All this blocking sounds a bit strange though.

It's definitly a block, if I do telnet www.anarchy-online.com 80 I get connection refused right away.

Auno seems to be fine aswell.

I think auno is blocked too, site got Last update: Thu, 26 Jul 2007 10:30:03 +0000 on the character info page. Which is the last day I could connect to the site too.

No need to troll or flame methinks. Either they implemented some anti DoS measures without knowing the consequenses or they don't want us to use the bandwith.

But, I dream about a shell on their forums db server and provoke blocked ip, would be fun :-)

The issues relating to the “helpbot” are not intentional as far as we can tell at this juncture. This might be some type of automated blocking in relation to new hardware or to the current server moves. We are currently looking into this and will report any findings.

Ok folks, firstly please drop the conspiracy theories and personal attacks. They are uncalled for are jumping to conclusions. We have never taken active action against any community run service, and we wouldn't unless it was because that service was causing an issue with the performance of the game in general.

No-one has been banned specifically, or targeted in that way.

What has happened is that we have had to close down access to certain sections of the servers due to an attempted Denial of Service Attack. This is partly through automated monitoring, and partly the actions of our server team when they recognized that something was amiss. We will always act in the best interests of the game performance, and this is no difference. It is a shame that the actions of a malicious minority can affect ordinary players, but this action was required to prevent the problem causing issues with the live dimensions.

We are looking at ways to help prevent this particular form of attack.

We are also looking into additional solutions that will allow the community to have access to the database feeds again.

I recommend those that currently have been blacklisted attempt to contact famine on irc.
Also remember to mention your IP as without they can't do anything.

That thread got quite some attention.

If I want to get FC's attention I bring out the zerg

My bot doesn't want to update its rosters now... I restart it to force roster update, starts up "Roster update underway Stand By" etc...

1 min later, bot logs off. Relogs 30 secs later, and says Roster update not scheduled.

PHP error log:
[06-Aug-2007 17:07:42] PHP Warning:  fsockopen(): unable to connect to www.anarchy-online.com:80 (A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.
) in C:\Bebot\Sources\Bot.php on line 1075


Is this related to the issue at hand here?

That error is from funcom Blocking us i get it alot too but my bot doesnt crash

Did not fix

I still can't access their webpage, and thus my bot won't update whois or rosters. The longer this goes on, the more useless my bot becomes. Any word as to an alternative solution? Or are they once again ignoring the bot community and not talking with our esteemed devs to come up with an alternative?