Alert, we're being hammered again...

[none]

Right now the forum is slow as molasses, times out most of the time, and the index page claims 146 guests...
We're under DoS attack, once again...

I really would like to understand what those idiots have against the forum of a free game.

[Bombast the Blue]

That is a whole field of study... usually with very elusive subjects... and in a world where ever more you just need to be perceived has having some kind of existence to be the recipient of hate...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OvW8Z7kiws

[none]

you just need to be perceived has having some kind of existence to be the recipient of hate...

Still...

I'm thinking it must be AI training bots, because they apparently don't try to brute force valid logins to be able to post spam, as in the olden days, they actually enter and read each and every thread there is.
Just look at those stunning view numbers, they are baffling given the low activity of real users. The only reason to read, and read, and read over and over again threads with little to no interest for outsiders is AI training...

[kowdar]

I've blocked the forum for AI agents to keep them from saturating our database connections.
This only applies to the forum, the block is not active for the website, because the problem that manifests itself is the number of simultaneous connections to the database.

The block is by agent names:

externalagent|PetalBot|AdsBot-Google|Amazonbot|anthropic-ai|Applebot|Applebot-Extended|AwarioRssBot|AwarioSmartBot|Bytespider|CCBot|ChatGPT|ChatGPT-User|Claude-Web|ClaudeBot|cohere-ai|DataForSeoBot|Diffbot|FacebookBot|facebookexternalhit|Google-Extended|GPTBot|ImagesiftBot|magpie-rawler|omgili|Omgilibot|peer39_crawler|PerplexityBot|YouBot|AhrefsBot|Barkrowler|SemrushBot|DotBot

Additionally, I increased the number of simultaneous connections to the database from 150 to 300,
but this alone was not a solution because the forum was working very slowly.

Now I hope it will be much better...

[LuisGuzman]

Thank you Kowdar, it seems to me that forum runs smoother now