I know it's a few months off yet, but we're inching towards 2.0, and I think something that the userbase can do to prepare without being too annoying is to compile a list of website typos (reference to old/nonexistent features, spelling and grammar errors, etc) for the devs to fix. Here, I'll start us off:

In http://www.vendetta-online.com/h/universe_history.html the UIT is mistakenly called the Neutral Territories. In bold, even.

(This might belong under Suggestions or Community Projects. Whistler et al, do as you see fit.)

I notice the guild software website is very bare. It has 5 pages - the intro, brief history, then 2 that are saying VO is their only product, and a third that redirects you to VO.

Incidentally, the typo I reported a year and a half ago is still there.

It's my understanding that the website it written in C. Yes C, so like although thats kind of neat, well, its geekyness extends usability, meh, Andy, php aint that bad...

yoda, that's odd as hell.

C ?

No, it's not written in C.
Most of the site is in lua and yes, php is teh sukcs ;)

OK, I'm not sure that writing a website in Lua is much better.

What, exactly, is wrong with perl or python or PHP?
(I ask because I really DO want to know, since that's kind of my livliehood...)

Using Lua via FastCGI isn't any worse than Perl/Python/PHP, it's just uncommon. Lua is very fast and relatively efficient, and it was what the guys were writing with at the time (for the game itself).

Strictly speaking, most of our website isn't even dynamic (especially the areas Rogue was commenting on). It's updated via modification of lua code, which then largely exports out to static HTML. Only the messageboard and billing areas are truly dynamic. This lets us handle Slashdotting with minimal fuss. Webservers are orders of magnitude faster at serving static html/css/images/javascript than they are at running dynamic code.. in any language.

By and large, the language is irrelevant, it's the architecture that's important. On a somewhat related aside.. PHP has a crappy security history, although it's ok as Suhosin or patched against hardened-PHP.

Anyway, yes, I should fix those old typos.

Also, if anyone is curious about the "Lua being fast" thing, see here (note, Benchmarks Are Evil):

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/benchmark.php?test=all〈=all

The compiled languages are, of course, fastest. But Lua+LuaJIT manages to even beat out Python+Psyco, and standard Lua beats out Python/Perl/PHP/Ruby. Erlang+HiPE does pretty well, too. But this sort of thing is a terrible reason to select a language. Just interesting, for whatever it's worth.