Fileball
From Traxus
| Fileball (The Lh'owon Ar'kives) | |
 | |
| Focus: | Marathon content sharing |
|---|---|
| Administrator(s): | Randall Shaw, Gary Simmons, Claude Errera |
| Launched: | March 30, 2001[1] |
| Status: | Offline |
Fileball (best known for its Marathon site, The Lh'owon Ar'kives, and originally launched as Evihcra.com) was the brainchild of Randall Shaw and Gary Simmons. It eclipsed Bungie.org's Archives and took that site's administrator, Claude Errera, as one of its own, eventually assimilating all of the old Archives' files into its own database. At its peak, it was the center of all Marathon content and held gigabytes of files. It offered a free place to store maps, scenarios, and other game content. Shaw and Errera remained mostly behind the scenes, while Simmons posted news items for almost every file added to the site.
The most novel concept behind Fileball was that it gave users previously unknown levels of control over their files. They categorized things, they gave the files their descriptions, and they rated each other's archives. The previous Marathon archive sites required submission and were far less interactive.
Contents |
Closure
At the beginning of 2007, Fileball experienced some unexpected outages. After a period of silence, the administration announced that the costs of running the site were becoming too great, and so for a short while, it was impossible to upload new files or update existing ones. This was fixed, but instead of using the old two-site mirror system, Fileball served its archive files exclusively off the slower Bungie FTP server. After a server meltdown August 2007, the site became read-only. It is possible to download any of its files from the FTP server, but nothing new can be added.
Legacy
As part of the Fileball shutdown, the administrators offered a complete DVD of the archives and the accompanying database to all interested parties. Appleswitch obtained a copy (although he has yet to use it for anything), and Robert Long a site based on Fileball's archives.
See Also
External Links
- Fileball FTP - Fileball's functional FTP server
- Acme Station - Robert Long's archive
- Fileball Woes - Simmons explains the server meltdown.
