Wednesday, July 10, 2013

End of Service Announcement

Hey everybody, I've got some bad news today. I've been struggling with this decision for a few months now, but have made a decision to end the TORParse project effective 27 July 2013.

I've had a lot of fun developing this project and working with the community the last year and a half, but have ultimately made the decision to end this project due to a couple reasons. The most important reason is I do not play SWTOR anymore. While I still have an active subscription to the game, I haven't actually played the game in several months, and even more so, haven't played any high level content that this website is based around in over half a year. It is extremely difficult to stay motivated to work on a project that I no longer have any passion to develop. I'll keep my opinions on the game to myself, but wish the developers and players of the game all the best; maybe one day I will return.

Secondly, there has been a lot of change in my personal life that has limited the amount of free time I have to work on this project. This has always been a hobby for me and continues to be. Unfortunately, this is not actually my job, even though some days it feels like it is. There are so many things that need to be worked on between the website and ingame client that the project has just become too time consuming. I think I've done a good job at prioritizing thus far, but due to my lack of free time the past few months, it has become ever increasingly difficult to even work on the simple things.

So, with that, I want to thank everyone that has used the website since it launched on the 8th of April, 2012. Your support with words of encouragement, feature requests, and from some, monetary donations has been incredible. It goes without saying that the website and client would not have seen as much success as it has without a great community behind it driving its development.

Lastly, I will consider only serious offers to transition the project to another development team. I would love to see this project last beyond just my own involvement. If you're experienced and interested, please contact me at james@torparse.com. If there is no interest in transitioning the project, the website and ingame client will go down as planned on 27 July 2013.

Respectfully,
James

P.S. Some might be interested to know that over the project's lifespan (as of 9 July 2013), an approximate 623,747 people have visited the website and combined have spent 106,557 hours browsing (a little over 12 years). Since the ingame client's launch (22 April 2013), the ingame client has serviced over 20,000 unique users with an average of 1,000 being connected at any given time. The website currently hosts over 330,000 combat logs totaling nearly 600GB of combat log data!

49 comments:

  1. What are the platforms being used to run TORParse, I understand Adobe AIR for the software client, php for the forum, I would guess php and mysql... anything else ?

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  2. The website is in PHP/MySQL. The server for the ingame client is PHP/MySQL and the ingame client itself is written in Flashbuilder (Flex + Actionscript).

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    1. Thanks for the answers, I'm a developer myself, have not the time to pick torparse up completely, but thought it'd be important for someone interested... Have you thought about crowdfunding it ?

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    2. I'm not closing it for financial reasons. The site could definitely be profitable with a proper marketing strategy.

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    3. Hey James, I own TORBattles.net I have enough server room to run the in-game client. we could xfer the database for the users so they don't have to sign up again. it's a shame to see such a nice program go away. if you're interested, send me an email at admin@torbattles.net

      -Eric

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  3. Does that mean that the website itself is going to be gone or will people still be able to use it?

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  4. It means TORParse will cease to exist, no website and no ingame client, unless I find a developer or group of developers I'm comfortable with passing the project on to (don't get your hopes up).

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  5. It's a sad day for us TorParse users. Here marks the end of the BEST SWTOR combat log parser.

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  6. By far the best parser. I really wish you the best and hopefully someone will pick up the project and keep it going.
    One suggestion, please post this in the SWTOR forums, it might help getting someone to get the project going.

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  7. a sad day for us.... torparse is awesome! thanks for the great work man

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  8. Cheers for all the fun I had with the site and ingame client.
    2 bad tho ur abandoning this project :(

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  9. Nuuuu! but thanks for what is/has been a great client and site.

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  10. i have no development talent, but i could host the site as is.

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  11. This is awful news. I do wish you find someone who is capable of taking over the project. You did an amazing job and have provided my guild a useful tool to determine our output levels. PLEASE LET TORPARSE LIVE!

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  12. I really really hope you find someone to pass it onto. This is one of the only mods for SWTOR and I think it's the best one by far.
    If there's no more torparse doe anyone know of any other similar charts?

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  13. You've done an amazing job so far on developing the best 'damage meter' for SWTOR to date. I hope someone takes up the project and it continues to improve.
    Good luck and thank you for all the hard effort.

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  14. It was so good it became essential for most of us in HL PvE.
    It's part of the game for me.
    Thanks for the great work done, swtor is in trouble right now :)

    Did you ask Bioware ? :P

    Best wishes.

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  15. Best wishes. Here's hoping someone steps up.

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  16. I REALLY hope someone will pick this up. I really rely on TORPARSE and I particularly like the desktop parser because of how easy it is to use compared to others. Thanks for the work that has been put into this so far, it's been extremely helpful to the community and my guild.

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  17. I wish you the best. Your site has given me a lot of insight into fights my guild and I are working on as well as my own skill and need for improvement where it was needed. Seeing my name up there with boss fights was always a good motivational tool and gave me a sense of pride.

    Best wishes and thank you!

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  18. I really hope someone qualified steps forward that you're comfortable with. Simply put, this site and the services you provide completely changed my game experience in an extremely positive way. By allowing me to set personal goals and compare my results against others I was not only able to improve, it made the entire experience more fulfilling and enjoyable which added a ton of value to the game and ToR community as a whole. So thank you for that!

    I implore you to consider any serious offers from parties interested in carrying the torch. If there's anything we in the Torparse community can do to help facilitate that please let us know. I'm not the only one willing to move heaven and earth to keep the site online and available.

    -Gonnosuke

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    1. Agreed here as well. I cannot take over on this but I am willing to assist anyone who will. I have 12 years development experience and have been working with PHP and MySQL since I started. I am also very experienced in maintaining both Windows IIS and Apache web servers. Hit me up if you find someone who to take the lead on this.

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  19. Sad to see my favorite parser gone. Even if you can't find someone to pass it on to, would you consider an opensource option for the client so we can at least continue getting in-game parsing?

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  20. I sent you an email this evening and I am VERY Serious about taking over TORParse project for you! Please get back to me and lets talk! I will get me server ready to go ASAP and we can start working on migrating database!

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  21. I hate to see TORParse go. I hope that a new developmental team is found to help with the transition. Long live TORParse!

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  22. Why don't you Open Source it at least?

    Github and Bitbucket are free.. that way, someone might be able to continue it later..

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  23. Just open source it. What's the argument for not doing so at this point. As another poster has said, GitHub is free and you get a more dynamic community around it. Open source solutions are put in place to avoid *exactly* this kind of situation, where one person leaving a project derails it.

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  24. James,

    On behalf of myself, my guild, and everyone else in the Torparse community I would like to thank you for your fantastic work you have done in developing and maintaining such a fantastic website application, desktop parser and community resource. Truly exceptional work!

    I have experience in SQL database functionality and web applications (more typically .net based rather than PHP) and I would be willing to take a look at the project and indeed offer any assistance I can as well as provide server resources and hosting facilities to support the extended development and maintenance of this wonderful project.

    Github would be a really good way of opening the project to the community, even if no individual continued the project in its entirety, it is bound to spawn forks and at least allow the spirit of the project to continue.

    With very best regards,

    - Stef

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  25. open source would be cool, except you might end up with a handful of TorParses, instead of a single site where all logs would be conglomerated. Hell, I would probably spin one up for just my guild to use. :D

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  26. Why would you take the site down? Surely it still works even without active development?

    QQ

    Thanks for all the fish.

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  27. Going open source way would be nice. Keeping a service like this one up for the general public is time consuming and expensive but if we could have a private instance of the service installed elsewhere for guild use would be very nice.

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  28. Thank you so much for your work on this. You've made a wonderful product here and it's been a pleasure using it. Good luck.

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  29. thanks for torparse and your work. hopefully you will let someone pick this up. Good luck.

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  30. James, thanks for all your work, it's an awesome parser and has been very helpful to me in improving my gameplay

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  31. Thank you James for Torparse. Wish there was some way I could help with keeping it up and running. The only thing I can offer is my time, and without a working knowledge of PHP/MySQL I don't have much to offer.

    Would be interested in knowing what skills and resources are needed, maybe a group of users can get together and keep it running. This is the only useful real time tool I have come across for SWTOR.

    Thanks Again for Torparse.

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  32. Hi James,

    I've only just recently started using TORParse and I think it is absolutely brilliant. I am sad to hear that you can no longer support the project and service but I 100% agree with your reasons and thank you for being honest with us all.

    I really hope that you find someone to take the project over. Have you been approached by EA/Bioware regarding the parser? The ideal solution would be to have this integrated into the game client itself. That may sound like a long shot, but you really have done all the hard work for them already!

    Anyway, thanks for the hard work and I wish you all the best for the future!

    Gareth

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  33. Best parser on swtor, clear beautiful interface, super easy setup. runs on linux just as easy! Thank you for everything and good luck to you!

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  34. Dear James,
    we have mailed you an inquiry about obtaining TorParse, so it can continue running. The mail has been send from our @xtreamservers account, would you please be so kind to look into it? Thanks in advance.

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  35. James,

    You've done the SWTOR community an incredible service by creating and maintaining this tool. Please do us one more great service by allowing this to continue in someone else's hands. Your contributions will never be forgotten.

    Jim

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  36. Thank you for your great contribution to the SWTOR community, I do hope to god someone picks this up, It's the Best parser that has and ever will exist :)

    -Thrax

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  37. Great work James... Thanks for all you have done. I have no skills to offer you but I do hope something can be worked out to keep this amazing tool alive for SWTOR users.

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  38. James,

    If you don't find anyone to pass it on to - please at least consider opening this up as a OpenSource project. Or, could we just no longer maintain it, but keep the servers live? Most people here would be okay with that - and you could opensource it to allow the community to submit patches.

    If you need help with hosting, just say the word.

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  39. Yup, this is the best second party addition to swtor currently- great job on it. MOX is ok but it's interface is real bare bones and the lack of leader boards takes some flair and competitive interest away from the game. I'd really hate to see Torparse go.

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    1. This site has absolutely made my game experience twice as enjoyable - the challenge of pushing myself the extra bit, breaking new personal (or in class, or top 10 overall) records is absolutely a fun aspect of competitive MMO gaming.

      I really hope this site stays alive by being passed on to another capable web developer. This site absolutely is an integral part of SWTOR. Bioware may even notice a sizable hit in their subscriptions without any form of decent personal leaderboard to utilize (this site is the only one out there that I've ever come across).
      Thank you for creating this site, and please keep it alive.

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