Welcome to the new EtternaOnline website
If this is the first time you’ve opened up the game or website in a while, you probably have some questions. While more details and answers will be available if you continue reading, the gist is that the original website has been retired. Old accounts and data are not being carried over to the new website, which means you will need to register a new account and re-upload your scores.
Why a reboot?
The history of Etterna Online is comprised of score data spanning a large number of songs. Unfortunately this score info is quite spotty, missing a large amount of information due to a lack of replay data, input data, and other validation checks. Between a large number of users utilizing the XML upload feature, which has now been depreciated, and a prior website space issue forcing a deletion of most replay data, starting over to ensure everyone has the same checks seems like the best option.
tl;dr - The old site is missing the data we need to validate many scores, so we’re starting over to fix that.
Why close the old website while the new one is still in beta?
The most pertinent reason is pragmatic. We have limited space and finances, and hosting two websites costs significantly more money. The new website is far enough along that it is fully functional, so after several months of closed beta, it’s now ready to be tested by a wider audience.
The original plan was to close the old website once the new one was fully out. Unfortunately, we found ourselves in a situation where the old site could no longer keep up with demand, and the database reached its maximum capacity, rendering the website completely inaccessible.
The only viable solution to keep the old site running (without incurring significant costs for just a few more months) was to delete old data to make space for new ones. This was done for a while when the site was frequently going down, but eventually, we ran out of unnecessary data to delete. As a result, we had to shut the site down earlier than anticipated.
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tl;dr - We ran out of space and upgrading was really expensive. We couldn’t do anything to bring it back anymore, so we had to shut it down earlier than expected.
What does that mean for all the scores uploaded on the old site?
While the old data is not publicly accessible anymore, it is not gone. We have a backup of the website and the database, and we will be exploring ways to retrieve that old data in the future. However, as of now, data uploaded to the old website is unavailable until further notice.
tl;dr - We still have them, we will figure out what to do with them in the future.
How do I join the new website while in beta?
The beta is open, but we are slowly letting users in through frequent drops of invite codes until the full release. You can either find these codes on our new forum, or from the invites channel on our Discord.
Head on over to the register page and fill out the info listed, but note that you may need to try a number of codes to find an unused one. Once you verified your email, you are good to go!
tl;dr - Get an invite code from here and paste it on the register page.
How do I submit scores?
You might expect to log in through your current client and start uploading, but this will not work since all currently released clients (0.72.3 and below) use the old website API, which is shut down.
If you wish to test the 0.73 beta builds, please read the instructions from Poco on this news page. Install in a new directory, copy over your /Save/ and move your /Songs/ folders, then login with your new credentials.
Please note that your username is your email address, and that any new beta build will require you to install a new version to keep proper testing going. Once logged in, all scores on ranked files will be uploaded automatically. Any scores with no replay data will be marked invalid.
You can also check this thread to learn more about how to upload scores and stay updated on new beta builds.
tl;dr - You need a special test client in order to upload scores at the moment. Get it here.
What if I run into a problem?
If you’ve read the relevant pages and come across a game or website issue, please describe and report any troubles you are having through our Discord server. We expect some issues to crop up, and being alerted of reproducible issues is very helpful for everyone in the beta phase.
tl;dr - Report any issues you encounter in our Discord server.
Have fun, and enjoy exploring the new Etterna Online experience!