Russ:
The problem is more than just this board, but the combination of three message boards operating on the same server. RPGboards.com was turned off for part of the day on Monday and the third board was closed (basically without notice, i feel bad about that). Thats what brought us to where we are now.
I see. How many servers does 3DStream have in total? Just 1?
I'm not finishing that quote because I can tell you that 3dStream is not in a position to except money for hosting. We were a year ago, but not now.
How about donations?
I'm just kidding; I'm sure you don't accept those either.
Thats all the questions I saw through the posts that I know I can answer. I'll go into a little more detail about the rpgboards option. You guys have 6 forums on this board right now, I can have those 6 forums on rpgboards.com right below the 3 discussion forums in a category (like the Discussion, Popular RPGs categories that are already there. I can give two categories like you have if needed). Qhimm would have the administrative power to make them look and feel just like this board does using the vBulletin Control Panel and the admins/mods would be let on there at Qhimm's discretion.
Most of that sounds good. However, there's still 2 problems I see:
1. Usernames. This isn't too big a deal, a fair amount of us have...er...unique handles, but some probably will find that someone else at RPGBoards already has their name.
2. The simpleness of this board. Maybe this isn't a problem either; I don't know. But a lot (all?) of the people here like just how simple this board is. For example:
1) We have no avatars (load times with the thread tables can be long enough as it is), but RPGB does.
2) I don't think we have a signature feature (if there is, it's very obscure, as only Sephiroth 3D seems to use one, and even his *doesn't* have pictures). I have a very low tolerance for images in sigs, because of how much they tend to detract from quality and, more importantly, they really drive up loading times. RPGB does.
3) This board has few images (again, load times), and while we briefly flirted with emoticons beside post titles, most of the users didn't like them, so they were removed. However, RPG Boards has those, and a heckuva lot of other similar graphical fluff, so we'd be back at square 1, if not square -1. Some of us will obviously care/not care about that more than others, but the point should be made.
4) The ranking system here is nice and simple, while at RPGBoards they have "Veracity". Users here come and go, and a fair amount of them like the anonymity they can have. That anonymity will be lost at RPGB, since there's a memberlist.
Sure some of VBulletin's other features are nice, and maybe Qhimm can just turn all of the ones he doesn't want off. I don't know. But otherwise, the price may be too high.
[/end rant]
If RPG Boards proves to be our only option, I'm sure we'll take it. It's definately a nice offer, as opposed to just shutting us down.