Rest in Peace Fortuna 69

Super edit: Turns out the DEvelopers heard our cries and brought back Fortuna 69! Now we can all be nice together again!

Super edit 2: Fortuna 69 is down once more, thanks to bad timing on a Angels of the Zariman hotfix. This applies to both pre-New War and post-New War Fortuna 69 relays.

Unfortunately, it seems like the Saint of Altra update claimed a victim and it wasn’t Volt or Zephyr being overtaken by Gauss. The Fortuna 69 instance, which had been kept alive since Fortuna was released back in October last year, failed to survive the update. Due to unfortunate timing, it seems like no one was online to stay in Fortuna 69 while other Warframe players were updating their game.

Normally instances, servers used to put people in relays, close as soon as everyone leaves them. During large updates, events and whenever Baro Ki’Teer is around, you will see a lot more instances available, but the instances always die down and disappear after a few days. Fortuna 69 would have been like this, but people liked being in the server and kept it alive.

Through sheer effort, some AFKers and a hint of scheduling, the nice people of Fortuna 69 managed to keep the instance alive. They even managed to keep Fortuna alive during updates and hotfixes. To do this, people with slow, shitty internet would stay in Fortuna 69 until the people with fast internet downloaded the updates and hotfixes and managed to jump back in. Before long, there were full-time idle accounts in Fortuna 69, making sure someone was always online in the server. This was somewhat worrying on larger, multi-gig updates, as Warframe has the mean old habit of automatically kicking players out after fifteen minutes, so the race was always on to get updates installed before those fifteen minutes were up.

After a while though, the developers made it so there was an Instance 69 for all places like Fortuna. A Cetus 69 and all the relays existed. Fortuna 69 was believed to be safe from deletion. And in the mean time, a distinct community evolved, filled with regulars and newcomers and comers-and-goers alike. You could pop into Fortuna 69 (assuming you’re on the NA region) and see familiar faces and new people. Spontaneous mini-events would pop up, like players all wearing the same colour, pink butterfly Rhino invasions and colour-coordinated events like the Mag Rainbow. Fashion was always top notch on Fortuna 69, except whenever I was around with my bright yellow Volt, but even I bent to Fortuna 69’s styles and created myself a neon punk style Volt getup. There’s even a specific greeting for when people enter the server, “nice”.

Sadly though, the Saint of Altra update just seemed to catch everyone off, and no one was available to jump back into Fortuna 69 after downloading a 2GB update. By the time people realised what had happened, Fortuna 69 was gone.

There is some hope though. The people behind the Fortuna 69 Discord server, Neon Phoenix – F69, and many of the people who hang out there are asking the developers to reinstate the server. Since the developers tend to hang out on Twitter, people are using the #fortuna68 and #operationneonphoenix to petition the developers to bring back Fortuna 69. Because, frankly, that instance was probably one of the best places to be in Warframe.

At the very least, I hope we get a massive Fortuna update again at some point, because at least then we can bring Fortuna 69 back naturally.

Until then, stay nice, I suppose.