Armaholic is gone

[dalber24 122]

Bad news

Unfortunately we have lost www.armaholic.com and everything that entails...😭

An incredible amount of content, missions, scripts, mods, and all kinds of addons, programs, tutorials, the forum and all its information have been lost ...

Thank you @foxhound for so many years that we were able to enjoy the website that gave us everything for our beloved ArmA.
But I can't stop thinking about all that has been lost.😢

[WGP 90]

I'm not sure it's lost as such. I think he will still have the archives, so it may be took up.

 

I agree with everything you said, it's a part of Arma history and without AH, I don't think the series would have the number of players it does.

 

However there are large archives out there with players, I know Len61 & chrisb have huge archives plus we have a very large archive ourselves collected from all over the place. But hosting a site and everything that goes with that, not many people will want to do that.

 

In my opinion I think BI should take it on, it has given them so many players over the years, simply by letting players mod the game via AH. But we'll have to see.

[krzychuzokecia 700]

3 hours ago, WGP said:

In my opinion I think BI should take it on

Would be nice, but we all know it's never going to happen. Back when OFPR.info died (you know, the Armaholic before Arma was a thing even), Dwarden and Kllrt seemed to have some interest in helping with keeping the site alive, but nothing ever came out of it. With Armaholic being way, way bigger website, I fail to see how they could do anything really.

[dalber24 122]

17 hours ago, WGP said:

However there are large archives out there with players, I know Len61 & chrisb have huge archives plus we have a very large archive ourselves collected from all over the place. But hosting a site and everything that goes with that, not many people will want to do that.

Yes, it is true, there are people who have large ArmA2 files and I include myself I have a lot of information

 

https://i.imgur.com/691zebd.jpeg

 

but none of us have everything that was in Armaholic, and as for maintaining a site like that, I think it must be quite complicated due to the costs.

 

Quote

In my opinion I think BI should take it on, it has given them so many players over the years, simply by letting players mod the game via AH. But we'll have to see. 

Yes, the truth is that it would be a good idea, but surely BI will not do it, because it does not care, since they want A2 to die and that people continue to advance to their new versions, in my case I bought A3 just to give my support, but despite being more modern, having better models, it looks better, for me it is a horrible product and that is why I continue with A2, nothing is going to change that.

 

 

[froggyluv 2130]

Feels like a piece of history gone. Remember releasing Arma missions to Foxhound and excited to see them posted there. Shame we used to have a much stronger sense of community here but now its mostly dispersed to youtube/reddit and the abyss....

 

Will an Arma 4 arise from the ashes?

[Valken 621]

I think it is really sad. Foxhound has ALWAYS been friendly and supportive of the community. 

 

Steam WorkShop integration for ARMA 3, good or bad, DID divide and dilute the community from ARMAHOLIC and these forums.

I know there were some issues behind the scenes, I was not privilege to the details, but hoped it would be worked out.

 

At the very least, I hope ARMAHOLIC would be archived maybe in the Internet Archive? 

 

But better yet Foxhound should be an official curator on a unified supported platform. Steam Workshop has ownership issues for mod authors. I know this is an ongoing problem... so perhaps a third party system would be best, outside of Steam, maybe even outside of BIS to allow independence to cater to the community and free BIS from criticism.

 

I like Moddb, but I am unsure how to manage all the content Foxhound has curated over the years! The DB side is just flat listing. Unsure how to make it eloquent yet easy to use for all the different sub mod categories for example.

 

If we need a fund raising to enable this, perhaps Foxhound can review this and put together options for the community to review.

 

I wish you well Foxhound. We await your return in any shape or form, Comrade!

 

 

 

 

[britforce 9]

7 hours ago, dalber24 said:

Yes, the truth is that it would be a good idea, but surely BI will not do it, because it does not care, since they want A2 to die and that people continue to advance to their new versions, in my case I bought A3 just to give my support, but despite being more modern, having better models, it looks better, for me it is a horrible product and that is why I continue with A2, nothing is going to change that.

 

 

Same here, our group plays arma 2 with the dlc's. Won't ever change.

[BSN_19 14]

 

[krzychuzokecia 700]

12 hours ago, Valken said:

Steam WorkShop integration for ARMA 3, good or bad, DID divide and dilute the community from ARMAHOLIC and these forums.

Ah, I'll have to give votum separatum. I'm pretty sure that Armaholic wouldn't be able to serve all the traffic that goes through Steam Workshop. Foxhound would need to either block access to non-paying users (on top of existing bandwith cap), or limit the number of hosted content. Which could lead to users abandoning the site anyway. So Workshop was kind of "blessing in disguise" for Armaholic - it was clear that in last years Foxhound was focusing more on hosting quality content, instead of browsing through forums like a mad-man, and grabbing every single release.

 

Also, when we're on the topic of "Workshop killed the Armaholic star", let's not forget that Armaholic itself led to demise of various Arma modding sites through the years. This might have not been intentional (I dunno what people were saying behind the closed doors), but among the userbase there surely was some kind of weird "popularity contest" about which site was "crap" and which was "cool". Armaholic was seen as the elite, and everyone was flocking to it. But that was shortsighted - you don't need to be a prophet to predict that sooner or later those websites will die. Especially since you could see what happened to numerous OFP websites, many of which hosted exclusive content. There is a number of addons which are not available to public anymore, because their authors were hosting them only in one place, and disallowed other mirrors. That content has not vanished completely - someone still probably has it on their hard drives - but problem is even knowing that this stuff exists.

 

So yeah, the "mod distribution system" has to be decentralized, for it to be able to prosper and serve future creators and users. You mentioned ModDB, of which I am fan, but posting someone else's stuff there is really against EULA (even though it happens often). I really have no idea why it is not more popular among Arma modders - I guess part of this may too be Armaholic popularity. Afterall, if AH would host your content, and even post news/updates, why bother doing it for yourself? But ModDB is not enough either. Just like having "our own" host (like Armaholic was) is not enough. The truth is that people should stop being too sentimental and just start posting their stuff wherever they can - including even the dreaded Steam Workshop. This way, when one source of Arma content dies, it's fairly easy to replace it.

18 hours ago, froggyluv said:

youtube/reddit

Get on with the times gramps! Cool kids these days use Discord and Twitch! Yuck! ;)

[britforce 9]

On 5/27/2021 at 8:42 AM, WGP said:

chrisb have huge archives

Son and nephew now.

😞

[jerryhopper 285]

Hello!

If you have any old addons on your harddisks,  DO NOT DELETE THEM.
I am attempting to rebuild a list of addons that were hosted on armaholic,  but i need the community to submit the 'lost' addons.

Please spread the word:  DO NOT DELETE OLD ARMA/ARMA2/ARMAA3 Addons,  especially if they are in their original ZIP file.



Read the progress-thread here on twitter: 
 

 

[Soviet Player 0]

well on moddb i can install but there is no more mods like on armaholic so if someone have folders with mods i be thanksfull for this.

[Gunter Severloh 3948]

Please use and review this thread which has many pages and active.

Welcome to BI forums btw 🙂

https://forums.bohemia.net/forums/topic/234791-armaholic-website-not-working/

 

[john85oc 28]

and now i see the thead its locked, the Armaholic facebook and Twitter page its removed too.

No idea whats happend in that thead but its feel we cant recuse the Work of so many autors and a nice work.

[W0lle 1042]

Not possible to rescue the work, no. Because:

 

Quote

"Backups? everything was there until the day the site went offline, I just deleted it all, I mean think of this yea - when we tried to get files OR do anything it was almost impossible due to the stupid hackers and throttling the server, it was so bad any file we were trying to get was corrupted! so blame those who ignored my appeals to (stop what you are doing, we are sorting it out) which I said more than once! "

Quote Darkxess from that other thread. I will not comment that any further.

 

Now the only thing left to do is searching our local drives for addons and missions we stored there. And make use of the tools Jerry is developing.

[ZackTactical34 86]

Arma 2 was already dying, but this was the fatal blow...

[R0adki11 3945]

Closing - please see the following thread for answers: https://forums.bohemia.net/forums/topic/234791-armaholic-website-not-working/