Just a small idea, when the server/game is down due to DDOS or a server restart, players are unable to access the forums because I assume that the forums are hosted on the same server as the game. The forums could be hosted on a separate host so players can access forums for information while the game is down.
There is a facebook page that anyone can access, with or without a facebook account: https://www.facebook.com/MapleRoyals
We used to have the forum on a seperate server to the game however this only made the website seem quite slow. Regarding your concern about DDoS, as far as I know there hasn't been a successful DDoS on the game server in over 4 months. Yesterday was a Layer 7 DoS attack which only affects http so this is why the website was struggling yesterday. We have added some firewall protection that seems to have slowed down the L7 attacks. However, we are looking for a more permanent solution which should be implemented in about 10 days or so.
