WDL1 permanently retired

edited February 2014 in News & Announcements
I've retired the Chicago mirror wdl1 indefinitely as I will likely be moving servers shortly and the flat honest truth is I'm not going to pay for ~40mbit of bandwidth for your free downloads on a premium network. There's other things on this box that need a higher quality network than what we have now and that is my top priority. WDL3 has also been removed as it's been out of service for quite some time. Throughout the years I've been given reason after reason to not care for the majority of our user base which is ungrateful bratty kids who want to try shit at no cost to them, whine when things don't work and otherwise contribute nothing of quality. I don't honestly care to waste my paycheck on you types of people anymore. There are communities which will cater to these types and accept any low grade crap they can produce but this is not one of them.

The mirror in France will remain online as long as Rioter cares to keep paying for it. Forums and site will remain as long as there's activity and nothing crashes.

For the good folks out there who didn't post inane shit thanks for a good 10 years.

Comments

  • Inb4 massive traffic spike as all the retard kids stockpile software older than they are for their shitty "archives"
  • I would say torrent the stuff instead. But bratty 12 year olds don't understand that for torrents to work you have to seed.
  • I would say torrent the stuff instead. But bratty 12 year olds don't understand that for torrents to work you have to seed.
    I actually debated going and getting a server for winworld downloads, but something most people don't realize is the amount of bandwidth used for downloads a month. This was from irc the other day:
    03:44 <@noone`&gt; how much bandwidth does ww eat a month?
    03:45 <@stitch|wo&gt; noone`, ~40mbit 95% on wdl1
    On most reliable providers in the US, the bill for that would be expensive after a while. There are other providers that typically allow unlimited use (OVH comes to my mind as I actually have a sever with them), however will limit you to 10mbps if you're constantly saturating your connection. You can que people complaining about slow downloads then. Even with a torrent, you'd still need at least 1-2 servers constantly seeding because people are selfish, like you said which eliminates the reason for even using torrents.
  • Even back in the day when we had stuff split over several people's home servers the bandwidth was huge just hosting 4 or 5 files.
  • I remember when Tim set up a server at that internet cafe and we hammered the shit out of that Comcast connection for months. I also recall a hacked account at some California university being used for some time, not to mention that whole ednet fiasco, trololol.

    Regarding torrents, they would only work if people kept seeding after completion, which most people don't. On a site like WinWorld with a huge number of files and a relatively small number of visitors it'd be next to impossible to keep them active without having servers set up as permanent seeds. I guarantee the majority of people would download a shitload of files and not even seed a fraction of what they downloaded. Personally I try to be a courteous pirate and seed to at least a 1.25 ratio. We could try uploading the torrents to multiple sites in addition to WinWorld in an attempt to generate seeds and site traffic, but I doubt it'd be enough and could draw unnecessary attention. The only other torrent-related option I could think of would be a private tracker and we don't have the userbase to sustain that. Not to mention part of WinWorld's appeal is the fact that a lot of people don't like/trust BitTorrent, or simply can't use it for one reason or another.

    TL;DR - BitTorrent isn't and has never been a viable option for our download library.

    Somewhat OT: Eventually I'd like to get my own Kimsufi box, especially now that they have servers hosted in the US instead of France. My experience with them through using Rioter's dedi has left with me a relatively positive impression. If I ever do, I'll set up a mirror. Problem is my needs are minimal enough I don't think I could justify a dedicated server for myself, which is why I'm glad Rioter is nice enough to let me and others mooch off his box for my backups / Mumble / Minecraft....
  • Up to 5 TB of traffic / month, then restricted to 10 Mbps.

    Jeebus. For personal use, you'd never use that up.
  • I just wanted to say that I appreciate the time, effort, and obviously money that has gone in to keeping this collection available. There have been a lot of good archive sites come and go over the years, and I think WinWorld has had a good run.

    It has been invaluable at times to be able to just go directly to a reliable source for some uncommon and otherwise underrated archive file. The nice thing about the WinWorld collection has been that it is a coherent, well organized, unified collection. And it isn't just darn games. The WinWorld files have always been easily accessible, not buried in advertising, not behind any pay/subscription wall, and not hosted on some random cluster of home PCs that might contain stuff you don't want to go anywhere near.

    Thanks again!
  • The collection and the site aren't going anywhere. It's basically just going down to one mirror instead of 3.
  • I'm late to this party.

    WDL2 remains online. I don't see it going down any time soon.
  • Rioter wrote:
    WDL2 remains online. I don't see it going down any time soon.
    This is good to hear. And thanks again for keeping this collection available!
  • WDL3 had to go offline for a while due to some abuse, but it's been running faithfully for quite some time now. It's not linked on the main page, but http://wdl3.winworldpc.com/ is still active.
  • I guess I'm a bit late to the party but, sheesh, what happened here? Not that I'm complaining, I didn't even know there were downloads, I thought this site was about sex and drugs.
  • On the mirror page it says Mirror One, but it leads to WDL2's page, which says on it "Mirror Two". Bit of a mismatch?
  • edited February 2014
    I would say torrent the stuff instead. But bratty 12 year olds don't understand that for torrents to work you have to seed.
    I've had my share of pirating :/ Don't judge people because of their age.

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