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[scourge]

Hate ta tell ya, folks... HotU is D-E-A-D dead. Far as i've been able to ascertain thus far, the host went under, and Sarinee (AKA Underdogs, the owner) has paid very little attention to the the site for the last couple o' years. It's been mostly maintained (such as it was) by her handpicked assistants/admins and the community at large, though as far as I know she was still paying the bills, which is another issue, as it had become quite hideously expensive. She is altogether too occupied with her professional responsibilities, other hobbies, and the general state of affairs in her Country (Thailand, and if you are at least semi-aware of international current affairs, you know things have been over there lately) too spend much time on HotU. It was her pet project for many years, her brainchild, and something she really did not want to let die, but we all have to make choices, ya know? At any rate, I've not heard anything at this point about Sarinee making a decision, assuming she is even aware of what happened yet. I've been a regular at the site and associated forums since the early days of gamingdepot and ezboard hosting everything, so I really hate to see it die, and it truly is an irreplacable resource and a great museum or monument of sorts, but many of us were starting to feel that perhaps Sarinee should, in fact, simply let it die in peace. I rather doubt the downloads would have even been totally fixed anyhow, as it is my understanding that most of the files were destroyed in "the incident", and they would have to have been collected from whereever and whomever they might be found, and added again from scratch. I'm sure we would all have helped to some degree, but with the many thousnds of files, it was an incredibly daunting task, either way.

In short, at this point, I do not believe that HotU will coming back, although given some of the occurences and forum discussions prior to the site going down, I have some hope that it might be resurrected of sorts in the form of a tribute or mirror or such. If the claims a certain individual made are actually true. And if the gentleman actually decides to go ahead with the project, of course.