WotC 3.5E Archive taken down [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Wildstag

2020-02-22, 12:50 PM

This happened while the forums were away, but the archive.wizards.com resource has been taken down by Wizards of the Coast. Someone I was talking to on another forum reached out and got a message from the support team. They said basically "Unfortunately at this time the Archived content has been taken down. While we may elect to restore access to this content in the future we cannot guarantee a time-frame for this."

It went down without announcement or pomp. So I guess if you need anything from it, check the Wayback Machine and pray it's been archived.

Madara

2020-02-22, 12:53 PM

I remember posting awhile back and finding that someone had been slowly downloading the whole thing. Hopefully now that the long dark is over, they'll pop their head in.

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-02-22, 12:58 PM

I remember posting awhile back and finding that someone had been slowly downloading the whole thing. Hopefully now that the long dark is over, they'll pop their head in.There should be a stickied post on this forum with the archived archives available, so people can find that stuff when they need it.

DeTess

2020-02-22, 01:03 PM

It'd indeed be useful if someone had the entire archive available somewhere. I personally know that I've used the swiftblade and wild cohort with some regularity, so I tracked those down on the wayback machine to get an offline copy, but knowing about all the things I forgot about would be useful as well.

daremetoidareyo

2020-02-22, 01:10 PM

I got some in PDF form in my sig

Wildstag

2020-02-22, 01:37 PM

Thanks for archiving what you did, it's a start, I guess.

There's a couple like the Swiftblade or the Kobold Races of the Dragon Web Enhancement that are Wayback Machine only for now. The Kobold Domain is just so interesting with its "go play in traffic" spell for 9th level (Transmute Rock to Lava). Some of the articles aren't really useful either, just there as fluff like the good ol' Manyshot Wizard vs Balor.

Ultimately, the art archive is just going to be the biggest loss.

flappeercraft

2020-02-22, 01:49 PM

anyone have links to the wayback machine stuff?

edit: found the jackpot (https://web.archive.org/web/20190718165833/http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/arch/dnd) along my bookmarks

Wildstag

2020-02-22, 01:59 PM

I have this link (https://web.archive.org/web/20161031210900/http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/arch/dnd) to the archived home page, but you'd have to manually check each link for an archived version.

Alternatively, raise enough hell with the Wizards twitter accounts that they reopen it, if even for a limited time.

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-02-22, 02:07 PM

I have a lot of pages backed up on my computer, but some of them apparently got corrupted when I saved them, and I haven't gone through them to figure out which ones are still viable. I should probably do a cloud backup, though.

Jowgen

2020-02-22, 03:47 PM

Hopefully now that the long dark is over, they'll pop their head in.

Petition for "The Long Dark" to be adopted as the offical desgination of said period.

I got some in PDF form in my sig

Big fan of your Far Corners collection, and now it looks like we'll all be relying on the fruits of your labour quite a bit more.

The only thing I can contribute is this (https://web.archive.org/web/20141222093838/https://ww2.wizards.com/books/mirrorstone/Article.aspx?doc=dl_magicitems)pretty darn obscure one on the wayback that has Raistlin's Frog (broken AF CL boosting item) and Sabar's Gazing Globe (broken AF Crystal Ball for Illusion Shenanigans)

Luccan

2020-02-22, 04:45 PM

Well, there go my plans for a weird "legally free online only" gonzo-setting. Now it would just be SRD stuff, much less interesting.

Crichton

2020-02-22, 05:19 PM

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-02-22, 05:26 PM

Don't know if it will change their mind at all, but I recommend that we all reach out and (politely) contact them via official channels, requesting that they put the 3.5 archives back up. Might be a longshot, but it certainly wont go back up if we don't show our support, and it only costs a few seconds for each of us to try.

Submit a support ticket here: https://dnd-support.wizards.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

And/or Tweet them @Wizards_DnD and @Wizards_Help

Anybody have an official email address, or do they do all contact through the support website?Thank you for that link.

Everyone who reports in to them, could you please request that they also allow for batch downloads for all of the archives, in case the official stuff is lost?

Here is what I asked them:

"The archives for 3rd Edition were recently removed. I (and a lot of other people) still use these resources. Would you please reinstate the archives, as well as have someplace where everything can be downloaded for our own personal use in case any of this is ever permanently lost? It would be an absolute shame if this part of gaming history was somehow lost forever. :("

Don't copy and paste that, just in case they think it's one person spamming lots of replies, but please toss your hat in with that general sentiment.

inuyasha

2020-02-22, 05:56 PM

Petition for "The Long Dark" to be adopted as the offical desgination of said period.

I agree.

That aside though, is there any reason why Wizards took down the archives? I really iked those, and still looked at several articles as neat things to reference when designing adventures and such.

Crichton

2020-02-22, 05:58 PM

I agree.

That aside though, is there any reason why Wizards took down the archives? I really iked those, and still looked at several articles as neat things to reference when designing adventures and such.

No official word on that, so anything anyone would respond with would be speculation. Your guess is as good as mine, as they say. Nothing we can do about it aside from contact them to ask for them back.

Wildstag

2020-02-22, 06:33 PM

Full text of the message I saw on reddit that support team gave was as follows. They gave no reason even in the response as to why they did it.

Support Agent (D&D)

Feb 17, 9:07 AM PST

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Wizards of the Coast Customer Support. Unfortunately at this time the Archived content has been taken down. While we may elect to restore access to this content in the future we cannot guarantee a time-frame for this. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

In any case, we appreciate you taking the time to write in with your feedback! I have gotten your feedback regarding returning access to the archived D&D 3.5 Content up to the appropriate teams for review. While I cannot guarantee any further contacts concerning your feedback, I can assure you that we take all feedback submitted to us very seriously.

I’ll be glad to help you further if you have any other questions or concerns!

(person’s name)
Wizards of the Coast | Customer Service Representative
Email support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week here.

DarkSoul

2020-02-22, 07:37 PM

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-02-22, 07:42 PM

Somewhere, I managed to find a 1.67 GB .rar file that appears to have the vast majority of the content contained within. I haven't been through it all to see if it's truly complete. I think I got it from minmaxforum, but I'm not sure.

I'll see about putting together a torrent or something if other people looking come up empty-handed.Well, everything I've got is over 4 GB, so it's probably not everything unless it's .txt or other files without any pictures. Then again, .htm files aren't typically the most conservative format, so...

StreamOfTheSky

2020-02-22, 09:55 PM

*sigh*

Figured this would happen some day, why would WotC continue doing even one nice thing for us 3E players if they could avoid it?

I'll keep tabs on this topic to see what heroes have accumulated the archives. I totally slacked on doing it, sadly.

Thanks for letting me know.

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-02-22, 10:02 PM

There are several files that just WILL NOT .zip up, no matter what I try or which programs I use. But here's what I managed (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18qROkA0K2h7vlqnXB6KBE4UynjitsaUz?usp=sharing).

[edit] Managed to get everything I've got into a .zip file in the end, so...

Wildstag

2020-02-23, 01:39 AM

Dude, you're amazing. Thanks for sharing that. Shame there's no images, so I'll have to lament the loss of those resources, but weirdly enough (and mind you I only checked the Cliffhangers pages) the art can be accessed. As an example from "Kingdom of the Blind - Noise and Motion", the map (http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/images/kingblind1_72.jpg) is still accessible. Which honestly confuses me. Did they just take down the articles and somehow leave up the art and other such files? Is there a more programming-proficient forumite that might be able to explain how this happened?

Interestingly, the Map of the Week folder does have the jpgs, but adventure module articles don't come with it.

Psyren

2020-02-23, 01:48 AM

Ugh, this sucks :smallfrown:

The preview stuff like Archivist I don't mind them taking down so much, since it's just repeating stuff that's in the published books anyway. But some of the other things like the Mind's Eye archive could ONLY be found online. Meditant was the first handbook I ever made, and part of the reason why was because it was a PrC that any psionics user could read and use if they wanted to.

(Not trying to be a conspiracy nutter, but part of me wonders if WotC had a sinister thought along the lines of "the biggest active forum of 3.5 players, GiantITP, is offline! If we take the 3.5 archives down now there won't be nearly as much outcry! Quick, pull the plug Jenkins!")

malloc

2020-02-23, 01:17 PM

Doctor Awkward

2020-02-23, 01:29 PM

(Not trying to be a conspiracy nutter, but part of me wonders if WotC had a sinister thought along the lines of "the biggest active forum of 3.5 players, GiantITP, is offline! If we take the 3.5 archives down now there won't be nearly as much outcry! Quick, pull the plug Jenkins!")

"I believe in coincidences. Coincidences happen every day. But I don't trust coincidences."
--Elim Garak, 1993

I am likewise extremely saddened to see those articles go. So far as I know they were the only place where the Font of Inspiration feat was printed, among many other things.

A while ago I pasted the entire Shothragot the Ender Elder Evil article into a google doc. That's about all I could contribute to any archive.

soullos

2020-02-23, 07:54 PM

A few months ago I made an offline copy of the 3.5 archive for my personal use. I mainly wanted to do that to have access of the Consolidated Lists of like monsters and spells and whatnot. By accident, I backed up almost the entire archive in addition. This is an offline copy with most links available and usable (those of 2003 or less can be iffy). The archive.org version linked in this thread earlier will be more complete but this offline copy is faster for that want it.

The "Index" shortcut is the main link leading to the Consolidated Lists. I added a few extra shortcuts to lead to the main 3.5 Archive, the D&D Glossary and Feature Articles. Download links do work surprisingly. It's not perfect, but I feel this should cater to most people's needs. All of Mind's Eye is there and available for example.

Note: Not all links work (the big red "3.5 D&D Archive" button does not work, for example, use the shortcuts included to navigate or use the small "articles" link at the top of the page and scroll down to use the "Complete D&D Archives" at the bottom to start navigating to other articles. Shortcuts included are the easiest method though. :) ).

Hope this helps. :)

WotC 3.5 Archive, local offline copy (https://drive.google.com/open?id=1DKR_VlzN4_mqY8G8mzfeXZY72RbQhQp9)

Edit: Link fixed!

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-02-23, 10:38 PM

I also shot them an email. I used a few of those for some really fun projects--it would be a true shame to see them gone for good.

I appreciate the Google Drive archive. Out of curiosity, do you have a list of pages that you were unable to include in that resource? If we can dig those up, I'm sure myself or another user could try and finagle the missing files into zipping properly.Good news! Because I didn't save the error report after the .zip file was done, I tried a "refresh and overwrite" function on the .zip file I had so I could get another error report, and for some reason Winrar decided that all the files were okay now. Reuploading now.

I don't know if that's everything, but it's everything I had.

[edit] And...done (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V8hAVYAIU2Qutxk3ju-86wbov5fIcDo-/view?usp=sharing)!

martixy

2020-02-23, 11:34 PM

"I believe in coincidences. Coincidences happen every day. But I don't trust coincidences."
--Elim Garak, 1993

Garak was a wise man. I always liked him.

I've sent a support ticket and tweeted at them.
Hopefully if we brigade them hard enough they will reinstate the archive.

Endarire

2020-02-23, 11:50 PM

May we get a sticky post with the 3.x web archive link?

tiercel

2020-02-24, 03:13 AM

Don't know if it will change their mind at all, but I recommend that we all reach out and (politely) contact them via official channels, requesting that they put the 3.5 archives back up. Might be a longshot, but it certainly wont go back up if we don't show our support, and it only costs a few seconds for each of us to try.

Submit a support ticket here: https://dnd-support.wizards.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Everyone who reports in to them, could you please request that they also allow for batch downloads for all of the archives, in case the official stuff is lost?

Here is what I asked them:

"The archives for 3rd Edition were recently removed. I (and a lot of other people) still use these resources. Would you please reinstate the archives, as well as have someplace where everything can be downloaded for our own personal use in case any of this is ever permanently lost? It would be an absolute shame if this part of gaming history was somehow lost forever. :("

Thanks for the headsup and voice added to hopefully bring the archives back, and thanks to all the posters who have worked to archive content for sharing thus far!

Akkristor

2020-02-24, 10:01 AM

In addition to the web-archive posted above, there is the "PBMC Meta-Compendium", an archive of not only the WOTC pages, but also a large number of Min-max and TO-focused posts from the old MinMaxBoards, put together by PleaseBreakMyCampaign

http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=16929

Palanan

2020-02-24, 11:33 AM

Thanks to Crichton for posting the link for a support ticket (https://dnd-support.wizards.com/hc/en-us/requests/new). Here’s my request to them:

I have been playing Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 since it first came out in August of 2003, and ever since then I've made frequent use of your web supplements and other online material. In recent years I've continued to make use of your 3.0/3.5 Web Archive, which has been a valuable resource for imaginative game content not available anywhere else.

Unfortunately this resource seems to have been removed recently, and I wanted to let you know that myself and many others would be very appreciative if you could restore access to the Web Archive. We still use this material, and for many of us it's not only helpful for our current games, it's a richly nostalgic reminder of a wonderful period in the evolution of a game we have been playing for many years.

It would be ideal if you could restore this content in its prior form so we can continue to access it for use in our games and online discussions. If there is some reason why this is impractical, I can guarantee you that I and many others would be glad to purchase a hardcover compendium of this material, in order to ensure that we have it available for many years to come.

Please let me know if you would be willing to restore the Web Archive to allow for continued access to this content; and if not, please let me know if you would be willing to publish a hardback compendium of this material. Thanks very much and I look forward to hearing from you.

There’s probably not much chance they’ll restore the web archive; but if we remind them we’re still here and interested, they might consider publishing a hardback compilation. It’s about as easy a project as you could ask for, since all of the development has long since been done.

A very long shot, but worth asking for.

Jowgen

2020-02-25, 02:44 AM

My support ticket got a genric non-reply about the message now being in the hands of the "developers".

Crichton

2020-02-25, 10:42 AM

My support ticket got a genric non-reply about the message now being in the hands of the "developers".

Mine did too, but we gotta keep sending them, and telling all our gaming friends to send them too!

Unavenger

2020-02-25, 11:31 AM

Good news! Because I didn't save the error report after the .zip file was done, I tried a "refresh and overwrite" function on the .zip file I had so I could get another error report, and for some reason Winrar decided that all the files were okay now. Reuploading now.

I don't know if that's everything, but it's everything I had.

[edit] And...done (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18qROkA0K2h7vlqnXB6KBE4UynjitsaUz?usp=sharing)!

For some reason, I can't download it. Any ideas why it won't work?

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-02-25, 12:13 PM

For some reason, I can't download it. Any ideas why it won't work?Not really. I altered the options on it a little. Maybe it'll work now? (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V8hAVYAIU2Qutxk3ju-86wbov5fIcDo-/view?usp=sharing)

[edit] Tried accessing on another gmail account (that isn't the one I put it up with). You can't view it because it's a .zip file. It seems to download okay for me well enough.

Unavenger

2020-02-25, 12:38 PM

Not really. I altered the options on it a little. Maybe it'll work now? (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V8hAVYAIU2Qutxk3ju-86wbov5fIcDo-/view?usp=sharing)

[edit] Tried accessing on another gmail account (that isn't the one I put it up with). You can't view it because it's a .zip file. It seems to download okay for me well enough.

Huh, it doesn't download for me at all. It just comes up with a "Download failed" message.

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-02-25, 12:56 PM

Huh, it doesn't download for me at all. It just comes up with a "Download failed" message.I'm using Chrome, and it seems to download just fine. Maybe try a different browser? Do you have enough space on your hard drive? Are you using any odd extensions that might be interfering?

Palanan

2020-02-25, 05:19 PM

Originally Posted by Jowgen
My support ticket got a genric non-reply about the message now being in the hands of the "developers".

I never even got that much, just an auto-message about my feedback being sent to the “right teams.”

Folks, I don’t think we’ll get anywhere through the customer support system. If we’re really going to get attention on this, we need to be writing individual letters to key people at Wizards. Ask for the resource to be restored, as a gesture to the gaming community that supported their products for so many years.

And if you'd be willing to buy a hardcover compendium of the online material, tell them that as well. I know I would.

.

Unavenger

2020-02-25, 05:23 PM

I'm using Chrome, and it seems to download just fine. Maybe try a different browser? Do you have enough space on your hard drive? Are you using any odd extensions that might be interfering?

Adblock Plus tried to block an element on the page which must have stopped the download. I have it, now.

(Of course, now my computer's giving me hell trying to extract it, because it's so large, but it'll prolly get there?) EDIT: Yeah it works now 100%.

Thanks.

Crichton

2020-02-25, 08:15 PM

Less than stellar news, here's the most recent response:

Thank you for contacting Wizards of the Coast. We’re glad that our players were able to have so many exciting years with the help of our digital archive of older adventures and content. Unfortunately, we have had to retire that site and all the material upon it. While our web team is working on a new place for customers to access the SRD and OGL materials for previous editions of D&D, we don't have any information on when that will will be complete. Additionally, other content hosted at that site beyond the SRD and OGL material is no longer available. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes, but please let us know if we can assist with anything else.

I think Palanan is right, above. Customer service might not be the right place to be contacting. I'm not sure who, or how, to contact individual staff members to express our support and request the reinstatement of the archives, but it does seem like a better plan. Ideas, anyone?

martixy

2020-02-25, 08:28 PM

Less than stellar news, here's the most recent response:

I think Palanan is right, above. Customer service might not be the right place to be contacting. I'm not sure who, or how, to contact individual staff members to express our support and request the reinstatement of the archives, but it does seem like a better plan. Ideas, anyone?

The exact response I got just now.

They're aware of us. They just don't seem to wanna budge. Their insistence on using the word "customer" makes me think this was written by a sales rep or something. I think someone over there might have the impression that keeping the archive up might somehow prevent them from selling more 5e books. I don't think they realize that a community that hasn't switched for 6 years will not magically do so now (Not to mention the AD&D folk who have been living, what, 30 years in the past?). Or that many of us also play 5e in addition to 3.5e.

TBH I'm not sure what now. Try to find a webmaster, or someone from the IT team?

I searched around the dndbeyond site and they keep a changelog, posted by, what I assume is IT staff - we could try PMing some of them.

StevenC21

2020-02-25, 08:51 PM

I'll boycott 5e entirely if they don't give us our stuff back. I play both, mostly 3e. But I'll give them zero percent of my business if they're trying to force us to switch over.

Kelb_Panthera

2020-02-25, 09:03 PM

martixy

2020-02-25, 09:14 PM

"... is no longer available."

I don't think any amount of pestering is gonna help, guys. That line sounds like it was deleted outright. They'd have to dig it out of various web archives themselves to put it back just like we already are. Keeping resource dumps like MaxDuRarity's circulating is probably the best we're gonna be able to do for the forseeable future.

No it's not. At least not all of it.

I tried hosting the archive posted above on my own machine, and browser complained about a css file that was served over HTTP (my server is on HTTPS - mixed content like this is a security issue for browsers) - which it turned out had still survived. So a) the archive is not complete and b) not everything is down/lost.

I'm a web developer. Technically-wise I could absolutely host that archive on my own. The problem on hosting it publicly is likely on the legal side.
I wonder if we can obtain permission...

And... I'm not sure how the law works here, but the web archive def has some pages of the WotC archive. There has to be some exceptions for archival reasons.
Any lawyer D&D nerds around here?

Kelb_Panthera

2020-02-25, 09:28 PM

And... I'm not sure how the law works here, but the web archive def has some pages of the WotC archive. There has to be some exceptions for archival reasons.
Any lawyer D&D nerds around here?

Unfortunately, we can't really discuss that on this forum. Actual legal discussion is against the forum rules. Best we can do here is exchange emails or arrange to discuss on other forums or the like.

I'm not a lawyer or coder so I'm not gonna be much help in any case.

Palanan

2020-02-25, 09:29 PM

Originally Posted by martixy
TBH I'm not sure what now. Try to find a webmaster, or someone from the IT team?

It's likely that people on the IT team aren’t going to care about this, and they won’t be in a position to make changes even if they do.

We’d have a better chance if we wrote to someone who’s fairly high up on the executive team, but not so high that they’re living in the stratosphere.

Unfortunately I can’t find much about the executive leadership at Wizards. Is anyone with better google-fu able to find some names?

StevenC21

2020-02-25, 10:06 PM

https://www.comparably.com/companies/wizards-of-the-coast/executive-team

This website seems to have some names. Don't know how useful, but they are there. If anyone wants to start mailing to them, it's a start.

martixy

2020-02-25, 10:17 PM

Unfortunately, we can't really discuss that on this forum. Actual legal discussion is against the forum rules. Best we can do here is exchange emails or arrange to discuss on other forums or the like.

I'm not a lawyer or coder so I'm not gonna be much help in any case.

Good point. Just pointing out where the problem lies isn't against the rules tho, even if we have to stop any further discussion.

Anyone who wants to continue this, feel free to PM me, we can absolutely exchange emails/discords/what-have-you. Actually, speaking of discord, I'm in the gitp server, same nickname, and my id is #0341.

It's likely that people on the IT team aren’t going to care about this, and they won’t be in a position to make changes even if they do.

We’d have a better chance if we wrote to someone who’s fairly high up on the executive team, but not so high that they’re living in the stratosphere.

Unfortunately I can’t find much about the executive leadership at Wizards. Is anyone with better google-fu able to find some names?

Actually I somewhat feel like it's the IT guys - aka the nerds in the company who will likely be able to help us the most - or at least willing to help the most, ability/permission to do so being a different matter.

In the mean time I've been busy fixing the broken archive to a hostable state. Stay tuned.

Crichton

2020-02-25, 11:21 PM

Stay tuned.

Staying tuned, for alternative solutions.

I was thinking, DrivethruRPG has the license for distributing legal pdfs of published 3.5 books, right? Maybe we should be pleading with WotC to release the web archive as a compiled pdf (or multiple pdfs) on DrivethruRPG or something like that. Something that costs WotC little to no actual effort, but still makes them money, at least a bit. Thoughts?

Wildstag

2020-02-25, 11:26 PM

So while I love this energy to some extent, I do have to admit I'm concerned about digging into information too much, since it's a slippery slope to more personal information. I have considered just asking some of the current 5e devs on Twitter, those that overlapped 3.5 and 5e at least.

No it's not. At least not all of it.

I tried hosting the archive posted above on my own machine, and browser complained about a css file that was served over HTTP (my server is on HTTPS - mixed content like this is a security issue for browsers) - which it turned out had still survived. So a) the archive is not complete and b) not everything is down/lost.

To speak to some of that, if you look at some of the shared files in this thread and click on some of the image file links in the articles, you'll find that some of those links still work. I can access some maps that still are on the archive.wizards.com domain. Scroll through page 1 for the specific example I shared. It might be that files such as those are the weak links. I would think that if those files are still up but the articles themselves are down, it might indicate or provide an idea of what WotC actually did to the archive. I don't have any web-design knowledge though.

I love the 3.5e archives. I use them on a constant basis, since I play 3.5 far more often than I do any other edition or game. A lot of the information in the articles is flawed. An example I can think of is that one article on VoP suggests that it's a good option on monk. Thematically, it might be, but from a mechanics standpoint it's terrible. However, the same article expanded Vow of Poverty by saying that a character that takes VoP should get an additional bonus to AC equal to the level of armor proficiency they lose (Light = 1, Medium = 2, Heavy = 3, Shield = 4).

The swiftblade was one of my favorite PrCs, and I've longed to play a Kobold with Slight Build and the Kobold Domain (Transmute Rock to Lava at level 9 is what my friend calls a "go play in traffic" spell). Everyone else here, and many not here, will have similar stories.

So as a suggestion, if you are going to send e-mails to representatives of the company, let them know the anecdotes too, and ask them for a relevant contact to talk to. But make sure you don't get crazy about a search for a WotC staff to make demands of.

Chricton, that sounds like a fantastic idea.

martixy

2020-02-26, 04:02 AM

Stay tuned.

I managed to count everything.
We are missing 23588 unique images and 2653 other resources (e.g. zip files or whatever).

Once I figure out how to fetch all of asynchronously. (Oh, Boccob, why did I choose python? Hack crap together, eh? Bodge it, they said? What was I thinking? So used to javascript. In python you have to reimplement every async primitive. JS really is the promised land, isn't it? Okay, I'll see myself out already.)

Leon

2020-02-26, 04:35 AM

They should at least drop the silly pretense that the page is "down for maintenance" When i first saw that i was like well bugger, should have saved more of it instead of just going to it when i needed it. The version of Cityscape i use has the web extra's added onto the end of it.

Palanan

2020-02-26, 09:36 AM

Originally Posted by martixy
Actually I somewhat feel like it's the IT guys - aka the nerds in the company who will likely be able to help us the most - or at least willing to help the most, ability/permission to do so being a different matter.

Worth pursuing if you think they’d have some sympathy, but I’m not sure if they would, based on my experience with IT workers across a number of organizations. From what I've seen they tend not to care about what the institution focuses on, just their own corner of the techie bubble. It was hard enough getting them to help me as an employee, much less anyone else.

But if you think you can make a case to them, go for it.

Originally Posted by Crichton
Maybe we should be pleading with WotC to release the web archive as a compiled pdf (or multiple pdfs) on DrivethruRPG or something like that. Something that costs WotC little to no actual effort, but still makes them money, at least a bit.

This is a fantastic idea, and probably the suggestion with the best chance of becoming reality. A compiled PDF would be virtually zero effort for Wizards, and while the return would be minimal, they’d still be making a profit on a property without further development or marketing effort. That's a win all around.

I’m personally attached to the idea of a hardcopy compendium—I love my MIC—but a compiled PDF feels much more feasible.

Originally Posted by Wildstag
I have considered just asking some of the current 5e devs on Twitter, those that overlapped 3.5 and 5e at least.

If you can contact some of the 3.5 devs directly, that’s perfect. Let them know we really care about this content, that its absence has been noticed and we’d like to get it back, enough that we’re willing to pay for it.

If possible, ask them who at Wizards would be the best person to lobby about this, in terms of decision-making pull. I’ve looked at the list that StevenC21 posted, but just from the job descriptions I’m not sure who on that list would have the right combination of authority and sympathy. If you can ask a veteran 3.5 dev who we should contact, that could be really helpful.

Originally Posted by martixy
In the mean time I've been busy fixing the broken archive to a hostable state. Stay tuned.

Definitely tuned. :smalltongue:

Wildstag

2020-02-26, 01:52 PM

If you can contact some of the 3.5 devs directly, that’s perfect. Let them know we really care about this content, that its absence has been noticed and we’d like to get it back, enough that we’re willing to pay for it.

If possible, ask them who at Wizards would be the best person to lobby about this, in terms of decision-making pull. I’ve looked at the list that StevenC21 posted, but just from the job descriptions I’m not sure who on that list would have the right combination of authority and sympathy. If you can ask a veteran 3.5 dev who we should contact, that could be really helpful.

So to speak to this, two of the bigger D&D employees that have a twitter presence are Christopher Perkins and Mike Mearls. These two are co-creators of 5E. They are also listed as Design Manager and Lead Developer (respectively) on the Tome of Battle. They're also on the team for 3.5s PHB2, Magic Item Compendium, and probably other books as well.

I don't think they did any of the articles, but they had some design and development overlap between the two editions. They would probably be great to reach out to.

Palanan

2020-02-26, 02:04 PM

Excellent, thanks. They sound like ideal choices to contact, and I wouldn't be surprised if they'd contributed something that ended up in the online archive.

I'm not on Twitter, and it sounds like you know the players better than I do. Would you want to reach out to them?

Jowgen

2020-02-26, 06:57 PM

Got another word back. It, like, sounds bad.

Thank you for contacting Wizards of the Coast. We’re glad that our players were able to have so many exciting years with the help of our digital archive of older adventures and content. Unfortunately, we have had to retire that site and all the material upon it. While our web team is working on a new place for customers to access the SRD and OGL materials for previous editions of D&D, we don't have any information on when that will will be complete. Additionally, other content hosted at that site beyond the SRD and OGL material is no longer available. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes, but please let us know if we can assist with anything else.

Psyren

2020-02-26, 07:32 PM

Got another word back. It, like, sounds bad.

They might as well have included a middle-finger emoji or a gif :smalltongue:

The only follow-up I can think of would be asking about the online-only content, but it doesn't seem like that would go anywhere. Guess we're stuck circulating the tapes! (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KeepCirculatingTheTapes)

Thurbane

2020-02-26, 07:33 PM

There’s probably not much chance they’ll restore the web archive; but if we remind them we’re still here and interested, they might consider publishing a hardback compilation. It’s about as easy a project as you could ask for, since all of the development has long since been done.

A very long shot, but worth asking for.

If they did, it would be amazing, and people would definitely buy it!

People bought the re-releases of 1E books and premium 3.5 reprints, so you never know.

unseenmage

2020-02-26, 07:34 PM

If they did, it would be amazing, and people would definitely buy it!

People bought the re-releases of 1E books and premium 3.5 reprints, so you never know.

I've wanted this since always

Kelb_Panthera

2020-02-26, 08:07 PM

I'd buy that. My opinion of WotC isn't super high right now and showing some love to players once forsaken* would definitely be something I'd want to reward. I like hardcover better anyway though, I'd be willing to accept soft-cover if they really want to cheap out.

*why, yes. I am still bitter about them sending out the order to pull 3.5 books from store shelves with the launch of 4e.

Palanan

2020-02-27, 12:08 AM

Originally Posted by Thurbane
If they did, it would be amazing, and people would definitely buy it!

People bought the re-releases of 1E books and premium 3.5 reprints, so you never know.

Absolutely, and that’s what I’m hoping for—their awareness of a market for a compilation. We really need to let them know that we’re willing to pay money for this. That’s what will get their attention.

Originally Posted by Kelb_Panthera
I like hardcover better anyway though, I'd be willing to accept soft-cover if they really want to cheap out.

I’d prefer hardcover myself, but I’d be glad for a compilation in any format.

Originally Posted by unseenmage
I've wanted this since always….

I’m hoping that Wildstag and/or others can reach out to the devs he mentioned on Twitter. If they can recommend someone higher up who’d be willing to listen, I’d hope a lot of us would let that person know how much we want this.

khadgar567

2020-02-27, 01:38 AM

I’m hoping that Wildstag and/or others can reach out to the devs he mentioned on Twitter. If they can recommend someone higher up who’d be willing to listen, I’d hope a lot of us would let that person know how much we want this.
most of the high ups are kinda not care for the fans they only care about the baldur's gate game and 5th edition giving them money they want as long as 5th edition shows profit they are okay with 4th and 3rd editions to rot in corner. so only way for some one to return wizards to its old glory is buying tha company outright and firing the board of imbeciles then recruit new team for 6th edition.

DwarvenWarCorgi

2020-02-27, 01:50 AM

Madara

2020-02-27, 08:33 AM

A sad day for all. Just as The Long Dark ends, a new darkness falls. Thanks to the folks archiving on their own. Seconding everyone with twitter, spam those guys feeds. I have a friend in middle management at Wizards parent company, Hasbro, I'll reach out to her about other appropriate individuals to contact about this.

Well, what did folks call it when they pushed 4th and took 3.5 off the shelves at stores?

We can call this (whatever that was) II

I know we have some little clubs and groups on the forums- maybe now we can start a "Keepers of the 3rd" who can be contacted for the links to people's digital archives and stuff?

Palanan

2020-02-27, 10:18 AM

Originally Posted by DwarvenWarCorgi
I have a friend in middle management at Wizards parent company, Hasbro, I'll reach out to her about other appropriate individuals to contact about this.

That would be fantastic, thanks. Please let us know what your friend suggests.

skunk3

2020-02-27, 08:47 PM

This is a huge PITA because I am running a character that relies on the epic Warlock info as well as Master Arcane Artisan prestige class. I pray that info is in these archives somewhere.

Wildstag

2020-02-27, 09:44 PM

Skunk, the Epic Warlock Feats are part of the Epic Insights articles. At least one of the links on the first page of backed up archives has the epic warlock feats. Master Arcane Artisan is also in that link.

It sucks that we have to rely on this, but I guess it should be alright, since each page has a "Download Article" link.

Palanan

2020-02-27, 10:30 PM

Stag, were you going to contact the two devs on Twitter?

StevenC21

2020-02-27, 10:47 PM

I've done a little bit of work on this, but is there any other way I can help? I sent a support request a while back, like everyone else, and I found that list, though it's probably a dead end...

Is there any other way for me to help? I really, REALLY don't want even one article to be lost. This stuff has much emotional value to me.

Palanan

2020-02-27, 10:58 PM

Originally Posted by by StevenC21
Is there any other way for me to help?

Right now we have two leads—the devs on Twitter that Wildstag mentioned, and the friend at Hasbro that DwarvenWarCorgi said he’d contact.

If any of them respond, we might have a lead on someone to contact directly, which should improve our chances of being heard. If that person hears from a number of us, we’ve got a shot at making our case for a win-win scenario, in which Wizards gets a little more profit and we get either a PDF or a hardcover compilation.

So, if we hear back from anyone with a promising name, that'll be the person for you to write to directly.

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-02-27, 11:23 PM

Regardless, we need to get this thread stickied. Who do we have to talk to for that?

Luccan

2020-02-28, 12:43 AM

Regardless, we need to get this thread stickied. Who do we have to talk to for that?

Probably a mod of this subforum, but I don't know if they want to get requests like that. I'm not even sure what their criteria for stickying a thread are

Wildstag

2020-02-28, 02:28 AM

I'd rather see a post with complete archives stickied than just this thread.

Palanan

2020-02-28, 03:01 PM

Is anyone willing to contact the 3.5 devs on Twitter?

They were mentioned earlier, and they would be excellent contacts if someone is willing to make the effort.

Wildstag

2020-02-29, 02:53 PM

They've already been contacted. I'd link but I don't want to also just share my twitter handle. At a certain point, patience is key. If they're going to reply, I don't expect it to be immediate; it's not like I sent them an e-mail. It could also help if others reached out on twitter inquiring about the archives. It's a network with many users, so I figure a good percentage of people in this thread could also reach out.

Palanan

2020-02-29, 04:47 PM

Originally Posted by Wildstag
They've already been contacted.

Thanks. You hadn’t mentioned that before, so I wasn’t sure if you were going to.

Originally Posted by Wildstag
It could also help if others reached out on twitter inquiring about the archives.

Agreed. I’m not on Twitter and don’t plan to be, but it would be great if others could contact them as well. I’ll be sending letters once we know the best person to address them to.

MeeposFire

2020-02-29, 04:47 PM

As somebody who does not play 3e anymore (and absolutely refuses to DM it anymore as it is more work than it is worth in terms of fun for me) I still wish I could see at least some of these. I rather liked the swift blade, kobold, cityscape alternate class features, dead level features, epic binder, and epic warlock. As I recall the epic binder stuff has been missing for a while.

Thurbane

2020-02-29, 04:59 PM

I've had some luck using the Wayback Machine with the links.

There's links to online monsters in my thread here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?567712), and online PrCs in my thread here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?598494-3-5-List-of-Online-Prestige-Classes).

redking

2020-03-01, 05:15 AM

Was I hallucinating last night, or are a bunch of posts missing?

Specifically, I could have sworn there was a compiled PDFs link.

DeTess

2020-03-01, 06:42 AM

Was I hallucinating last night, or are a bunch of posts missing?

Specifically, I could have sworn there was a compiled PDFs link.

Did you check the first page of the thread? and the links to some compiled pdf's are in daremeto's signature.

redking

2020-03-01, 07:06 PM

Did you check the first page of the thread? and the links to some compiled pdf's are in daremeto's signature.

Thanks. I see it now.

animewatcha

2020-03-02, 09:53 PM

Nijineko was compiling ( over years ) an archive of the WOTC archive articles and a few other things. The following link is from v1.4 of it. I have seen a link to it for a v1.7 but that link no longer works. Nijineko last post on minmax was almost a year ago. Somewhere amongst my HDD drives ( if they haven't gone bad ), I may have downloaded a 2.1 or something around that version. I don't know how complete it is. Download the 1.4 while you still can.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/dbmkg8efcbn4eak/AABSjyTbZIEDdIWm0I_uVFkpa?dl=0

-sidenote- If mods see to it that this is not legal to post. I apologize because I was acting in accordance to 'the bad news'.

Wildstag

2020-03-06, 12:19 PM

No response on the twitter front, which sucks. At this point all I want is an announcement about it or something, instead of just a “it’s our content, deal with it” attitude.

Thanks for the many sources of archive archives. Y’all do good work.

Palanan

2020-03-06, 12:46 PM

Originally Posted by Wildstag
No response on the twitter front….

Thanks for trying, I appreciate it. Sounds like the devs aren’t really interested in listening to their former community, which is unfortunate.

Originally Posted by DwarvenWarCorgi
I have a friend in middle management at Wizards parent company, Hasbro, I'll reach out to her about other appropriate individuals to contact about this.

Did you ever hear back from your friend?

Troacctid

2020-03-06, 02:49 PM

It looks like the Magic: The Gathering archives are down too, FWIW.

Palanan

2020-03-06, 05:01 PM

Originally Posted by Troacctid
It looks like the Magic: The Gathering archives are down too, FWIW.

At this point, it’s hard not to feel like they’re giving Bigby’s Giant Finger to a broad spectrum of former customers.

Eladrinblade

2020-03-07, 10:58 AM

If anybody spots the article about using spellcraft to identify items, could you please post it?

edit: found it (https://web.archive.org/web/20161031214906/http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sg/20051125a)

Troacctid

2020-03-07, 11:01 AM

If anybody spots the article about using spellcraft to identify items, could you please post it?
That one is in the Magic Item Compendium.

Eladrinblade

2020-03-07, 11:37 AM

That one is in the Magic Item Compendium.

I doubt it. It's an article with like six different ways, which can be combined if you want.

Troacctid

2020-03-07, 03:52 PM

I mean identifying magic items with Spellcraft specifically is in MIC.

Aracor

2020-03-14, 08:38 AM

It's back, it's back!

http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/features

Palanan

2020-03-14, 08:51 AM

Well, glory be. Very well done spotting that, Aracor.

So, could it be? Did they actually...(wait for it)...listen to us?

Remuko

2020-03-14, 10:41 AM

It's back, it's back!

http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/features

praise be to Bahamut!

Luccan

2020-03-14, 11:22 AM

It's back, it's back!

http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/features

I'm legitimately surprised. This is great!

StevenC21

2020-03-14, 11:25 AM

YES!

Now quick, somebody put the whole thing on archive.org!

Wildstag

2020-03-14, 11:33 AM

Praise Gilgamesh! Now I know what I’ll be doing all day: clicking the “download article” link for every article and saving as much of the artwork and maps as possible!

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-03-14, 12:47 PM

Praise Gilgamesh! Now I know what I’ll be doing all day: clicking the “download article” link for every article and saving as much of the artwork and maps as possible!I know there are programs to do this for you, but I can't find any that just do subdomains instead of entire websites.

Anyone have any tangible ideas on that? Especially if said programs altered the hyperlinks to redirect to the downloaded pages...

[edit] I'm using http://www.httrack.com/page/2/ to archive the (entirely-open-source, should-probably-already-be-on-the-SRD) subdomain. Has anyone had experience using it before? It looks a bit complicated, and I'm not 100% sure I'll get it right. So if anyone else wants to try a crack at it, maybe one of us will get it right. Tanukis and typewriters, etc.

Wildstag

2020-03-14, 01:10 PM

Curiously, some of the links still result in the "whoops you just exploded the internet" page. So just tread lightly?

Crichton

2020-03-14, 01:12 PM

I know there are programs to do this for you, but I can't find any that just do subdomains instead of entire websites.

Anyone have any tangible ideas on that? Especially if said programs altered the hyperlinks to redirect to the downloaded pages...

[edit] I'm using http://www.httrack.com/page/2/ to archive the (entirely open-source, should-probably-already-be-on-the-SRD) subdomain. Has anyone had experience using it before? It looks a bit complicated, and I'm not 100% sure I'll get it right. So if anyone else wants to try a crack at it, maybe one of us will get it right. Tanukis and typewriters, etc.

I've used it, and you're right, it's a bit finicky, but does work. Not as well as using WGet, but that's mostly a linux thing, and pretty much command line only (I think there's a gui version, but haven't used it). If you have access to a linux machine, or want to jump through the hoops to get wget working on windows (it's possible, but kind of a pain), then something like "wget -r -l -np -nc -nH http://[address]" would probably do what you're looking for, though there's a gajillion different command line options to tailor it to what you're looking for, and I'm not at all an expert.

Wildstag

2020-03-14, 01:42 PM

Here is the link to the Art & Map Gallery Archive, since it's not available following the link at the top of this page. I find it useful. The PC Portraits Online Archives could be useful for any online games or the like.

Edit: Also, the link to "Download this article" saves it as a pdf, which looks better than a saved html file.

Thurbane

2020-03-14, 04:40 PM

It's back, it's back!

http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/features

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GwjfUFyY6M

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-03-14, 04:43 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GwjfUFyY6M"Video Unavailable."

Gasp!* Are they taking down Youtube, too?!

animewatcha

2020-03-14, 04:56 PM

Curiously, some of the links still result in the "whoops you just exploded the internet" page. So just tread lightly?

In the past, some of the archive was already not available due to it leading to white page or something. I don't know what you call it. pretty much 'page couldn't load' due to 'not existing anymore'.

Palanan

2020-03-14, 05:35 PM

Originally Posted by Wildstag
Here is the link to the Art & Map Gallery Archive, since it's not available following the link at the top of this page.

Did you mean to include a link in there?

Originally Posted by MaxiDuRaritry
"Video Unavailable."

Gasp!* Are they taking down Youtube, too?!

For an awful moment I had almost the exact same thought.

soullos

2020-03-14, 06:33 PM

Thurbane

2020-03-14, 06:58 PM

This (http://dndsrd.net/) SRD site has a download link: http://dndsrd.net/sovelior_sage_srd.zip

martixy

2020-03-14, 09:09 PM

It's back, it's back!

http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/features

I will choose to believe we helped with our customer support spam. :D

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-03-15, 10:24 AM

That's what I used to created a local offline copy (I provided a link on the first page). I've been using this to archive the SRD as well. It's finicky for sure, and I'm not even sure if I'm doing it right as well. :eek:The program has downloaded just under 30 GB so far, over the last (more than) 12 hours. That's waaaay more than the 3-point-something I had before.

It appears to be going after all the Magic: The Gathering stuff, as well as other things I'm not recognizing.

animewatcha

2020-03-15, 04:45 PM

If possible, perhaps keep it going despite it being over 30GB. Random links within the 2k7 section are wonky. Hard to tell if cause of changeover to 4e or late-late 3.5.

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-03-15, 05:13 PM

If possible, perhaps keep it going despite it being over 30GB. Random links within the 2k7 section are wonky. Hard to tell if cause of changeover to 4e or late-late 3.5.I am. It was just unexpected. I'm taking everything from archives.wizards.com. Though maybe 3 links in is a bit much? Should I have gone with 2, 1, or 0? I don't know how that works, exactly, so I can't say. I probably should've gone with smaller link series, if I'm at nearly 10x as much as I had before.

Also, I'm up to 20 errors, though the error list hasn't been compiled, yet.

Endarire

2020-03-15, 07:38 PM

Let's appreciate what we got. Alleluia!

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-03-16, 12:21 PM

Ugh. Just under 2 days after I started, and I'm up to nearly 44 GB of data downloaded. I'm pretty sure I need to redo this from scratch, because there's no way there's that many webpage files that are relevant to what we want (ie, D&D 3.0, 3.5, Minis, and maybe MtG). I can tell you guys right now that I'm not gonna wade through all of it to weed out the unnecessary files, since, frankly, I don't have the knowledge to do so, and I doubt anyone else will want to (but feel free to tell me if I'm wrong).

Again, I really don't know what I'm doing with the options on HTTrack. Anyone have any suggestions?

Leaving it alone for now, until I get some feedback.

daremetoidareyo

2020-03-16, 12:26 PM

If you contacted wizards, contacy them ahain with thanks. Graciousness goes a long way

ZamielVanWeber

2020-03-16, 12:33 PM

If we have solid criteria for it I can wade through the pages and purge the excess material in return for a copy of the final product.

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-03-16, 12:47 PM

If you contacted wizards, contacy them ahain with thanks. Graciousness goes a long wayDone so.

In the past couple of weeks, the D&D archives for 3rd Edition were removed from Wizards.com, which was upsetting, as they are an important part of gaming history, and there's a lot of very high quality content there. I sent in a request that the archives be reinstated, because they're very much useful, and now they are back up. I am very grateful for that, so thank you, whoever made that decision and put in the work.

One other thing would be very much appreciated, as well. Would it be possible to package up the 3.0 and 3.5 articles (including The Mind's Eye and various campaign settings), the D&D Minis articles, the MtG articles, and the supplementary materials (such as pictures and maps) in some .zip or .rar files for download? Or even a .pdf would be great (although this would likely require more work, given the number of bookmarks required for a finalized product). It really would be a shame if the data were corrupted somehow and all those great gaming resources were lost. Having them available for download (especially if the info could be uploaded to a privately hosted HTML SRD document somewhere, since it's OGL content) would let the rest of us host the information for you, and would give you freely available backups so even if your backups go down, the info would still be there.

Thank you once again for putting the information back online. It's VERY much appreciated.

Made an additional suggestion so we could get them to .zip the files up for us. I'd really love to see all that stuff added to, say, d20srd.org, as well, since it's OGL content. That'd be amazing.

If we have solid criteria for it I can wade through the pages and purge the excess material in return for a copy of the final product.I'll be sure to do that. Gonna have to .zip that sucker up. Uploading it after downloading it is gonna take forever, though.

Still, if anyone has any other suggestions...

animewatcha

2020-03-16, 03:54 PM

I am. It was just unexpected. I'm taking everything from archives.wizards.com. Though maybe 3 links in is a bit much? Should I have gone with 2, 1, or 0? I don't know how that works, exactly, so I can't say. I probably should've gone with smaller link series, if I'm at nearly 10x as much as I had before.

Also, I'm up to 20 errors, though the error list hasn't been compiled, yet.

When I tried out different sections on trying to get a 'main url' out of the 3.5 sections. I kept getting redirecting via 'the exploding internet'. So proceeding with this one seems to be it. When all is said and done. Instead of uploading it all in one go. Is it possible to do .zip portions of it ( just blanketedly dong like first 5 folders, next 5 folders, etc. ) We could then download it and wade through it ourselves to try and 'refine' it with everyone working through different sections at once.

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-03-17, 01:12 AM

I've got it .rar(RAWR!)'d into two 10GB files and one 7GB file (Parts 1-3). Gonna have to Dropbox Something Else* it, because G.Drive isn't big enough.

So, how's this gonna happen once I get that done?

*Dropbox isn't big enough, either.

[edit] Gah. Gonna have to make smaller file sizes. 2-5 GB seems to be the largest I can get without crafting a bunch of G.Drive accounts. I guess I'll have to make a few more, then. -_-

ZamielVanWeber

2020-03-17, 01:17 AM

Once I have the files I unzip and will probably just delete everything that isn't 3.0 to 3.5 related, as well as trash article that don't actually have content. Depending on factors it will probably take a few weeks. Then I can rezip the cleaned up version and send it back to you.

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-03-17, 01:18 AM

ZamielVanWeber

2020-03-17, 01:19 AM

animewatcha

2020-03-17, 01:20 AM

Kim Dotcom's website is still operational with its URL change. I have downloaded a few large files from it before. Not giving a URL because causing file-sharing website.

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-03-17, 01:30 AM

Sounds good, thank you. They closed the gyms in my state and I am disabled so... honestly tis seems as productive a use of my time as any. PM me the details when they are ready and I should be good to start Tuesday or Wednesday.

Yeeeeah. According to Google Drive, it's gonna take like 2.5 days to upload those things. So far, anyway. Took more than a day to download it all, and uploads are always slower than downloads around here.

[edit] Hmm. I wonder how much of a PITA it'd be to get everything nicely put together in some .pdfs once we have the wheat separated from the chaff...

Wildstag

2020-03-17, 02:12 AM

To speak to the pdfs, there's already a fair number of pages that can be downloaded onto a neat pdf of its own, and I've been working on that, but granted it's a very incomplete portion of the domain.

So you wouldn't necessarily need to pdf all of the pages, is what I'm saying, because the work's already been done for part of it.

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-03-17, 11:02 AM

Well, that didn't take nearly as long as I figured it would.

Okay, guys. Any- and everyone who wants everything HTTracker pulled from the publicly available, OGL website now has access to what I've got. See below.

The files were zipped up into a three-part .rar file. Note that since it's one file broken up into three (via WinRAR), you need all three parts to extract the files from them. Meh. I'm sure you know how it works. If you don't, lemme know.

Part 1: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Qbcd3FguvTgIZloQ223Cs4gvtb3XUIHn/view?usp=sharing
Part 2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rxeyftm6eRsWFP7Bh1RyNjewtb6hyRBh/view?usp=sharing
Part 3: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1alHqM3pjnQJ4RKbcf9D7g8f6d2YUavpt/view?usp=sharing

Files that were missing from the WotC archives: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KIX0MzH_cY515eYVg43MO_t6NCTelUG0/view?usp=sharing

I had to create three Google accounts to fit everything in, so each one is on a different account.

Lemme know if there're any issues with them.

Palanan

2020-03-17, 09:27 PM

Thurbane

2020-03-17, 09:30 PM

Does that indicate a permanently missing page, or is it some sort of temporary issue? And would it do any good to keep a list of those?

Probably doesn't hurt to keep a list.

animewatcha

2020-03-17, 10:20 PM

I'm a little behind on exploring the newly restored archives, but I just found one of the "exploded the internet" pages.

Does that indicate a permanently missing page, or is it some sort of temporary issue? And would it do any good to keep a list of those?

Several pieces of the archive were 'no longer available' as time went on. Before it would give a 'cannot load' page of some sort ( depending upon your browser ). Whereupon you would need to scour the wayback machine or 'certain sites' for content.

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-03-18, 06:43 PM

I'm a little behind on exploring the newly restored archives, but I just found one of the "exploded the internet" pages.

Does that indicate a permanently missing page, or is it some sort of temporary issue? And would it do any good to keep a list of those?Keep tabs on what you find that's missing. We'll see if anyone has it in their own archives, or maybe if it's on the Wayback Machine.

[EDIT] According to Morof Stonehands, apparently, Outside White Plume Mountain (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20051207a) is one of the files that exploded some time ago (along with a few other files for that adventure). Anyone have it on tap?

Also, is anyone having problems downloading Part 2 of my downloaded archives (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rxeyftm6eRsWFP7Bh1RyNjewtb6hyRBh/view?usp=sharing)? I've gotten one report on it from Stonehands up there. Anyone else having issues, and do I need to reupload? Currently testing this myself, but an early heads-up would be nice.

One Step Two

2020-03-18, 06:58 PM

[EDIT] According to Morof Stonehands, apparently, Outside White Plume Mountain (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20051207a) is one of the files that exploded some time ago (along with a few other files for that adventure). Anyone have it on tap?

I did a thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?533710-Trials-beneath-the-mountain-A-DM-s-notes-and-journal) on the module, I really ought to update my notes on it. In any case, I have the archive.org link for the module, (https://web.archive.org/web/20090603202048/http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/WhitePlumeMountainRevised.zip) and the archive.org link for the outside the mountain PDF. (https://web.archive.org/web/20090604150940/http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/DnD_OUTSIDE_THE_MOUNTAIN.zip)

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-03-18, 07:05 PM

If we find anything else like this, I'll probably download all the missing stuff we can find (thanks, One Step Two!), add it to a single .rar file [HERE (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KIX0MzH_cY515eYVg43MO_t6NCTelUG0/view?usp=sharing)]*, and upload it onto a file I'll keep updated.

*Uploaded and updated!

PairO'Dice Lost

2020-03-18, 07:23 PM

Thurbane

2020-03-18, 07:41 PM

Is original content freely available on the WotC website considered OGL? And if yes, does that status change once it's removed/no longer available?

Troacctid

2020-03-18, 07:42 PM

Is the content freely available on the WotC website considered OGL? And if yes, does that status change if it's removed?
No and no.

Morof Stonehands

2020-03-18, 09:54 PM

Keep tabs on what you find that's missing. We'll see if anyone has it in their own archives, or maybe if it's on the Wayback Machine.

[EDIT] According to Morof Stonehands, apparently, Outside White Plume Mountain (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20051207a) is one of the files that exploded some time ago (along with a few other files for that adventure). Anyone have it on tap?

Also, is anyone having problems downloading Part 2 of my downloaded archives (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rxeyftm6eRsWFP7Bh1RyNjewtb6hyRBh/view?usp=sharing)? I've gotten one report on it from Stonehands up there. Anyone else having issues, and do I need to reupload? Currently testing this myself, but an early heads-up would be nice.

I did a thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?533710-Trials-beneath-the-mountain-A-DM-s-notes-and-journal) on the module, I really ought to update my notes on it. In any case, I have the archive.org link for the module, (https://web.archive.org/web/20090603202048/http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/WhitePlumeMountainRevised.zip) and the archive.org link for the outside the mountain PDF. (https://web.archive.org/web/20090604150940/http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/DnD_OUTSIDE_THE_MOUNTAIN.zip)

Great help both of you, many thanks

animewatcha

2020-03-19, 12:08 AM

I did a wget download of the site a few days ago before noticing this thread, and have my own archive that I put together with some handy scripts. It's a 2.5 GB .zip file of (what I'm pretty sure is) all the 3e content minus any exploded pages. Everything is arranged in folders by article series, is named according to the article title instead of the gibberish URL, and has the original webpage backgrounds and such (at least on Linux; the relative paths might not work on Windows). Here's (https://drive.google.com/open?id=1o37F9KSgEwYPcH4KzlMoJX2S3l7a5C4j) the download for anyone who wants it, let me know if you run into any issues with it.

Downloaded it. Currently unzipping. Only thing so far is renaming for 'Preview' articles so far. It popped up enough that I am trying a 'rename all'. Seeing if it will be be stable still. On windows.

-edit- Okay, should add in the retired articles. Like spellbook. http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/arch/sb . They might be old articles, but they do have a few gems in there like mirror move or hemorrhage. Add in the other retired article sections as well.

MaxiDuRaritry

2020-03-19, 12:32 AM

Great help both of you, many thanksI didn't have any problems with Part 2 of my upload, except it went fairly slow. The download said it had a download speed of "0 Bytes," and yet the percentage of the download kept ticking upward.

So maybe it was your connection?

Palanan

2020-03-19, 09:58 AM

Originally Posted by MaxiDuRaritry
Keep tabs on what you find that's missing. We'll see if anyone has it in their own archives, or maybe if it's on the Wayback Machine.

So, this is odd. One of the article links led me straight to an exploded-internet page, but when I tried it again a few hours later it behaved normally, even allowing me to unzip downloads as normal.

Not sure why that would happen. I find it hard to imagine that Wizards would devote any staff time to testing each link in the archive and repairing the broken ones.

DeTess

2020-03-19, 05:32 PM

Not sure why that would happen. I find it hard to imagine that Wizards would devote any staff time to testing each link in the archive and repairing the broken ones.

I mean, you could probably just write a bit of code to test each link and return a list of which ones are broken. Such code probably already exists, so for WotC it would really just be a case of running it and having a person check if any of the broken links can be fixed. That's maybe half a day's work.

PairO'Dice Lost

2020-03-20, 02:46 AM

Downloaded it. Currently unzipping. Only thing so far is renaming for 'Preview' articles so far. It popped up enough that I am trying a 'rename all'. Seeing if it will be be stable still. On windows.

What's the issue with the renaming? I just grabbed whatever's in the title tags for each page, I didn't check for any wonkiness there.

-edit- Okay, should add in the retired articles. Like spellbook. http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/arch/sb . They might be old articles, but they do have a few gems in there like mirror move or hemorrhage. Add in the other retired article sections as well.

Huh, every other retired article section is there except for Battle Sheets, Cliffhangers, and Spellbook; I don't know why it skipped those. I'll download Spellbook and get them processed for a new .zip tomorrow.

StevenC21

2020-03-21, 01:33 PM

Perhaps those directories had communication errors during your scrape?

That's happened to me in the past with similar things.

Bohandas

2020-03-24, 12:56 AM

Palanan

2020-03-24, 04:22 PM

When I try to open files from Nijineko's archive, all I get is raw HTML.

Is that intended, or am I missing some basic step?

animewatcha

2020-03-26, 04:12 AM

Believe that was intended. just like 'saving a webpage'. It will save the html and i think a folder of the content 'in the same area'. The two needed to be in the 'same area' to work right.

ShurikVch

2020-03-26, 01:10 PM

Flash news: it's BAAACK!

Melayl

2020-04-22, 10:28 AM

In case it goes away again, I found this page (https://orbitalflower.github.io/rpg/resources/wizards-3e-archive.html) today while searching for Rich Baker's warlock faq. Never did find the faq...

Pippin

2020-04-22, 01:27 PM

In case it goes away again, I found this page (https://orbitalflower.github.io/rpg/resources/wizards-3e-archive.html) today while searching for Rich Baker's warlock faq. Never did find the faq...
I never saw that website, it does look very useful, thank you.

It has one major flaw, though. It seems to me that all it does is provide links to archive.wizards.com, so the moment the latter website goes offline, the former becomes pointless... The only solution is to have archive.wizards.com entirely saved somewhere, but I have no idea how to achieve that.

Melayl

2020-04-22, 03:39 PM

Ah. I thought it was archived links from the wayback machine. My bad...

animewatcha

2020-04-22, 04:11 PM

In case it goes away again, I found this page (https://orbitalflower.github.io/rpg/resources/wizards-3e-archive.html) today while searching for Rich Baker's warlock faq. Never did find the faq...

This one?

https://web.archive.org/web/20071210095404/http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=405215

Melayl

2020-04-22, 05:04 PM

This one?

https://web.archive.org/web/20071210095404/http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=405215

AHA! That certainly helps, thank you. I would love to be able to find the original thread that is mentioned in the first post, but I haven't been able to.

animewatcha

2020-04-22, 06:26 PM

The original thread unfortunately has the wizards nuked thread aspect in attempting to load it.

nijineko

2020-04-24, 03:18 PM

The original thread unfortunately has the wizards nuked thread aspect in attempting to load it.

My original 3.x archive is still active on dropbox. (Yes, even after all these years.) Has more added to it.

Note that a lot of it is not pretty, literally saved HTML files directly off the WotC site from back in the day, so it won't look nice, but all the important info is still there.

Scurvy_Platypus

2021-10-09, 06:16 AM

Howdy folks,

I think this is my first post here... I know I had an account like...10 years ago?...but not sure if I ever posted on it. Regardless, my username was open (once again?) so...go me!

Any, in case people aren't aware of it, a quick note...

Over on this thread, Thurbane has a link to a whole bunch of different online monsters:
forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?567712

The "Weeper" entry has a "Link broken?" and note points to an archive.wizards link for the download "Lest Darkness Rise": archive.wizards.com/dnd/files/Lest_Darkness_Rise.zip

Remove the "archive." from the link and it downloads just fine: wizards.com/dnd/files/Lest_Darkness_Rise.zip

Now, if you look at the next entry above that, the "Valicorn", we see the same thing: archive.wizards.com/dnd/files/WE_Ghostwalk.zip

This time, if we do that, we get the "Down for maintenance!" error. So, instead we plug that address into the wayback machine and get: web.archive.org/web/2016*/wizards.com/dnd/files/WE_Ghostwalk.zip

2016 is a redirect (orange link), but 2013 gives us a working download.

I dunno what the state is for people archiving this stuff, but hopefully that helps.

My final tip is to consider using "Print Friendly and PDF". It exists as both a website and as a Chrome or Firefox extension. It doesn't always give perfect results but it's got a unique ability to allow you to delete out elements from the pdf preview before generating a pdf file. I'd say it's got a success rate of about 85% and I usually use it instead of something like the Adobe Print PDF, because of the ability to remove stupid advertisements, etc. Most blogs it won't capture the comments but if you don't care about that, no biggie. So, if you don't have an option to print to pdf or your don't have a "printer friendly" page, consider using the extension and generate some much nicer looking files for yourself.