Is Vanilla ever going to fix these forums?

SilverBride · June 17

There is really no excuse for Drafts not being fixed when they have been given the solution.

Sluggy · June 17

SilverBride wrote: »

We should get a forum achievement for finding all the hidden options.

It's like playing Where's Waldo but without any of the fun pictures.

Luneca · June 17

LadyGP wrote: »

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

CptTekashi wrote: »

what Icons are invisible ?

The edit button for one, except mobile.

THERE IS AN EDIT BUTTON?!

I need it for all my typos, esp. on this Chromebook. This $99 Chromebook can't handle over 100 wpm ... But I do think the typos add to the fun heh.

SilverBride · June 17

Having invisible icons is like the forum version of overland difficulty set on Vestige.

LalMirchi · June 17

PHPBB is vastly superior forum software. Extremely configurable, not subject to slow-moving and very buggy commercial alternatives.

Gabriel_H · June 17

code65536 wrote: »

The reason you're still seeing them is because the icons come from a file on Vanilla's servers, and that file has gone missing.

It is not missing - it has been kidnapped by Sheogorath and turned into a goat. There are a series of cheese related clues that you have to follow that will lead you to a location. I don't want to give too many details as it would spoil it for others, but suffice to say the plot twist is actually quite good and the ending you don't see coming at all.

Edit: Oh but I will just say don't take the camembert!

katanagirl1 · June 17

I can’t tell anything has been fixed. Like I mentioned in my post, the fact that you cannot delete more than one draft (according to the internet search) means we are running an older version of Vanilla. So maybe update it?

SilverBride · July 5

This has gone on way too long. I know these issues have been reported to Vanilla but we don't see any progress toward them being resolved.

Why haven't they fixed the Drafts page for over a year when they were provided the solution?

And leaving us with invisible icons for weeks now is making it difficult for posters to reply and edit their posts.

@ZOS_Kevin Is there anything that can be done to motivate them to make these things a priority?

Varana · July 5

code65536 wrote: »

It was bought up by private equity in 2021

Okay.
Please ZOS, go shopping for a different provider and start research on how to move the database.
This one is dead.

MorallyBipolar · July 5

Isn't fixing this forum more of a ZOS thing than a vanilla thing? Other vanilla forums aren't broken like this.

LootAllTheStuff · July 5

I get the impression from what Kevin has posted in the past that ZOS isn't self-hosting but using Vanilla's hosting service. That means they always have the current live version (and get all the extras like the badges). The ESO skin also seems to reside on Vanilla's servers (see the page source snippets in the missing icons thread). This is similar to how other platforms, such as Discourse, work. The upshot, however, is that it is very much on Vanilla to fix the broken bits.

virtus753 · July 5

Varana wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

It was bought up by private equity in 2021

Okay.
Please ZOS, go shopping for a different provider and start research on how to move the database.
This one is dead.

I have wondered more than once in the past couple of weeks if this will be one of the casualties of Xbox’s current push to cut external vendors. In addition to Xbox not wanting the third-party relationships, it’s frustrating to pay an online service provider that doesn’t fix issues in a timely manner.

SilverBride · July 5

If Vanilla can't fix these soon then would finding a new hosting service be a possibility?

LootAllTheStuff · July 5

I think a more likely outcome could be them adding ESO to the current roster of Bethesda Discord channels. Which, having personally used both, would be highly sub-optimal for those of us who prefer the more long-term conversation potential of forums over the short-lived chat nature of Discord. That said, there are a few suitable platforms that could be considered; migration would be a pain, though - we'd be more likely to end up with a static archive of the current forums and essentially have to start over.

SilverBride · July 5

I don't want discord to take over the forums. We need to be able to make multiple threads in multiple categories and discord doesn't have that capability.

Tandor · July 5

I don't want the forums to be switched to Discord, it's one of the things I have no interest in (along with Twitch).

katanagirl1 · July 5

MorallyBipolar wrote: »

Isn't fixing this forum more of a ZOS thing than a vanilla thing? Other vanilla forums aren't broken like this.

I wondered about this, I don’t use other forums that have Vanilla. Like I mentioned before, you cannot delete multiple drafts here at once and supposedly that means we are running an older version. Can you confirm that?

SilverBride · July 5

The drafts page used to have the same look as every other page. Now it is white and blue and nothing like it used to look. I don't know if it's an older version but it is not the page it used to be.

I reported this in June of 2025, which was the first day I saw it like this.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/678770/forum-bug-when-looking-at-drafts/p1

Soarora · July 5

LootAllTheStuff wrote: »

I think a more likely outcome could be them adding ESO to the current roster of Bethesda Discord channels. Which, having personally used both, would be highly sub-optimal for those of us who prefer the more long-term conversation potential of forums over the short-lived chat nature of Discord. That said, there are a few suitable platforms that could be considered; migration would be a pain, though - we'd be more likely to end up with a static archive of the current forums and essentially have to start over.

ESO has their own discord server already. I'm inclined to agree that a transfer to discord would be bad though. Some people explicitly use a different username on the forums for personal reasons and I imagine it would be harder to moderate and to browse.

virtus753 · July 5

Soarora wrote: »

LootAllTheStuff wrote: »

I think a more likely outcome could be them adding ESO to the current roster of Bethesda Discord channels. Which, having personally used both, would be highly sub-optimal for those of us who prefer the more long-term conversation potential of forums over the short-lived chat nature of Discord. That said, there are a few suitable platforms that could be considered; migration would be a pain, though - we'd be more likely to end up with a static archive of the current forums and essentially have to start over.

ESO has their own discord server already. I'm inclined to agree that a transfer to discord would be bad though. Some people explicitly use a different username on the forums for personal reasons and I imagine it would be harder to moderate and to browse.

It was painful when New World shut down their forums in favor of their Discord server. I would hope ZOS would look at what happened there in terms of community relations before considering getting rid of the forums the way AGS did.

spartaxoxo · July 5

This really feels like a choose your battles thing. We can all see how Vanilla isn't making ZOS a priority but the alternative Discord and that's far worse

SilverBride · July 5

Surely there are other forum hosting services. And maybe ZOS can impress upon Vanilla that this is unacceptable and they need to make these bugs a priority.

I seriously doubt they would move to just Discord because there is no way to create theads and polls and have discussions like there is here. So let's not go down that road.

LalMirchi · July 6

A rather bad look for a technical outfit. If they cannot fix a simple forum what hope is there for their game?

hiyde · July 6

LalMirchi wrote: »

A rather bad look for a technical outfit. If they cannot fix a simple forum what hope is there for their game?

Because they're paying for this product, they aren't the coders of it, it isn't Open Source, so it's on the makers of the forum software to fix it. It's not like ZOS Devs can log into Higher Logic/Vanilla's servers and replace the missing system icons.

Also, it's not at all going to surprise me if due to this (or for completely different reasons), they close these forums and point people at Discord. They wouldn't be the first gaming company to do it. I think that would be awful but it still wouldn't surprise me.

DenverRalphy · July 6

Or ZOS could just stop using built in theme template elements and create one for themselves. Vanilla Forums has that ability built into its CMS base, there are a bajillion community built themes to draw inspiration from if need be, and based on the many custom changes already made to the forum theme layout ZOS has obviously done this in the past.

hiyde · July 6

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Or ZOS could just stop using built in theme template elements and create one for themselves. Vanilla Forums has that ability built into its CMS base, there are a bajillion community built themes to draw inspiration from if need be, and based on the many custom changes already made to the forum theme layout ZOS has obviously done this in the past.

ZOS has straight up said this is an issue on Higher Logic's (publisher of Vanilla Forum) side. I tend to believe them because if this were as simple as a template mod on the customer side, it would be malpractice for ZOS not to have fixed it by now.

imPDA · July 6

hiyde wrote: »

It's not like ZOS Devs can log into Higher Logic/Vanilla's servers and replace the missing system icons.

Even you as user can fix it btw, everything you need already exists and you need to turn off incorrect styles. I am able to do so with built-in inspect tool, but I don't know an easy way to permanently add it - browser addons for restyling exist, but I never used one, and different browser require different addons, so I have not elaborated my findings. (But it would be funny how even ESO forum requires addons to work better).

But nevertheless, there are 2 sprites, one located on elderscrollsonline, another - on vanilla servers (unavailable). Because of cascade principle, later loaded style wins, so it tries to load unavailable sprite with icons, if you turn this off and let sprite from eso load - it works fine. I don't really understand what can take so much time, it takes one minute to fix styles and then probably a day to review it and approve with a lead.

DenverRalphy · July 6

hiyde wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Or ZOS could just stop using built in theme template elements and create one for themselves. Vanilla Forums has that ability built into its CMS base, there are a bajillion community built themes to draw inspiration from if need be, and based on the many custom changes already made to the forum theme layout ZOS has obviously done this in the past.

ZOS has straight up said this is an issue on Higher Logic's (publisher of Vanilla Forum) side. I tend to believe them because if this were as simple as a template mod on the customer side, it would be malpractice for ZOS not to have fixed it by now.

Can you quote that source? Because I've worked with Vanilla Forums multiple times over the years, and this does not jive at all with how the Vanilla Forums package is distributed and supported. Vanilla (now owned by Higher Logic) builds the content management system that is known as Vanilla Forums. They don't design, build, or maintain sites using the forum software beyond the core functionality. They will provide theme templates for the site owner to build from, but those theme templates can, and are intended to be, edited by the site owner at their whim. Vanilla Forums themselves don't work on themes used by the site owners, as that is typically outside of their purview.

I know it's been said here on the forums that they're pushing it up to Vanilla for support. But I'm guessing Vanilla is bouncing it back and saying "not our job description".

LootAllTheStuff · July 6

DenverRalphy wrote: »

hiyde wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Or ZOS could just stop using built in theme template elements and create one for themselves. Vanilla Forums has that ability built into its CMS base, there are a bajillion community built themes to draw inspiration from if need be, and based on the many custom changes already made to the forum theme layout ZOS has obviously done this in the past.

ZOS has straight up said this is an issue on Higher Logic's (publisher of Vanilla Forum) side. I tend to believe them because if this were as simple as a template mod on the customer side, it would be malpractice for ZOS not to have fixed it by now.

Can you quote that source? Because I've worked with Vanilla Forums multiple times over the years, and this does not jive at all with how the Vanilla Forums package is distributed and supported. Vanilla (now owned by Higher Logic) builds the content management system that is known as Vanilla Forums. They don't design, build, or maintain sites using the forum software beyond the core functionality. They will provide theme templates for the site owner to build from, but those theme templates can, and are intended to be, edited by the site owner at their whim. Vanilla Forums themselves don't work on themes used by the site owners, as that is typically outside of their purview.

I know it's been said here on the forums that they're pushing it up to Vanilla for support. But I'm guessing Vanilla is bouncing it back and saying "not our job description".

When the invisible icons began appearing, there was this comment in the related thread:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8481579/#Comment_8481579

I think there might have been another comment in a different thread?

SilverBride · July 6

I'm curious what Vanilla's response has been when they were informed of these bugs. Did they accept responsibility to fix them? Have they given a single update to show that they are actually working on them?

They were provided with a quick solution for the Drafts bug yet have not taken the 5 minutes required to fix it.

I don't know what it would take to fix the invisible icons but they should have the capabilities to resolve these bugs in a timely manner.

The longer this goes on the more frustrating it is. They need to get these bugs fixed now.