a waste of time. They didn't really know what they were talking about, and the only thing they could answer us was "Reinstall phpbb, you will be able to import your old forum again".

Of course, we sensed that something's wrong... After all, we were not able to visit the Administration Panel of the forum to export all the forum content. "But maybe there are backup files which will not be overwritten when we reinstall phpbb", we thought. But that was wrong.

As soon the new forum worked again, all previous files were lost. And the support from the host doesn't support non-paying members. But not only that - people could not register correctly anymore.

And so, we searched and found a new webhoster. We built the whole forum new and copied the few things left. As soon the new forum was ready for publishing, we overwrote the index pages from kilu and spacequadrat websites with a simple HTML redirect code to our new forum.

vagabond.user-board.net was our first domain name on our new forum hoster, approx. from 2010 to 2017. It was then changed later to forumotion.com once that domain became available.

vagabond.forumotion.com - This is now our forum website, since approx. 2018. Frankly, it reminds me of being a vagabond itself... The forum of the clanless, without a real home to stay... But this has been our home since then, and hopefully, we won't change again.

This forum was built as a Vagabond Community, and not as vagabond guild forum. There is a sub-forum for the vagabond guild, but that's about it. And, this hoster got an automatic backup system, so that we will never lose that much content again, which I appreciate a lot. There may be ads on our forum, but at least we don't have to worry about losing our content or being put offline without notice.

Our new forum was build and is being updated from time to time mainly for those who only seek knowledge. It is not yet like our old forum before we lost everything, and far away from being a very good forum. But with the help of our new and old members, we will rebuild it and make it even better. This forum may even become home to vagabonds and the vagabond guild yet again...