Not sure if this is just affecting me (maybe I did something wrong?) or if it's site-wide?

This is site-wide! It has been closed since Survival.

Ah ok thanks!

That makes sense, then! Thank you for the information. :)

Are you sure you can't open it before Survival ends? I'm asking because I'm worried that people will think you're going to close it for the entirety of every holiday, and that might drive them away. A lot of us have had to rely on forums and friends lists to kiss people, we don't want it to be the same for Masquerade or Vesnali either.

genuine question- isn’t forums and friends lists kinda the whole point? i see that as the superior option for kissing over the shout box, where you have to hover over a moving username to randomly kiss someone without a guaranteed kiss back (kiss the person above) or at least a likely one (friends list).

i don’t see shout box adding anything significant to a site event, especially if having it on hinders it by causing lag and errors. i do prefer chatting there over forums since it’s more active but i don’t see why it would turn people away if you can’t use it for events? am i missing something?

Not everyone likes the forums though, I know a few people who prefer not to use them. Maybe there could be more done to encourage people to use them more, like making forum points easier to get, or having some threads made by staff or NPC accounts, it's been a while since we had any of those. I guess I'm just scared of certain friends being driven away by the lack of SB, and it does make events a bit more boring after a while.

I don't necessarily dislike forums and finding the holiday ones isn't really an issue, but the fact that none of the sections have a search function keeps me away at times. There hasn't been one since I joined, but I believe there used to be one. It's not really a problem for the event sections though. Just the much larger ones such as selling and general chatter. SB is just more convenient for me because it is on every page I go to so I don't have to have a tab open just for forums while I do my daily stuff. However I completely understand why it was necessary to close SB. I look forward to its return, but I completely understand why we don't have it right now. Hopefully down the line they will be able to find a way to have both :) But I know these things take time

How do you kiss with a friend list?

And yeah, I miss the shoutbox but I kinda got used to it not being active during free shop. It automatically closes if there are over 1000 users on the site.

I understand why its closed too. But they should open it back up if they have to take the forums down for maintenance again. I heard many users were unhappy about how both were closed during Survival's first day.

i hover over the usernames of my friends list and click the kiss button in their status

I wouldn't be so worried if I knew the staff were working on making it not slow the site as much during events. And the search hasn't been working for years. I just really miss it, but like I said, there could be stuff done to encourage people to use the forums more so that it won't be so bad. I think the gift boxes were an attempt, but after all the spam from last year, I doubt they'll do that again. That's why I suggested making forum points less rare, at least while the SB isn't available.

Sorry, I really didn't understand that well. And I did just want to know if it was being worked on so that it won't keep happening in the future. It's just more convenient to talk about how you're finding the event in there rather than in the forums. I also didn't mean asking for kisses there, just that it's easier to find people to give kisses to. I've had to keep some of my sidebar events open so I can click on the buttons there, especially for people who are away or aren't on much. I'm just a bit frustrated, a lot of people are even more than I am. I didn't mean to be rude, I'm sorry if I came off that way, of course I'll be thankful once it has been solved.

REALLY? Oh my stars, I'm so sorry!

At least the userbase has found ways around the shoutbox being down.

Thanks for updating us! Maybe the shoutbox needs to switch to a new system entirely?

A functioning site without Shoutbox

or

A non-functioning site with the Shoutbox...

I chose and hopefully the majority of the userbase would agree: A functioning site without the Shoutbox. Cause site lag/error error!?! makes any event, a drag and takes all the enjoyment out of it. :s

I don't think you understand how this works. You're speaking as if we didn't have to close the SB, like it's something we just chose to do for fun. But that's not the case. We've told you multiple times now that re-opening the SB will cause horrible lag for the entire site, and that's still the case regardless of whether forums are down or not.

Taking the forums down for maintenance doesn't magically solve the problem with the Shoutbox. If the Shoutbox is down for its own reasons, what makes you think we can just put it back up on a whim?

We obviously do not intend for any of these problems to happen. In this case, I worked several hours in a row through night and morning to get the forums back up as soon as possible.

In short, we can't promise that we'll never have to take them both down at the same time, ever again. Unexpected problems happen. We CAN promise that, whatever problems occur, it's not for lack of trying, it's not for lack of caring. We work very hard to both prevent issues and resolve them as quickly as possible when they happen.

And finally - Subeta staff are not out to get you! Please trust that we wouldn't do things like take down the forums and SB unless it were absolutely necessary. We take no joy in having to do things like this. And please trust that, like you, we really care that everyone here has the best experience possible.

- an alternative might be to open up the Subeta Discord again, I mean, at least that way folks like those that have gotten upset about the SB being down could have their place to chat...however I know that probably means monitoring something outside the site and that's probably not ideal, but at least it's something. Just a thought :)

Agree, but I'm not exactly a discord expert. I never knew you could close a discord server.

Do you actually mean linking to it?