Erfworld

Yeah, I would guess that evidence that the fundamental laws of the world have changed could be convincing evidence that current dogma is "horseshit".

No fun at all. Looking past the puns and jokes and bizarre differences, one thing popped out at me: She mentioned "dozens of tenturns ago." Most modern Erfworlders don't tend to live that long, and she just drops it like it's nothing.

No, I think tenturns are pretty easy. Like, the original GK battle was about five turns and that's the climax of the war. The campaign before that oughta be a bunch of tens, and people came into it already very seasoned.

It's a hundredturn that is to be considered a while, at the least.

Edited by Adannor on Sep 30th 2019 at 7:27:54 PM

Uffworld.

Erfworld is discontinued as a webcomic because of horrific and unbearable events in their personal lives

This really really sucks for everyone.

Wow. They just can't catch a break, can they? I hope all goes well for them.

Is it really necessary to be so secretive about the circumstances surrounding the cancellation?

Kind of a catch-22. They may very well have good reason for it, but we don't know because of it.

I don't begrudge the privacy when it comes to family matters, but the complete lights-out to the webcomic on the main site and in GITP does make me very curious and confused. I mean, they could still leave it open without updating to get ad revenue at least, right?

Even the Reddit is set to private. This is really strange.

From what Ive understood from from the fan subreddit Erfworld Ascending, the main subreddit has been private for sometime.

Also, the Twitter account has been shut down.

Also, from what I've gathered, it is not due to Linda's cancer or a lawsuit.

Also, book 1 is still up on the GITP site and will likely be up for the next day until the site owners take it down.

Edited by tclittle on Oct 12th 2019 at 9:36:19 AM

Damn. They were just really getting back into the groove too.

Have to say I'm curious about what happened, which they're being very mysterious about, but if it's something bad enough and personal enough that they don't want to talk about it that's just the way it has to be.

Boy, based on what I'm seeing on the Erfworld fan subreddit, it's something really bad on the personal side. No one can say anything because they aren't sure what they should share, but the implications:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ErfworldAscending/comments/dh349l/erfworld_permanently_discontinued_as_a_webcomic/f3isdls/

Saw that this morning... Crap.

I can only hope that things will get better with time. At least it's not Linda's cancer (as far as we know). I sincerely hope she will pull through.

Unless one has access to the audio, we won't know what happened... and judging by how dire the whole situation seems to be (as it seems very personal by nature, and not legal), it may be better to respect their wishes and leave it at that.

The extra weird thing is the suggestion that future updates could be a thing and that publication could be a thing. So while Erfworld the webcomic is dead the concept of Erfworld fiction isn’t.

I could come up with dozens of theories as to why this is being kept so secretive, but in the end it’s not my business, I wish them the best in life and hope that they catch a break someday.

"Future updates may be a thing" feels like them just being hopeful for an eventual recovery. Which would, even in best case, take a long long time.

I'm having a hard time imagining what could be so awful that they find it necessary to shut down Erfworld so hard. Updates stopping, sure, but they closed the forums, the Twitter, the Facebook, the official reddit, even getting Rich to take down book 1 from GitP. Like someone was saying in the fan reddit, they went totally scorched earth.

The scorched earth aspect does bother me quite a bit... I find it completely unnecessary, which raises quite a few questions.

Edited by NonoRobot on Oct 13th 2019 at 8:48:52 AM

It looks like the archives are public again, but the rest of the site is still dark.

Seeing the situation and how it's unlikely I'll find another group of fans who'd understand, I've got a confession to make.

I used to organize the annual Halloween fan content competitions on the Erfworld site. No one asked me to, but I wanted to do it to drum up activity and interest in the comic when times were tough. Especially to bring in some "fresh air" because of the various production or drama issues. I even got help from staff to make the announcements appear on the landing page notifications, and I was really proud when a lot of the entries started to make their way onto the front page too because they got "officially recognized" as good content, and just the good will and cheer it seemed to bring.

But then when all the drama started heating up, I noticed that despite the initial support a lot of the entries for last year were basically ignored, or maybe appeared months later on the main feed. Coupled with what I felt was a lack of recognition of my own fanfics, I decided not to run one this year. Sure, someone else said they wanted to take up the mantle of organizing it, but when I noticed this other fan hadn't made any moves to start calling for fanfics, art, poetry etc... I didn't reach out and ask if they were going to. Or pipe up and do it myself. I was willing to let it just go by uncelebrated.

Well, I feel a bit guilty about that now. But at the same time, I'm also glad. If there had been any work put into a 3rd Halloween Contest, it'd all be ended prematurely. So there it is. I'm not proud of holding these petty feelings in the midst of team Erfwrold's troubles, but maybe I'll feel better about it now. I doubt Rob et al will see it from here, but I do wish them well and thank them for every opportunity they presented and helped with.

That looks like some sort of a freak-out, yeah. Rob's posts always were strewn with some weirdly intense work ethic, and now I guess he'd feel that a comic never to be finished isn't worth reading for anybody and doesn't want to "lure" people into it.

Maybe a viable explanation, but it's also really scary. I hadn't been reading the comic, yet I've been freaked out by the news. There are a lot of unfinished webcomics out there. If the author says "I'll stop updating the webcomic for personal reasons", the readers will understand. They might be unhappy about it but at the end they'll accept that even webcomic authors have personal lives that take them away from writing. But suddenly taking down the comic from the internet and removing all content from social media suggests that there is something really unusual going on. That, in turn, will make people freak out and speculate even harder on what could have happened.

Of course I don't want to tell the author what to do, it's just weird, that's all.

Edited by petersohn on Oct 13th 2019 at 9:54:00 PM

Even if I stopped reading Erfworld quite a while ago, and even if (IMHO) it was pretty clear that it wasn't going to fully recover, I'm sad to see it go like this. The first book was top-tier material and the second one, while less focused, did a good job of expanding end exploring the setting. I've been a financial supporter of the comic for a while and, despite everything, I don't regret spending these money on it.

Whatever happened, I wish the best for the authors.

An explanation has now been posted on the Erfworld fan-subreddit by one of the mods, I presume with Rob’s permission. The short version is that he is having to deal with something like four concurrent ongoing family tragedies that are all compounding each other, as such Erfworld will now be a private place with the comic possibly never seeing another update.

Best I can interpret Rob needs to both stop being a public figure anymore and specifically get away from Erfworld.

Edited by Silasw on Oct 14th 2019 at 6:39:40 PM