Domain Name: EOTMUD.COM
Registrar: WILD WEST DOMAINS, INC.
Whois Server: whois.wildwestdomains.com
Referral URL: http://www.wildwestdomains.com
Name Server: NS35.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Name Server: NS36.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientRenewProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 05-aug-2007
Creation Date: 20-dec-2005
Expiration Date: 20-dec-2007
For the last two years, a friend of mine has been hosting my game for free, although occasionally me or someone on my MUD would donate a month's worth of the server fee, even when he has insisted not to. This guy and I used to be pretty tight, but unfortunately he's come into some problems in his life and part of those is he had to get rid of his computer, which makes his time online extremely limited. The host computer that the server is located on suffered a brief power outage, and his limited time made him unable to get to his account to manually boot the server back up. After several days of this, I decided that the time had come for me to get my own account and host the MUD out of my pocket book. After several days of trying to contact him (with some contact being successful) but several days of him unable to boot the server back up or login and do other things I needed him to do, I was able to get the company owner to boot his server back up, and thus I was able to login and get the most recent copies of the files I need (namely area files, player files… my last manual update had unfortunately been about two weeks old).
Well, all of that is well and good, we got the MUD running and everything installed on the virtual server, but the problem I'm having is with our domain. I got an account and VPS with the same company that he had, because in two years, we've maybe had a total of two days downtime and he was always complimenting the guy on his customer service and everything, so I figured after two years of good service, why not? Well, this obviously creates a problem with the domain because the guy who was hosting the MUD still has my domain configured in his account, so that prevents me within my account from adding the domain there, with the 'eotmud.com is already in use' error coming up. Also, with us having our accounts at the same place, our name servers are the same, and with his account taking up my domain, I see no way out of this.
When I asked the company owner about booting up the other guy's server so we could get our most recent files, in regards to the domain thing, he told me to do my best to contact the guy because he couldn't change that without the account holder's authorization, and that even a phone call from him would work. I sent him an email and have been trying to catch him on AIM (he's been having his cell phone connected to his screen name), but several days have passed with absolutely no luck.
I'm doing my best to be patient, but especially with us not even being open yet and having a small playerbase, every bit of "down time" as it were that everyone trying to connect through the domain is seeing, the more and more people I fear we'll lose as they just decide that the MUD must have gone down permanently. I respect the guy's reluctance to mess with that guy's account without his authorization, but seeing as how the domain is in my name, seeing as how I own it, I would think I would have some entitlement to where that is configured, and maybe some course of action I can take other than sit around and hope this guy finds time to login and remove the domain from his account.
I'm doing my best to be patient, and I greatly appreciate everything he's done for us for the last two years. I'm just ready to be completely self-sufficient in regards to this stuff, and I'm getting really frustrated. I also don't want to come across like an ass to the guy, or to the company who has our server on it, waving "legalities" and what not…
Anyone have any suggestion as to what I might be able to do?