Wesnoth 1.10 RC 1 released, and some rationale behind the accounts purge

Wesnoth 1.10 RC 1 was released. Go test it, kids. You really must help us.

Besides that, I said in my previous post that I’d be releasing a separate announcement for the Crazy MP People. I wasn’t joking.

It might seem weird to perform such a purge of old forum accounts, and it might even confuse some MP users. A few times I’ve had to provide support to players who, despite having gone through the process of registering a new account—requiring them to visit the forums, no less—they had not fully realized that the forum and MP servers share the same user accounts database!

The truth is, the purge has become—in part—a marketing ploy I devised in order to have people try the last 1.9.x version before 1.10 becomes the current stable. If this angers you because you have been avoiding the new series like the plague, then think again. Give 1.10 an opportunity, because 1.8 is going the way of the dodo. 1.10 is much better, has better features and terrains, and even if you dislike some of the changes (i.e. the feral trait), I’m sure you will eventually find it worth of your time once you grow past the They Changed it, now it Sucks stage.

Regardless of that, the plan of purging unused accounts came to me much earlier while dealing with a major flaw in the wesnothd (the MP server software) forum user handler code. It seemed worth it to try to keep the database tidy by removing old, entirely unused cruft from it, and unconfirmed, 0-post accounts that have never been on the MP server since the introduction of forum accounts integration count as overly unused cruft.

A purge like this isn’t a new thing either. The previous forum administrator performed a larger purge of unused accounts right when the aforementioned integration was introduced, but it was never announced or discussed anywhere.

Purge.