EGO Firefight Riding Into The Sunset - Closing the Fire Fight server
Due to the lack of interest in the community and to make room for new games FPS:X leadership as
decided to close the Fire Fight server.
I apologize in advance for being blunt, but INS has overextended its stay here in eGO. Its time to pull the plug. [Mj "DigitalDJ" "Dipshit" Feraca (Mike)]
Bottom line is this, we're not reopening Fire Fight. We do not receive any recruits from INS. Our servers are full of hackers and campers. We don't have enough admins to keep our servers regulated. Due to the lack of interest within the eGO community, were closing our INS servers. I'm not keeping these servers open for a small handful of eGO players. We pay for our members to play on these instances, not everyone who does not support this community.
Thank you and i'm sorry it has come down to this. I'm going to miss INS too, but whats done is done. Time to move on to games that have developers!
http://www.edge-gamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=184599
First of all, I strongly agree with Randomhero's sentiments, and I had a couple points to add as well. Some of you guys probably know me, I'm a regular on the Firefight server and never play on the Dust server.
I noticed that one of the factors cited in the decision to shut down the server was the lack of players. I'm not sure how anybody could come to that conclusion, as Firefight was consistently at 75%+ capacity during the usual gaming hours. I often have to wait 10 or 15 minutes just to get on the server. I get the impression the people pulling the trigger aren't actually involved in the firefight server at all. To suggest that it was under utilized is asinine.
Second, to pull the server out from under a dedicated and loyal userbase was a very weak way to do things. Literally one day it was there, and the next it was gone. Want legitimate user input? TELL THE USERS. By that I mean notify the folks on the server - give us an auto notification on joining. A straw poll on your forum is not a viable indicator of user preference.
The Dust server is nothing more than a glorified CS:S server with slower run speeds and the ability to prone. To trash a great INS server that actually had users that would communicate, work as a team, and use the game in the spirit that it was intended is a gross misallocation of your server resources.
I understand the need for server space in the face of new games, and in fact I'm pretty stoked for what RO:2 offers - I'm an old school Red Orchestra guy from back in the day so please don't think I'm trashing the new server. I do get the distinct impression, though, that somebody decided that "well, we need some clock cycles for a new RO server, how do we crap on somebody else and get away with it? Oh, we'll string together some very wobbly reasoning, and then slam the door on the INS guy's ****'s before they know what hit 'em." Not cool, guys.
In the interest of friendly compromise, I second Randomhero in requesting that you at least integrate some of the regular maps into the rotation of what is now the Dust only server. You have done far more to alienate loyal users than you have to advance the standing of the eGO organization, let's make this right.
Respectfully, Josh.
Yeah, please don't make more work for leadership. Sometime ask one of the LeadershiP, whats goin on. They have been trying to keep us alive for QUITE some time, INS is dieng, and they don't want to waste money on a public server if we are not getting any recruits. I'm sorry, but this is what happens when you guys DON'T READ THE FORUMS. Your favorite servers get closed.
Mind you, I've been up for two days straight as I'm typing this, so forgive me if I don't make a lot of sense. And please excuse me if I come off as a bit harsh, that is not my intention, rather I'm trying to be blunt. Additionally, this response will be long-winded, yet will be thorough, and should encompass all reasons for the closure of Insurgency.
I'd like to touch on a few points from this thread. But first, allow me to highlight the factors that led to leadership's decision.
The overwhelming (and really only) reason why Insurgency is being dropped is because, Insurgency is no longer a popular game both in general and amongst Edge Gamers' Organization. The most significant factor in this is that the developers quit. (And yes, we're aware that Jeremy is working on the game, AGAIN, but if we hold our breath any longer we will drown.) For two years we have known that the game was dying. When Insurgency had yet to be ported to the Orange Engine in the summer of '09 we all knew that the game was dying. Not to mention the fact the Endless went on a banning rampage against those who criticized the development team for consistently failing to deliver.
Because the game is dead, there is a lack of administrative support for the game. Our servers are constantly bombarded with hackers and punks. In the past 9 months, leadership has banned more users for hacking on the Insurgency servers than have been banned in the cumulative 2 years of previous support. Not only are we failing to deliver high-quality server which are inline with Edge Gamers' virtues, but we are also being harassed. Allow me to cite a recent example of our lack of administrative support. On August 24th OP:X Division held the weekly Admin Round Table in ventrilo. At the end of this meeting, an e-ranked member asked for an administrator to connect to the firefight server to kick a team-killer. For ten minutes no one responded, in a room full of capable administrators nonetheless! And at the Admin Round Table from the week before, Hammer, Burt and myself mentioned the closure of Insurgency servers. We made it clear that if the servers were going to stay, we would need a reason to continue paying for them. After that meeting, 1 e-ranked member connected to the server to play for 30 minutes and then disconnected for the night. The other server didn't have a single eGO-member playing on it.
Because there is no administrative support, few, if any, new members are recruited to replenish the administrative team. It takes no stretch of the imagination to understand that without clan member presence in any given server, said server will produce no recruits. We are not getting the word out about eGO because no one is voicing it. The game (as far as eGO goes) has been in a terrible cycle for the past year: no admins are present and therefore, no recruits are brought in, and no admins are present because no one is being recruited.
Financially, the game is inhibiting the expansion of Edge Gamers' Organization. This organization relies solely on community support (i.e. donations, administrators, volunteers, etc.) It is not economical to have eight divisions financially supporting one division nearly absolutely. At this point, Insurgency is inhibiting other divisions from expanding because said divisions have to pay for the Insurgency servers from the donations of their recruits. This is not to say that this organization is all about the money; however, I will say that game servers, websites and ventrilo servers don't grow on trees.
Onto discussing your points:
"[H]ow does the Dust server have more players than Firefight![?]"
I'm assuming that you're referring to the thread announcing the closure of the server. If this is the case, I apologize for the vagueness of that statement. The intended meaning was that amongst eGO members, Dust2 is played more often. While eGO is committed to supporting high-quality servers for players of all walks of life (assuming that they can follow our rules), the fact of the matter is that pubs do not pay for servers, members do. So forgive those of us in leadership if we tend to favor the opinion of clan members. Also, without delving excessively deep into this subject, I'd like to point out that without members in the servers there are no administrators, and without administrators we cannot provide high-quality servers. Now, we understand the the scale must have balance. That is to say that, without pubs, the servers could not do well either. Pubs inevitably equate to recruits which go on to become admins. However, no recruits would be attained without an established server payed for by preexisting members to begin with.
"eGO is known for the Firefight server it was the most played server for Insurgency and i know many would agree it was the best...."
Unfortunately, without admin support eGO is becoming well-known for being a haven for hackers and punks. Anytime an administrator connects, the server is wild, and as soon as said administrator disconnects, the server goes wild again. At what cost should we sacrifice the values that this organization is established upon? The true crime here is that people who respect the organization are losing a server also, but what is truly unfortunate is that people who respect this organization are a minority in Insurgency.
"as far as recruitment we had a strong following on FireFight...."
While the server remains full, many of the players are not English speakers which makes them shy away from an American-based organization that operates exclusively in English. Furthermore, many of the players on our Insurgency servers are repeat offenders and have been banned several times. While they are still allowed to play on our servers, they obviously cannot be trusted, and therefore would never be able to earn administrative rights. This, in turn, makes them shy away from joining the community. And finally, anybody who doesn't fit into those two camps above have been asked hundreds of times to join, and for whatever reason, refuse. We in leadership keep hearing, "strong recruitment potential in Insurgency," but the numbers say otherwise.
"[I] think we could add dust on the FireFight server rotation. [W]hy [did we] get rid of a server with a bunch of maps, for a server with one."
If I have yet to make it apparent in the indigitous Admin Round Table meetings, we are planning to remove ALL Insurgency servers, to include Dust. For those of you who have been involved with the community, this should come as no surprise. The servers have been in a phasing-out process for 2 years now (back in the BAR & BAS days.) The time has finally come for eGO to jump-ship because a new opportunity has come along. That opportunity is Red Orchestra 2 & Star Wars: The Old Republic. As more opportunities come to pass we will consider each and make decisions according to the organization's needs. Therefore, I personally find it unnecessary to change the map rotation on either server, as both will be removed in due time; however, it takes but a few moments to change the map rotation. We could add FireFight maps to the Dust2 server for the remaining duration of Edge Gamers' official involvement with the game. Also, let me take a moment to explain one more detail in the decision of shutting down FireFight rather than Dust2. Aside from the previously stated points of lack of community-member involvement, and subsequent consequences of that, FireFight was given the ax because the Dust2 server is actually the old Events server. It is simply easier from a server management standpoint to remove the FireFight server and change the rotation of the Dust2 server than to transfer all of the custom content (maps, plug-ins, etc.) to the FireFight server.
"I noticed that one of the factors cited in the decision to shut down the server was the lack of players. I'm not sure how anybody could come to that conclusion, as Firefight was consistently at 75%+ capacity during the usual gaming hours."
As mentioned earlier, by "lack of players," we meant a lack of community-member involvement. While we appreciate your interest in our servers, pubs simply don't pay the bills. As much as we would like to continue running servers, it is becoming an "unnecessary expense." By removing our Insurgency servers now, we can expand into more popular games. This expansion will allow us to acquire more recruits which will contribute more to the community. This will allow for a snow-ball effect of expansion. Considering this, I hope that you will find yourself on our servers again in the future. All I ask is that you don't expect to see them for Insurgency.
"[T]o pull the server out from under a dedicated and loyal userbase was a very weak way to do things. Literally one day it was there, and the next it was gone. Want legitimate user input? TELL THE USERS. By that I mean notify the folks on the server - give us an auto notification on joining. A straw poll on your forum is not a viable indicator of user preference."
Granted, the apparent (although it was a long-time coming) sudden removal of the FireFight server was not as graceful as one should expect from this organization. However, as mentioned previously, our concern was with the community-members. What is not shown on the forums is the indigitous ventrilo meetings we had regarding the closure of servers. I apologize for our bias, but as explained twice previously, this organization, to include the servers that are run-and-operated by it, are community-driven, and therefore, it was the volunteers who were polled and asked to offer feedback.
"I get the impression the people pulling the trigger aren't actually involved in the firefight server at all. To suggest that it was under utilized is asinine." " I do get the distinct impression, though, that somebody decided that, '[W]ell, we need some clock cycles for a new RO server, how do we crap on somebody else and get away with it? Oh, we'll string together some very wobbly reasoning, and then slam the door on the INS guy's ****'s before they know what hit 'em.'"
I empathize with you. If you can take my word for it, understand two things: the leadership team did not want to do this and the leadership team postponed this action for as long as possible. We didn't ask for the developers of Insurgency to quit on us. It felt a "very weak way to do things." To piss a game with such potential away should be criminal.
"The Dust server is nothing more than a glorified CS:S server with slower run speeds and the ability to prone. To trash a great INS server that actually had users that would communicate, work as a team, and use the game in the spirit that it was intended is a gross misallocation of your server resources."
This is a prime example of the disadvantages to Democracy. I can't really say much here except that the community-members have spoken. That said, I will talk to the remainder of leadership for the possibility of adding a vanilla map rotation to the Dust2 instance, and subsequently renaming the server. I can promise nothing as it is not my decision to make alone, however I feel that this would be a good way to end our involvement in Insurgency. As you so eloquently stated, "In the interest of friendly compromise, I second Randomhero in requesting that you at least integrate some of the regular maps into the rotation of what is now the Dust only server."
I'd like to stress here that I do not want my response to be misconstrued. By that, I am referring to my references to community-members versus public players. I, as well as Edge Gamers' do not have any less respect for mature, rule-abiding public players than we do for mature, rule-upholding community-members. The reason, as explained for our favoritism towards community-members is because it is they who volunteer to make this organization what it is. Without their monetary and non-monetary support, Edge Gamers' would not be present in the general video gaming community.
I hope this clears up any confusion as to why this action was taken.
As always, if you have questions, comments or concerns please contact me.
I'll leave this thread open as long as discussions remain civilized.
http://www.edge-gamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=184048
http://www.edge-gamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=184409
New Leadership for TF2 and OP:X
The Operation:X division is also proud to present their newest Division Leaders. Please congratulate DigitalDJ and SgtBeavis for stepping up into their new roles! DigitalDJ and SgtBeavis are leading the way; charting the path of EdgeGamers future.
Congratulations dipshit.
Update:
http://insurgencymod.blogspot.com/2011/09/ego-firefight-is-back.html
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