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Mk 4 - We're going to archive (2022.08)

Warmachine University is officially archiving itself. This probably comes as no surprise to most of you, since I started the discussion a month ago, but today I officially told Jaden to go ahead with the changes to the server settings, whenever he's ready. The site will still be online until further notice. The intention is for it to be there for any players who want to continue using mk3 rules (and prefer WMU to the card database/warroom2) and/or anyone who wants to compare mk4 Legacy rules to mk3 rules. PP have their own wiki that covers their main game systems, and my understanding is that Warmachine mk4 will be on the PP wiki, but I can't imagine they'll rebuild the vast tactica that WMU's many editors have created over the years. If any mk4 players want to start a new fan wiki I wish you the best of luck. Feel free to copy any of the wikicode we made for stat tables etc. (But please don't ask me questions about doing a data-scrape of WMU, or copying it to the torrent cloud, or ... whatever. I don't know jack about websites.) Ramble Mode: Engaged WMU started life as Battle College way back in (checks notes) sometime in mk1. Back then it was a regular website written by just one person, "Ringsnake". When the mk2 beta rolled out in 2009 Ringsnake decided it was too much work to update it all, but he did let "StJason" to copy it. StJason put it on a wikispaces.com site (which were free back then) and opened it up to any/all editors. I started playing in 2010, in the heyday of the forums. Every man and his dog was writing guides and tacticas, and each Faction subforum had a dozen-odd stickied threads of useful info and links to even more guides/tactica. I got my own stickied thread, with the rather bland title of "Common mistakes with Cryx models/rules". Any time a new player posted a question, or I saw something Cryx-related in the 'Rules Questions' subforum, I would copy it into my stickied thread. To begin with I had answers organised by model, but soon realised that when a special rule was shared between models, it was easier to organise by rule - so in the end I had some stuff organised by model, and some by special rule (plus a list of models with that rule). Then one day I tried to expand my thread empire to cover models/rules from two factions ... but neatly organising that quantity of info across two different subforums went straight in the 'too hard' basket and I soon abandoned the second thread. While I was doing my own thing with my sticky, Battle College had gotten itself a reputation of being, well ... shit, to be blunt. Any time it was brought up on the forums, the vets would instantly reply with "Don't go to Battle College for advice, it's useless! Well maybe it's ok if you just want to get a very general idea of what a model does, but DON'T believe anything it says about how good a model is / isn't !" (and most vets didn't bother being that polite). There were various causes, but the main reputation hurters were: Some rookie editors would misunderstand how a rule worked, and wrote an entire blurb about "how great a model was if you just did XYZ!" (but XYZ was against the rules). Then the veteran readers, when they spotted this bad blurb, didn't bother fixing it - instead they'd use it as evidence of why people shouldn't read Battle College in the first place. Battle College tended to talk about how a model was great in a best-case scenario, and ignore the normal scenario. It made stuff sound like it performed way better than it actually did, and new players would sometimes get 'tricked' into buying models that were actually terrible. In 2013-ish I started getting more involved in BC, despite it's reputation. I had decided to use it to expand my sticky thread, because BC was already set up with one page per special rule (albeit they were mostly blank back then). I started copying my "common mistakes" entries to those pages as "Rules Clarifications", and making use of the template system to cross-link those clarifications to the bottom of individual model pages. At the same time, I started cleaning up the Cryx pages to be organised the way I wanted it. One thing I cleaned was the 'Basic Info' section which had a terrible way of describing stats. Back then we weren't allowed to copy rules word-for-word and stats number-for-number, so everything was a little vague on purpose. But most of the time, the vague stat description was like "Venethrax has the same statline as Terminus, except with +1 MAT and -1 ARM" which is ... possibly the worst way to communicate information while still communicating 100% of the information. I changed it so each stat was given a rating: poor-bad-average-good-excellent, and I created the first iteration of the statbox. Secondly, the special abilities were really hit-and-miss. Some models would just list the names of their special abilities, some would say the names and vaguely what they did, and some would say the names and the best tactics of when to use that ability, and some of them would be all of the above (even though you'd think that's impossible!). I changed that by using the template system to create standardised vague rule descriptions. Moving on from the 'Basic Info', the 'Thoughts On' section wasn't great either. It was a single heading with maybe a sentence, maybe a paragraph or two, or maybe an entire novel - depending on the editor's enthusiasm for that model. But the novel length ones were never organised very well. And short or long, most times what the model even did (beatstick vs support vs whatever) wasn't even mentioned, because the editor was in such a rush to talk about how cool the model was. So I changed that with the sub-headings system you can see these days. In 2014-ish StJason started a new thread in the general forum asking "What can we add/change to Battle College to make it better (and stop people saying it sucks)?" I stuck my oar in and said "a) you need to organise the info consistently, like I've been doing in the Cryx section and b) we should add a 'drawbacks and downsides' section because a lot of the reputational problems is the rose-tinted glasses analysis of models." Somehow, and it still amazes me a little bit to this day, but somehow the other editors were on-board with my idea and suddenly there was a large combined effort to overhaul the entire wiki. That, I think, is when Battle College turned its reputation around. In 2016 we had a second massive overhaul with the mk2 to mk3 transition. We also moved to a new domain name and a modern wiki engine because the old site was starting to glitch - struggling under the load of so many different models and special rules (plus I always worried it couldn't handle all the template-ing I had implemented) - plus it was no longer a free site for non-school users. I helped shepherd the site through this and so I know how much work was involved. The new domain was owned and paid for by "Monocle Society". He set that version up with the most annoying Captcha system, which didn't even stop bots! If you did 1 or 2 edits it approved the edits no worries, but if you kept editing you'd have to keep clicking on pictures with traffic lights or whatever. When I'd make about 30 edits during my lunchbreak that was so, goddam, annoying. Anyway, in early 2018, he a) went radio silent and b) missed a couple of server bills so it went offline a couple of times ; so after a few months of dealing with that I asked the playerbase for help, and the LOS team stood up to the plate. We once again changed domain name, and the old site had to be data-scraped by a bot (because we couldn't get access to simply copy-paste the data). The bot training was done by "Tseung", who did a fantastic job (and I was also able to get him to change the server settings to create an anti-spambot feature that worked 1000x better than captcha, hurrah). Also in 2018 I finished putting all the Rules Clarifications in place. So that little maneuver only cost us 5 years. After that I did a few other big things - the expandable lists of models in each theme, the training series (still unfinished), and the intro to warmachine series - and dabbled in god knows how many small/medium projects. But these days my "main goals" for the wiki have been finished for several years now, and more and more I was fiddling with stuff just for the sake of it. My interest / commitment to the wiki was already waning, in other words, before mk4 was announced. Now I find myself in a town with no WMH meta at all, and I'm using mk4 as an excuse - rather than as a reason - for jumping ship. Jaden and I discussed what to do with the WMU site for mk4, since neither of us were committed to mk4. Our preference was to archive it as a mk3 resource, and the majority of the playerbase agreed. So that's that. I want to once again thank everyone that ever edited the wiki. Thanks for sharing all the Tricks that you liked doing with your models. Thanks for sharing all the Combos & Synergies that you found worked well. Thanks for putting a thousand different things into teeny tiny Nutshells. (Over a thousand, actually.) Thank you for helping turn it around from the "shit" reputation to the number 1 site that players would tell newbies to go to. I was always so proud, so goddam proud, everytime someone told another player "you should go check out WMU."

Mk 4 - Should we archive (2022.07)

Hello everyone, I'm the de facto WMU Chief Admin (ʖ̇uckto). We need to chat about Mk4 vs WMU. (There's a *long* Insider you may want to read first if you haven't already, link below) Jaden (from the LOS team) and I have known about Mk4 for a while now, and have talked about what it will mean for WMU. As most of you probably know, the LOS team have decided to move on from WMH. What you didn't know is that I'm in pretty much the same boat (mainly because I've moved to a town with zero meta). Secondly, Jaden and I look at PP's plan for the existing model range and the Unlimited Format, and while it sounds good we feel that it will effectively freeze mk3 models 'in amber'. So we figure why not freeze WMU now? So that leaves WMU with a choice We archive the existing WMU as-is, probably by turning off everyone's editing privileges. WMU will become a repository of mk3 rules for anyone who wants to continue playing "old WMH". Currently this is my preference and Jaden's preference. Setting up a new website for a mk4 wiki will be left up to you guys, the mk4 players. All the existing WMU articles and special abilities are *overwritten* with mk4 Legacy/Unlimited versions, and new pages created for mk4 new models. All the existing WMU articles and special abilities are *moved* to a different namespace on the wiki, to make space for mk4 Legacy/Unlimited versions. This is a giant headache of work, by the way. There's not only a thousand+ model pages to move, there's over 2000 templates for the special abilities that would also need to move, and the categories ... ugh. WMU is taken offline. Setting up a new website for a mk4 wiki will be left up to you guys, the mk4 players. Much as I like to think that I "own" WMU and I can go with option 1 with complete carte blanche, I don't and I can't. So, ummmm, convince me and Jaden to choose a different option ...? PS with me stepping down as chief admin, the role defaults to my backups, AkoSi Nosaj and Esben Heick PPS The Insider https://home.privateerpress.com/.../26/warmachine-big-news/

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Changing the Main Page

This section is to discuss the layout and content of the main page itself.

• Placeholder

The link to the Facebook group is outdated. I changed it on this talk page, but it would help contributors find the group if the link was updated on the main page itself. --QuantumOmega (talk) 18:29, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

General chat

Text cleared 2018.10

Any way we can get a mobile friendly theme added? site is a pain to use on mobile.

Spells Formatting Question

I've noticed that the spells section of the various Warcasters/Warlocks is inconsistant, some using a table and some not. While not a problem normally, it seems to cause a weird formatting issue in some cases (Iona1's Phantasm spell in particular.) Is there a reason for this besides having to edit all the spells and casters to conform to a single format? TerraBlight (talk) 19:10, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

They're in the process of being changed to the table format. There's actually a duplication process going on, where a 2nd spell template is setup, then casters are switched over to the new template then, when all the casters are switched, the 2nd template is moved to replace the original. As you can probably imagine, it's a big task.

Sounds like Iona1 got caught in the crossfire, let me go check it out.

juckto (talk) 19:14, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Man, that was fast! I figured as much but had to ask. I'd offer to help, but I don't have easy access to all the info and I'm not terribly familiar with the editing format here yet. Glad it was an easy fix!

TerraBlight (talk) 19:28, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Report a Bug

This section is to report anything, anywhere, that you spotted on the wiki that you think needs fixing.

Linking to this site

For whatever reason, one MUST go through the main page https://warmachineuniversity.com and than click on the link there to get to any other page. Direct linking does not work.

Kensai (talk), 20. July 2018

Password Reset

Forgotten password, and trying to reset brings up "Error sending mail: Unknown error in PHP's mail() function." which seems like a bigger problem than me just forgetting what email address I linked the account to...

Request a Feature

Since we're still setting up this wiki, there are a lot of things that users would like to have that the sysadmin hasn't installed yet. This is the best place to mention them.

Warcaster & other PP games

Can we consider adding sections for PP's other games, in particular Warcaster Neo-Mechanika? The game has an overlapping community, fundamentally similar design philosophy, and is literally in the same universe as Warmachine. It would be nice to have a single repository for all of PP's Warmachine-related stuff. (Jaxck 01.2021)

Banner Picture

Can we add a banner picture at the top of the main page? Right now it's rather bland and unattractive. I've uploaded a suitable picture here (Edit - File deleted as of 2018.10) - Praetordave (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I'm not super keen on having a banner that's taken directly from PP. I know that we use their imagary all the time for model pictures, but this feels a bit different given that it's huge and going to be emblazaned all over our Main Page; I feel it could easily be misconstrued as we're presenting it as our own artwork.

Also, we had a banner/logo discussion ages ago on the Facebook group (Link). It isn't on here yet because Kyle was supposed to add it to the top menu (right where the 'missing pic-logo' symbol is), and hasn't got round to it yet.

Anyway, I guess we could have a banner plus that logo, but as I said above, maybe not that banner. - juckto (talk) 19:04, 7 December 2016 (EST)

Logo

We have a logo (here). How do we get it onto this page? juckto (talk) 20:38, 14 June 2016 (EDT)

Looks like you edit the settings file, and probably want to upload the image file to somewhere on this server. 610 (talk) 00:20, 21 June 2016 (EDT)

Dynamic Page Listing (DPL)

• Requested by: NeonChameleon
• What it is: Allows you to find the "intersection" of multiple categories. More info at (?)
• Why we need it:
  • So we can sort "who has pathfinder" by faction, etc.
  • So we can set up auto-themes (when they're released)
• What we need to get it running: (?)

Parsar Functions

• Requested by: juckto & Ibidem
• Essentially, it allows us to create templates with "if/else" statements. More info at Wikipedia article on ParserFunctions
• Why we need it: For statblock templates.
  • Say, if one model has a FOCUS stat and one doesn't, currently we need two different templates (if you try to use just one template, it'll have "FOCUS = No input provided" on one of the models).
  • We don't want that, we want one template which is smart enough to not display anything for FOCUS if the user doesn't input FOCUS.
  • Similarly for models with no ranged weapons needing a RAT input, models which aren't units require a UNIT SIZE input, etc etc

quality of life update - sidebar addition

• Requested by: GeekyGami
• add sections after "Warmachine" "Hordes" and "Mini-Factions" but above "The Vaults". The sections should be titled "Riot Quest" "Company of Iron" and "Extreme Colossal Wrestling" perhaps "Fallen Corvis" as well.
• Why we need it: as a quality of life improvement for quick navigation.
• Links to the rule PDF's for each of these sub games could be made available upon link. That way players of those games can get to those perspective pages without having to go through a faction menu and scrolling and finding an entry.

Official Forums backup

• Requested by: Sleet01
• Official forums are going away forever (bar some hobby threads and the Rules Questions) on Monday, March 1. I may be able to scrape some stuff; any interest in hosting it here?
• Why we need it: reference material, the occasional laugh

Sleet01 (talk) 15:39, 27 February 2017 (EST)

WikiNewb's Request

• I wanted to add a redirect for "Storm Trooper" to "Storm Troopers" but it occurs to me that perhaps a lot of models could use redirects for accidental plural->single spellings. I tried manually adding a redirect but lacked permissions. Perhaps this could benefit from some minor automation?
  • Once your account is one day old and made 12 edits, you'll automatically be granted permissions to create new pages. Feel free to edit Sandbox. juckto (talk) 00:53, 27 June 2021 (UTC)