Warcraft II Forum
Warcraft II => Server.War2.ru => Topic started by: MaStA{hR} on November 17, 2015, 03:37:44 PM
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Of all of the games I've had the pleasure of playing, W2 is by far the greatest. It is now a poor imitation of what it used to be... with defining qualities such as:
Small community of players that will likely only diminish as time goes on
Major server issues like hosting [port forwarding - which is not user friendly to the average person] and periodic lag
Some concern over hacks
I don't have the time to do this, but here is the solution. I spoke with Lance about what's the next step... because we are all bickering or talking to each other back and forth and no one has actually stepped up and done anything. He said that he has to outsource the work that's left to do on this game to a team of developers because there is no time for him to do this probono. He is a very busy man that has to put food on the table. He has intricate knowledge of the coding and of the problems, and could potentially minimize the workload for a developer team to about 200-270 man hours. On the low end, this project would probably cost 30,000, with it topping out at about 50,000+ US Dollars. Lance would be the lead guy on the job but he won't be doing this for profit.
The solution is: Raise the money.
Q. How do you raise 30,000+?
A. Someone start a GoFundMe crowd funding page and start advertising and spamming the fuck out of it. Go door to door, spam friends at school, bug co-workers, beg family members for early Christmas money or prostitute your body. The question is, who will champion this project and give the money to Lance?
PS:
ONE student of mine raised $112,000 for kids in Haiti via crowdfunding and selling everything she owned. She was 17 years old at the time and did it in 9 months
ANOTHER student of mine raised $27,000 for an organization named Mariposa which deals with youth development and she did so by spamming her GoFundMe page on facebook and at school and did it in 4 months.
I had ANOTHER student raise $16,000 and did it in about 6 months.
It is all possible. Now let's do it! Please reply below and/or begin this. We need 1 championleader for this project to direct all of us. If we all go about our business as usual nothing will get done. Someone designate themselves or someone else to lead this project. I would do it, and I'd be one of the more qualified peoples to do it, but I'm sorry I will not be able to. However, I would be willing to match some donations to get the ball rolling.
The money will solve a lot of undercurrent issues. It won't help me because I am temporarily in the Dominican Republic and the PvPgn server conflicts with most 3rd world country providers. BUT, it will help out all of us fools that are in the US, Canada and Europe. We get this shit fixed guys, and we can have a game where the sky is the limit. 200-10k people on at any given time. We just have to fix our basic problems.
Yamon says he could "get the money today". I doubt it, but it'd be nice to believe him. Someone pester him? We now have clear direction and a solution. Our only barrier is money. Lezz do it!
IF NOTHING HAS CHANGED BY JANUARY, I WILL BEGIN RAISING MONEY AND EXCLUDE ALL OF YOU WHEN I GET A TROPHY. <3
EDIT: YOU WILL BE ASKING FOR DONATIONS, THERE IS NO INVESTMENT. NOONE WILL BE GETTING PRIVATE SHARES OF THE W2 SERVER OR ANYTHING. THE MATH EQUATION HERE IS IF LANCE HAS 30k = PERFECT W2 GAME.
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Holy shit, $30000-$50000? People are losing their minds if they think they'd get a return on investment worth a payment of that size.
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There is no investment. The return on investment is happy memories gaming!
Essentially people have to be looking for donations, not investments! We don't want ole Big Brother Blizz knocking on our doors.
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With that investment, your better off getting blizzard involved.
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If people want iL to work faster on a specific project, why not try PMing him and offering him some money to put more focus into it? He's doing all the work he's currently doing while having a job and being a busy guy, and he's doing it for free. Instead of coming up with crazy $30,000 plans to hire entire development teams headed by a guy half the server already doesn't trust, has anyone asked iL if, were you to put $1000 in escrow for him, he would be able to complete X project by January 1?
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Unfortunetely the busiest time of year for me is Oct/Nov/Dec as well as Jan/Feb/Mar (some of you may have noticed I've been absent for a while maybe? been very busy work wise). The reason for this is that many businesses are getting their sites ready for the holidays which accounts for Oct/Nov/Dev, and then again at the beginning of the year as businesses get their new budgets for the year. So I have not forgotten about this project, but I've put it on pause until I have more free time. Masta asked me about some things and the only way I'd be able to contribute right now at this time of year is more of a development lead. I had told him what it would take hours wise and that a team of developers could do it but those teams are NOT cheap. Most teams run 150-200/hr and are generally teams of 3-5 people. I have excellent knowledge of whats needed, and could direct such an effort but dont have that kind of time right now to do the actual coding myself because of the season, but directing others and explaining issues as well as the solutions is not all that much time at all, something I could hand off to a dev team easily with crystal clear directions. The best time for me is in the late spring and early summer when I dont have much going on. Personally, I do not believe anyone in their right mind is going to be able to come up with 30k+ that would be needed but I wouldnt stop anyone from trying either. One point I'd make though, 30K doesnt go to me. I volunteer my time always for war2. The cash would have to go to those that would do development but do not give two shits about war2. My bet is that iL probably experiences the same heavy work loads as I do at this time of year since he's in a similar field. IMO the most logical answer is to just be patient, I do plan to continue to develop things as I am sure iL will as well but this time of year is busy probably for both of us.
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If people want iL to work faster on a specific project, why not try PMing him and offering him some money to put more focus into it? He's doing all the work he's currently doing while having a job and being a busy guy, and he's doing it for free. Instead of coming up with crazy $30,000 plans to hire entire development teams headed by a guy half the server already doesn't trust, has anyone asked iL if, were you to put $1000 in escrow for him, he would be able to complete X project by January 1?
This probably seems like the best idea,
What's the first project everyone wants done first?
I wouldn't mind raising some cash to throw il's way provided it gets done.
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I don't know if iL has the time to take people up on an offer like that, but it does strike me as something that could be proposed before running off on grand schemes to create all new servers like I've seen tk and now masta propose, both of them talking about tens of thousands of dollars being invested on a 20-year-old game that we can already play as is
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I'll give it a shot. Its worth a shot. I'm starting a new server any way... a new server with proactive enthusiastic leadership is the only hope for war2 IMO. Throwing money at a server without ambitious leaders is not wise IMO. Good idea masta.
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Fixing the server is only a small part of the solution. I would say 10-20%
Sorry to say , but nothing will happen masta, I have tried this twice before
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If people want iL to work faster on a specific project, why not try PMing him and offering him some money to put more focus into it? He's doing all the work he's currently doing while having a job and being a busy guy, and he's doing it for free. Instead of coming up with crazy $30,000 plans to hire entire development teams headed by a guy half the server already doesn't trust, has anyone asked iL if, were you to put $1000 in escrow for him, he would be able to complete X project by January 1?
This probably seems like the best idea,
What's the first project everyone wants done first?
I wouldn't mind raising some cash to throw il's way provided it gets done.
Probably completion of anti-hack project and hardware ban.
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I'll give it a shot. Its worth a shot. I'm starting a new server any way... a new server with proactive enthusiastic leadership is the only hope for war2 IMO. Throwing money at a server without ambitious leaders is not wise IMO. Good idea masta.
Correct. Board members often exile ineffective CEOs.
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I sent lance a message. I basically let him know I really wish I could hire him to spear head the entire operation but based on past events the community (my self included) are hesitant to give him access to personal information or any amount of access to a server that could potentially be dangerous.
That being said there is no doubt he has a better understanding of what needs to be done and how to do it .. So i'm considering (if he is interested) hiring an outside professional programmer and basically putting the two of them in contact with eachother so that the programmer can do his job, but use lance as a resource center to consult with... The programmer would have the access and run the operation. Lance would assist with any issues or questions the programmer comes up with and be compensated as well.
We will see what Lance says.
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Lance already posted in this thread.
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i didnt see that. it seems as if he is open to the idea and willing to do almost exactly what i think would be most beneficial to the project at this point
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I will set up a go fund me by next week. I will have about a week to myself no wife or kids completely uninterrupted. I will spam the gofundme link all across the internet. We will see what happens at the end of that week. If we can get a grand or more in that short time frame i'd say it's a valid possibility. if some donate but it's a very poor showing then im assuming there is a way to return the money to the donors.
i am going to be extremely busy from April - Oct. My goal was to start the process early april once I have extra cash coming in and pay someone over the course of 3-4 months so that we had a new server ready to play war2 on by early October-November next year.
This isnt a small project and needs to be done right. It's not going to happen over night especially considering I'm not a baller
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I think people like tk imagine there will be some kind of War2 renaissance and the only thing holding us back is that he hasn't poured his life savings into the game yet.
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No. I think it's extremely realistic to have a community much larger than the one we currently have (i will estimate at least 3-4 times as large as our current active user base). I think the two biggest factors that currently prohibit us from accomplishing that goal is:
1) proactive leadership that has a strong desire to keep the community as large and strong as possible
2) finances .. which (in my opinion) would be much more available to the current community if we did in fact have that type of leadership..but who in the right mind is going to give money to people who show little to no enthusiasm as it is? iL is the only one with any amount of ambition (i guess LB is starting to show some interest again).. but iL doesn't even have the time or energy to give 100%.
i believe that if you run the server like you would a business it would be much more successful. you "hire" a staff (admins/ops) to give customer service to your customers(players)
Right now, the current war2 company (server.war2.ru) is comparable to walking into a run down k-mart just barely hanging on with 2-3 sales associates that are nowhere to be found in the store.
It is inevitable that k-mart is not going to be very successful and will eventually close down for good. that's whats happening to server.war2.ru right now and nobody in charge seems to either care or believe it's possible to do better... so it won't get better until something changes. that's not ok with many members of the community.
what you're seeing (and what you have seen in the past) is members of the community starting to take action into their own hands. If things were being handled correctly from an administrative point of view none of these conversations would even be taking place.
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Well as the saying goes, you cant fail unless you try. I've tried several times so I can say with experience that its probably a recipe for failure, but then again maybe it's not. Sometimes timing has a lot to do with successes and failures. Just ask anyone in the tech world who was "to far ahead of the times" only to see their ideas become a huge success years after it was vehemently rejected by the intended audiences that are now embracing the same idea like it's the best thing since sliced bread. Lycos could attest to that as could many tech companies.... including myself. It's like a Square-out route in the NFL. If the timing isnt right, you're just going to end up giving away possession of the ball at a very in-opportune time.
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What changes are you making to server . ?
Please ensure the following is included
You need to be able to have 10,000 on at once.
You can host games but the server hosts tourneys ( like poker)
You can't ban people from games, imagine if the poker sites you let ban people from games ... They would all die by now. Obviously the site will ban you if you break rules .
There is a consistent running ladder, So when a new person joins there are 1262 on ladder.
Why even worry about the chat/ lobby
Why do we need it? That's something for 20'years ago, nowadays the Internet is so large none of the sites have chat on the main page. ( just an idea)
So just create games or join tourneys .
It's no use at all investing 30,000 into the same thing we have now . Need to be able to grow
Try create a flying car.
At the moment your just trying to make the horse& cart a bit faster
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what you're seeing (and what you have seen in the past) is members of the community starting to take action into their own hands. If things were being handled correctly from an administrative point of view none of these conversations would even be taking place.
people like mousetopher and tora presented themselves as people who wanted to help. their help was accepted and after proving themselves stable individuals who make contributions they have been given trust to further help the community. they are the roadmap for how people who want to help are able to. we dont typically turn people down. there has been no shortage of people whose offers to help i've taken up, and we've promoted to admin such players as dugs, foonat, lightbringer, electrified-ice, sentinel, frostbitten, sexican and yamon for a period, and...
tk, YOU were an admin after following a similar path, right? and then you not only quit for dubious reasons, you went on to spend 6 months flaming the server at every opportunity and teaming up with equinox before suddenly asking why you weren't an admin anymore. it's very strange. (speaking of equinox, we even created a huge messageboard for his league even after his antics.) i likewise encourage you to keep up your [as] clan stuff and have offered to give you a special tag if you think it will help, but for some reason you think you specifically must be an admin, and since you aren't you're now talking about dropping $10,000 on this 20yo game to make your own server that may or may not have some functions that iL doesn't get to programming for this one.
i mean it's your money and you can do what you want but i just want to warn you it seems a bit delusional and like you have a bit of a messiah complex. im an active admin and will continue to be receptive to people who want to help and seem responsible enough to be admins, and hopefully iL will continue to advance the server. we prefer not to include you at least as an admin at this point - but why does it HAVE to be you? didnt you quite intentionally burn that bridge?
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I love how whenever Blid mentions tournaments getting hosted his go to guy is Tora. Lol I like Blid though and he said he appreciates what I do, go back a year before Tora started hosting tournament and you have Smeagol hosting tournaments no forum no nothing just him. 3rd person :). Oh well, 30-50k does sound ridiculous though.
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I love how whenever Blid mentions tournaments getting hosted his go to guy is Tora. Lol I like Blid though and he said he appreciates what I do, go back a year before Tora started hosting tournament and you have Smeagol hosting tournaments no forum no nothing just him. 3rd person :). Oh well, 30-50k does sound ridiculous though.
Tora is more important than you for obvious reasons.
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Ryu and you are nothing so your point? Go spam some threads, allow some hackers into your clan, and reign over your bot clan with 1 member ManoWar. Was I talking to you? No, but your obsession with me leads you to have a boner for me all day long.
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I was personally hoping that the money wouldn't go towards Feature and company's custom warcraft, but it would go into restabilizing the war2.ru one. Just making it bigger, badder and smoother. Can't we just throw money at it and make it work?
I want my old game back when there were chats galore, people winbotting, people spamming channels with stealthbots, so many games up you're not sure who you want to play with, hundreds of newbs looking for a new L on their record. That's what I want. I have 1500 facebook friends, probably 600 of them are students who are rich as balls. I wouldn't mind putting myself on a limb and giving this link to them. :)
I don't even want to promote this game because when you get on, you can't play, you have cranky or inactive people in chat, you can't host right off the bat, and there are only pros/legends on with a sprinkle of low tier players.
I'm ready to pull all the stops and help tk[as]. I just don't want this to be complicated and have a terrible split like when East finally went to .ru. We still had hundreds of people on east and the .RU server was stealing all the gow/.pud players and the transition wasn't clean.
If we can avoid this, I suggest working with what we've got and just make it into a machine, rather than start from scratch which would be way more expensive than Lance's estimated figure.
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Also, 30k can be raised in less than a month. We're a community of 200-1000 strong (I know that's a wide range but when you account for only 50 or so people on the server at any given time and the fact that most people play for a week then ditch out for months like myself) it seems fairly accurate.
Anyways, so if we have 200 people that promote this shit and get even just 10 people to donate 10 bucks... that's 200x10x10 = 20,000 right there with hardly breaking a sweat... And I know some of us can reach out to more people than others.
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Messiah complex? I dont even know what that means.
I never sided with EQ on anything. We werent partners or team mates. If he said something that made sense (it happened from time to time) i agreed with him. If what he was saying didn't make sense i didnt agree with him.
blid.. new admins do not become new admins until the community realizes "holy shit nobody is ever online to help me with anything". then they complain. then they complain some more. then they complain some more.. and eventually an admin or two are brought on.
If nobody complained, you have made it pretty clear through your actions you have absolutely no problem with a server with no visible admins.
the community needs active leadership. they need enthusiastic leadership. they need pro-active leadership... you are none of those things which is why i have no clue why you continue to hold on to your role.
if you gave more shits about the community than you do the feeling you get from being il's right hand man you would step down and get the hell out of the way of the people who do have the drive to build this community... maybe you don't even realize how big of a weight you truly are. i dunno.
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Ryu and you are nothing so your point? Go spam some threads, allow some hackers into your clan, and reign over your bot clan with 1 member ManoWar. Was I talking to you? No, but your obsession with me leads you to have a boner for me all day long.
You mad? Tora hosts GoW, nobody here give a shit about pball. Sadly...
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i know im saying you're a weight on this server, which is true.. but i also understand iL is the one who gives you the "power" you have. he is just as much at fault if not more. it's his server. if he wants it to be successful he should have realized you're a "do bare minimum" kinda guy a long time ago and given someone else more control over the direction of the server. he's not doing that.. which is just more evidence we literally have no leadership with any amount of vision. We have a owner who tinkers with programming and gives us some decent updates from time to time and his right hand man who does the bare minimum.
we need a new server with new leadership. end of story. im going to do the best i can to make it happen and surround myself with the right people for the right jobs.... basically do everything this administration is not doing. its not very difficult. it's just not happening.
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I'm trying to say:
Tourneys shouldn't be held in advance, no one should host a tourney . They should be constantly there and start when full .
If it's online poker, family fued, monopoly or any modernised game online, no1 actually hosts thetourneys . It's a slow, inefficient way of doing it
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Somebody should definitely put this on kick starter I don't think it's a bad idea at all but I need to get something for their money. Possibly a special icon or T-shirt or maybe special rights to do things that nobody else can do e.g. have their own avatar
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TK is speaking a lot of sense. I don't 100% agree with him but I agree with about 80%. I knew he was far deeper than our arguments because of reading this forum for months and seeing him randomly on the server. This place is deadsville and I totally agree the bare minimum is what is done around here. I agree with Cam splitting to another server is a stupid idea the money should be poured into Server RU. I will do whatever I can to help this project if it comes to fruition.
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Yeah so what is the consensus here... It seems as though there are a few different ideas floating around.
1. Maintain and upgrade .RU's staff, server and development.
2. Revamp the War2 Custom Project that Feature and others were talking about
3. Start from scratch and create a whole new deal.
Also, where is Mouse's server based? In her home? I don't really get how she has her own server(s). Pretty cool, but I don't get it!
So what are we doing here? Because we're downplaying the fact that .RU exists and it wouldn't exist without the current and/or old admins. It's incredible that they were able to recreate Warcraft 2 and finally add the Single Player Campaign. I don't think enough has been done, but please let's not totally trash talk these W2 "Gods" haha.
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TK is speaking a lot of sense. I don't 100% agree with him but I agree with about 80%. I knew he was far deeper than our arguments because of reading this forum for months and seeing him randomly on the server. This place is deadsville and I totally agree the bare minimum is what is done around here. I agree with Cam splitting to another server is a stupid idea the money should be poured into Server RU. I will do whatever I can to help this project if it comes to fruition.
i would totally agree with that if i believed it would do good. i have a strong feeling they would take the money and make improvements (either iL would do it or hire other people to do it) ... which is good, no doubt about that. but i dont think those improvements or updates will mean anything without mechanisms in place to 1) keep the users we have and 2) bring new users to the server.. and 3) keep the new users we bring to the server.
based on what i've seen, blid is iL's right hand man because blid has been around a long time, and blid used to pay the $5 a month fee to host the server. i guess that $5 a month was a big deal to iL. once iL got new hosting, the payment increased from $5 a month to $15 a month and blid stopped paying. im not sure if he has picked it up or not yet. blid?
So we literally have a server owner who is not actively engaged in the community who has delegated most administrative responsibilities to Blid who is also not actively engaged with the community (well he is on the forums.. and smurfs 99% of the time on the server, so i dont know how engaged you would call that). Both of which seem extremely hesitant to delegate administrative responsibilities to other people.
I personally can't rationalize trying to financially support a project that will be managed by 1 or 2 people who literally seem pretty content with the way things are going.
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Best case scenarios IMOin order:
1) iL finally wakes up and gives admin to a few users with some fire under their ass who are actively engaged with the entire community and basically gives them free reign to handle what direction the server goes. If blid is still part of the decision making process that's fine but his voice on matters should hold no more weight than anyone else's... which is very unlikely.
2) 1 or more users muster up a few grand and convince iL to sell them the server and hand over access to everything (this is probably the best case scenario that's is fairly realistic)
3) we create a new server and start from scratch. new owner. new leaders... unfortunately that's going to be a huge financial undertaking. still a possibility.
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Yeah so what is the consensus here... It seems as though there are a few different ideas floating around.
1. Maintain and upgrade .RU's staff, server and development.
2. Revamp the War2 Custom Project that Feature and others were talking about
3. Start from scratch and create a whole new deal.
Also, where is Mouse's server based? In her home? I don't really get how she has her own server(s). Pretty cool, but I don't get it!
So what are we doing here? Because we're downplaying the fact that .RU exists and it wouldn't exist without the current and/or old admins. It's incredible that they were able to recreate Warcraft 2 and finally add the Single Player Campaign. I don't think enough has been done, but please let's not totally trash talk these W2 "Gods" haha.
Yeah so what is the consensus here... It seems as though there are a few different ideas floating around.
1. Maintain and upgrade .RU's staff, server and development.
2. Revamp the War2 Custom Project that Feature and others were talking about
3. Start from scratch and create a whole new deal.
Also, where is Mouse's server based? In her home? I don't really get how she has her own server(s). Pretty cool, but I don't get it!
So what are we doing here? Because we're downplaying the fact that .RU exists and it wouldn't exist without the current and/or old admins. It's incredible that they were able to recreate Warcraft 2 and finally add the Single Player Campaign. I don't think enough has been done, but please let's not totally trash talk these W2 "Gods" haha.
many agree that looking back on how everything went down, creating this server and leaving battle.net did more harm than good long term.
calling them war2 gods is exactly the reason i think blid holds on to admin, does very little, and is hesitant to pass the torch to others with more ambition than himself. this is my own personal opinion... but i think he enjoys being what you call a "war2 god", not sharing the title with many others, and having to do very little to maintain that persona.
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i'm glad to see my idea is underway. You're welcome everyone. Just wanted to get that out of the way. Now that i have all of your attention, Yes. Yes we can do this. If everyone on the server contributes including myself we can easily come up with 30k. Now the way we need to do this is very specific.
#1 We need a war2 council. The war2 council should consist of experienced players, or players who have donated over 1,000 dollars.
#2 30,000 is an approximation. Finding developers who will work for cheaper shouldn't be hard.
#3 Lance needs to be in charge of the developement.
#4 Stupid spitballing ideas for the server CANNOT be accept. Leave the game alone. No player gets a special anything unless they're part of the council/staff
#5 server.war2.ru must be completely abandoned. The staff of server.war2.ru also must be abandoned. Not banned, just removed from power. The only staff i would recommend from server.war2.ru would be blid. Blid should be head admin on the new server.
#6 The essential problems that war2.ru face are all known by lance and are already adressed by lance, making this a 100% safe investment, most likely yielding AMAZING results
#7 ADVERTISEMENT. advertisement needs to be payed for as well. Mass advertisement like never before. Hire an entire advertisement team.
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i'm glad to see my idea is underway. You're welcome everyone. Just wanted to get that out of the way. Now that i have all of your attention, Yes. Yes we can do this. If everyone on the server contributes including myself we can easily come up with 30k. Now the way we need to do this is very specific.
#1 We need a war2 council. The war2 council should consist of experienced players, or players who have donated over 1,000 dollars.
#2 30,000 is an approximation. Finding developers who will work for cheaper shouldn't be hard.
#3 Lance needs to be in charge of the developement.
#4 Stupid spitballing ideas for the server CANNOT be accept. Leave the game alone. No player gets a special anything unless they're part of the council/staff
#5 server.war2.ru must be completely abandoned. The staff of server.war2.ru also must be abandoned. Not banned, just removed from power. The only staff i would recommend from server.war2.ru would be blid. Blid should be head admin on the new server.
#6 The essential problems that war2.ru face are all known by lance and are already adressed by lance, making this a 100% safe investment, most likely yielding AMAZING results
#7 ADVERTISEMENT. advertisement needs to be payed for as well. Mass advertisement like never before. Hire an entire advertisement team.
the trust issues whether real or perceived with Lance that still exist would ensure imminent failure.. if some of the older users thought he had access to important information they would make sure the project failed.
i believe blid is a nice enough guy. i dont believe he is intentionally holding progress back... but he has made it 100% clear he doesnt believe the community can be re-built to anything significant. he believes this community is the way it is because that's just the natural cycle of a nearly 20 year old game. he doesnt seem to believe much can be done to improve it..... explain why in the world you would want the "top dog" on the server to be the person who literally has no vision of what the server could and should be?
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i'm glad to see my idea is underway. You're welcome everyone. Just wanted to get that out of the way. Now that i have all of your attention, Yes. Yes we can do this. If everyone on the server contributes including myself we can easily come up with 30k. Now the way we need to do this is very specific.
#1 We need a war2 council. The war2 council should consist of experienced players, or players who have donated over 1,000 dollars.
#2 30,000 is an approximation. Finding developers who will work for cheaper shouldn't be hard.
#3 Lance needs to be in charge of the developement.
#4 Stupid spitballing ideas for the server CANNOT be accept. Leave the game alone. No player gets a special anything unless they're part of the council/staff
#5 server.war2.ru must be completely abandoned. The staff of server.war2.ru also must be abandoned. Not banned, just removed from power. The only staff i would recommend from server.war2.ru would be blid. Blid should be head admin on the new server.
#6 The essential problems that war2.ru face are all known by lance and are already adressed by lance, making this a 100% safe investment, most likely yielding AMAZING results
#7 ADVERTISEMENT. advertisement needs to be payed for as well. Mass advertisement like never before. Hire an entire advertisement team.
the trust issues whether real or perceived with Lance that still exist would ensure imminent failure.. if some of the older users thought he had access to important information they would make sure the project failed.
i believe blid is a nice enough guy. i dont believe he is intentionally holding progress back... but he has made it 100% clear he doesnt believe the community can be re-built to anything significant. he believes this community is the way it is because that's just the natural cycle of a nearly 20 year old game. he doesnt seem to believe much can be done to improve it..... explain why in the world you would want the "top dog" on the server to be the person who literally has no vision of what the server could and should be?
i agree they do seem rather content with a playerbase of 15 people. The only reason people don't trust lance is because he was banning people on his server that wasn't even really a server. So what has he really done? They also came up with some huge conspiracy theory that he was putting viruses on people's computers which seemed highly counter-intuitive to him going through the time and effort of creating a new server. Lance is completely trustworthy and has never really actually done anything wrong.
And the players that really don't trust him, who gives a fuck about them. I play wc2 every day and there's like 2 people i would miss if they didn't migrate to the new server. 0 fucks given there.
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i dont know how much of it is true. i wasnt admin while it was all going on.. but my understanding is that he had quite a bit of access to the server. he got caught hacking and had his admin removed. he had access to a backdoor to the server (either he found it or created one before he was removed). then used that access to create lots of little problems that took a really long time to resolve. then DDossed server.war2.ru while he was trying to get war2 custom launched.
again i dont know how much of that is true or verified. i do know some of it to be true.
i also realize that the things i do know to be true happened quite a while ago and he seems to have been very helpful and cooperative the past year or two.
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i dont know how much of it is true. i wasnt admin while it was all going on.. but my understanding is that he had quite a bit of access to the server. he got caught hacking and had his admin removed. he had access to a backdoor to the server (either he found it or created one before he was removed). then used that access to create lots of little problems that took a really long time to resolve. then DDossed server.war2.ru while he was trying to get war2 custom launched.
again i dont know how much of that is true or verified. i do know some of it to be true.
i also realize that the things i do know to be true happened quite a while ago and he seems to have been very helpful and cooperative the past year or two.
TK is right Lance is no saint. He may not have done some of the things he was accused of, but don't believe he is some saint. If you let Lance be the head of this project people will fight against it. I don't know lance from Adam except on this forum and what I heard and saw about his server when that was happening, but I do not and would not trust him with 30-50k AT ALL. He seems like a nice guy and all and he would be a good asset to help, but putting him 100% in charge is silly.
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Kickstarter
$20 own avatar
$50 own avatar and shirt
$1,000 get on war2 council
$10 get invited and kept up to date on grand opening event
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Kickstarter
$20 own avatar
$50 own avatar and shirt
$1,000 get on war2 council
$10 get invited and kept up to date on grand opening event
Sent from my nokia 5110 using Tapatalk
that's all well and good dellam but some people are going to have to donate very large sums of money. people who can afford it. *cough*
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What do you mean " have to donate" no one has to do it . Plus it's just an example . At least with a group of "owners" you could vote on subjects
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If people want iL to work faster on a specific project, why not try PMing him and offering him some money to put more focus into it? He's doing all the work he's currently doing while having a job and being a busy guy, and he's doing it for free. Instead of coming up with crazy $30,000 plans to hire entire development teams headed by a guy half the server already doesn't trust, has anyone asked iL if, were you to put $1000 in escrow for him, he would be able to complete X project by January 1?
This probably seems like the best idea,
What's the first project everyone wants done first?
I wouldn't mind raising some cash to throw il's way provided it gets done.
Probably completion of anti-hack project and hardware ban.
Alright , anti-hack and hardware ban.
then what?
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Kickstarter
$20 own avatar
$50 own avatar and shirt
$1,000 get on war2 council
$10 get invited and kept up to date on grand opening event
$10,000 get out of jail when hacking unlimited pass
Sent from my nokia 5110 using Tapatalk
FIXED
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Kickstarter
$20 own avatar
$50 own avatar and shirt
$1,000 get on war2 council
$10 get invited and kept up to date on grand opening event
$10,000 get out of jail when hacking unlimited pass
Sent from my nokia 5110 using Tapatalk
FIXED
Hacking won't be a thing ....
You won't be able to anymore
Bans will be for things like bad language or insulting people / breaking other server rules
Sent from my nokia 5110 using Tapatalk
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Kickstarter
$20 own avatar
$50 own avatar and shirt
$1,000 get on war2 council
$10 get invited and kept up to date on grand opening event
$10,000 get out of jail when hacking unlimited pass
Sent from my nokia 5110 using Tapatalk
FIXED
Lmfao
Sent from my Motorola DynaTAC 8000X using Tapatalk
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You guys are all operating under the false premise that a large investment/commitment will lead to a large increase in users. I dont believe this to be true. The fact is this is an OLD game with OLD graphics and OLD mechanics. In a super advanced console and PC world, no one new is going to join. This game still exists because of the few loyals that love this game for nostalgic reasons.
That said if you want to fix things make a minimal investment that requires marginal changes that can be handled more readily such as hosting and anti hacking. that will create an environment where there are more games for the frequent loyals that play which is what the community needs.
my two cents...
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lol lb
This is a good idea! I had the same thought that the only plausible way to "save" the game at this point is to invest some serious cash -- add all the features that have been pending for ages, fix all the glitches, streamline everything so the game is much smoother for existing players and much more newb-friendly. Of course it's a lot of work to go to for a very old game, but if someone has the time and money to sink into it then why not? Kickstarter ftw!
And there's definitely a ton of things that can be done:
- fix display glitches in new OSes
- 24/7 autohosting bots for a variety of maps
- system to let clan leaders assign icons to their own clan members
- automatically recording all games, like on Fightcade! (Don't know if it's possible, but how sweet would that be?)
- better ladder? integrate with ladder tab in server?
- improving lag/conflict/hosting issues?
- single email-verified account shared between website, forum & server, with a single profile on the site for stats, replays, game history (I personally think this is very important, especially for getting new players involved)
- lots and lots of advertising & cash prize tournies
I hope you guys get somewhere with this. Whether it should build on .ru or be a complete from-the-ground-up rewrite is probably for the developers to decide. Depending on how well-coded .ru is (or isn't) it might be easier to start from scratch. That'd be something to discuss with iL after the project is funded.
I'd also suggest looking beyond Lance for developer(s), not only because he has a lot of bad (or at least ambiguous) history with war2, but also simply because there are a lot of brilliant programmers out there and no logical reason to not at least explore your options. He does have the familiarity though, so a consulting position might be the ticket.
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my two cents...
More like your 2 million...mind blown.
(http://media.giphy.com/media/TlK63EWmJDBa5MjIr6g/giphy.gif)
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lol lb
This is a good idea! I had the same thought that the only plausible way to "save" the game at this point is to invest some serious cash -- add all the features that have been pending for ages, fix all the glitches, streamline everything so the game is much smoother for existing players and much more newb-friendly. Of course it's a lot of work to go to for a very old game, but if someone has the time and money to sink into it then why not? Kickstarter ftw!
And there's definitely a ton of things that can be done:
- fix display glitches in new OSes
- 24/7 autohosting bots for a variety of maps
- system to let clan leaders assign icons to their own clan members
- automatically recording all games, like on Fightcade! (Don't know if it's possible, but how sweet would that be?)
- better ladder? integrate with ladder tab in server?
- improving lag/conflict/hosting issues?
- single email-verified account shared between website, forum & server, with a single profile on the site for stats, replays, game history (I personally think this is very important, especially for getting new players involved)
- lots and lots of advertising & cash prize tournies
I hope you guys get somewhere with this. Whether it should build on .ru or be a complete from-the-ground-up rewrite is probably for the developers to decide. Depending on how well-coded .ru is (or isn't) it might be easier to start from scratch. That'd be something to discuss with iL after the project is funded.
I'd also suggest looking beyond Lance for developer(s), not only because he has a lot of bad (or at least ambiguous) history with war2, but also simply because there are a lot of brilliant programmers out there and no logical reason to not at least explore your options. He does have the familiarity though, so a consulting position might be the ticket.
Some great ideas
You guys need to think out side the box, read my previous posts about hitting 10,000'new users, I outlined marketing strategies and timelines .
Stop thinking about what you want, think about what the new player wants. They can download an app and play a multiplayer game in 30 secs.
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Edit: Dellam, please stop posting. Your posts are an attempt to derail the great momentum we've got going. Your ideas parallel that of a toddler. So just please, stop. lol.
Would there be a way to increase the DPI/graphics clarity if we hired a developer team? The mechanics are flawless for the most part and still ahead of its time. This game is a rare gem and beats out a lot of old AND new games. Hell CS and games shittier than that have blurry graphics and there are still thousands of active users. IF we fix the hosting issues, we can retain players a lot easier. There are a number of new people that haven't played w2 in years but found .RU download after googling this game. They get on, play 3 games in the course of 2 hours (because they can't host), get frustrated, then uninstall the game. Sound familiar? Sure does. If we get our act together, and people can host the games they want to play, there would be a much easier time at finding a larger user base. Some of us are looking at it the wrong way.
The simple fact is we've got to approach it like this in this order:
(This is our target audience with the solutions that Miranda and I have provided)
1. Attempt to retain the community we currently have. (Which is evidently dwindling by ~1 every month)
2. Attempt to reach out to members who have recently quit. (Which evidently numbers anywhere between 200-2000)
3. Attempt to reach out to old east/west and beyond players who have moved on with their lives/other games. (Warcraft 2 has sold over 2 million copies according to Wikipedia. Finding a way to reach out to any destitute nerd that has any chemical level of nostalgia seems plausible - We could reach out to the thousands with minimal advertising costs and even if we grab a conservative number of 1 out of every 10,000 user we reach, still raise our community up)
4. Attempt to find a new user base from people who have never played the game. (There are a lot of RTS players... look at the hundreds of games like www.tribalwars.net (http://www.tribalwars.net) players that are into browser based RTS. These games are way worse than W2 but they find a way to capture them. We advertise our game on sites like this we could reach out to millions of users and even if we capture just 1 in 10,000...)
You guys are very pessimistic. Even if it is realism, it's not the right way to think about it. Move out of the way so hot blood like myself and tk[as] can fucking raise money *DONATIONS* NOT *INVESTMENTS* - because there is zero return on investment and increase this user base.
DO THE STATISTICAL MATH. IF YOU REACH OUT TO THE RIGHT AUDIENCE IT IS SUPER REAL.
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Edit: Dellam, please stop posting. Your posts are an attempt to derail the great momentum we've got going. Your ideas parallel that of a toddler. So just please, stop. lol.
Would there be a way to increase the DPI/graphics clarity if we hired a developer team? The mechanics are flawless for the most part and still ahead of its time. This game is a rare gem and beats out a lot of old AND new games. Hell CS and games shittier than that have blurry graphics and there are still thousands of active users. IF we fix the hosting issues, we can retain players a lot easier. There are a number of new people that haven't played w2 in years but found .RU download after googling this game. They get on, play 3 games in the course of 2 hours (because they can't host), get frustrated, then uninstall the game. Sound familiar? Sure does. If we get our act together, and people can host the games they want to play, there would be a much easier time at finding a larger user base. Some of us are looking at it the wrong way.
The simple fact is we've got to approach it like this in this order:
(This is our target audience with the solutions that Miranda and I have provided)
1. Attempt to retain the community we currently have. (Which is evidently dwindling by ~1 every month)
2. Attempt to reach out to members who have recently quit. (Which evidently numbers anywhere between 200-2000)
3. Attempt to reach out to old east/west and beyond players who have moved on with their lives/other games. (Warcraft 2 has sold over 2 million copies according to Wikipedia. Finding a way to reach out to any destitute nerd that has any chemical level of nostalgia seems plausible - We could reach out to the thousands with minimal advertising costs and even if we grab a conservative number of 1 out of every 10,000 user we reach, still raise our community up)
4. Attempt to find a new user base from people who have never played the game. (There are a lot of RTS players... look at the hundreds of games like [url=http://www.tribalwars.net]www.tribalwars.net[/url] ([url]http://www.tribalwars.net[/url]) players that are into browser based RTS. These games are way worse than W2 but they find a way to capture them. We advertise our game on sites like this we could reach out to millions of users and even if we capture just 1 in 10,000...)
You guys are very pessimistic. Even if it is realism, it's not the right way to think about it. Move out of the way so hot blood like myself and tk[as] can fucking raise money *DONATIONS* NOT *INVESTMENTS* - because there is zero return on investment and increase this user base.
DO THE STATISTICAL MATH. IF YOU REACH OUT TO THE RIGHT AUDIENCE IT IS SUPER REAL.
So far this seems like a great approach almost all the ideas by TK and Masta on this thread. Tk should be given a large head in this project. Masta should also be given a bit of pull, I say they are the first in the new council. I and Tora will do whatever we can for this project. Whether it's raising some of the money to advertising. Keep me up to date. Mouse, Blid, and of course IL should be given some say in this having run servers and knowing what is required.
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Edit: Dellam, please stop posting. Your posts are an attempt to derail the great momentum we've got going. Your ideas parallel that of a toddler. So just please, stop. lol.
Would there be a way to increase the DPI/graphics clarity if we hired a developer team? The mechanics are flawless for the most part and still ahead of its time. This game is a rare gem and beats out a lot of old AND new games. Hell CS and games shittier than that have blurry graphics and there are still thousands of active users. IF we fix the hosting issues, we can retain players a lot easier. There are a number of new people that haven't played w2 in years but found .RU download after googling this game. They get on, play 3 games in the course of 2 hours (because they can't host), get frustrated, then uninstall the game. Sound familiar? Sure does. If we get our act together, and people can host the games they want to play, there would be a much easier time at finding a larger user base. Some of us are looking at it the wrong way.
The simple fact is we've got to approach it like this in this order:
(This is our target audience with the solutions that Miranda and I have provided)
1. Attempt to retain the community we currently have. (Which is evidently dwindling by ~1 every month)
2. Attempt to reach out to members who have recently quit. (Which evidently numbers anywhere between 200-2000)
3. Attempt to reach out to old east/west and beyond players who have moved on with their lives/other games. (Warcraft 2 has sold over 2 million copies according to Wikipedia. Finding a way to reach out to any destitute nerd that has any chemical level of nostalgia seems plausible - We could reach out to the thousands with minimal advertising costs and even if we grab a conservative number of 1 out of every 10,000 user we reach, still raise our community up)
4. Attempt to find a new user base from people who have never played the game. (There are a lot of RTS players... look at the hundreds of games like [url=http://www.tribalwars.net]www.tribalwars.net[/url] ([url]http://www.tribalwars.net[/url]) players that are into browser based RTS. These games are way worse than W2 but they find a way to capture them. We advertise our game on sites like this we could reach out to millions of users and even if we capture just 1 in 10,000...)
You guys are very pessimistic. Even if it is realism, it's not the right way to think about it. Move out of the way so hot blood like myself and tk[as] can fucking raise money *DONATIONS* NOT *INVESTMENTS* - because there is zero return on investment and increase this user base.
DO THE STATISTICAL MATH. IF YOU REACH OUT TO THE RIGHT AUDIENCE IT IS SUPER REAL.
Your just quoting what I alreAdy planned except yours if is gibberish and unthought out . No timelines or real ambision.
MAsta I put a lot of effort into this twice before but unfortunately the majority of people here don't want the server to grow. A lot of people are happy just having 2 people in chat to verse in a game . If there were 2,000 games going, those people wouldn't be happy.
That's the reason it didn't grow when I offered to get 10,000 members before . That's the reason it won't grow now . Also some1 will forget this thread and restart the same conversation in 18 months time
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this game is so old the only thing that really would give a boost is a warcraft 2 HD
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That would actually be great. Is this possible? To redo the artwork or something?
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Hi, MaStA{hR}!
Well, your idea about crowd funding campaign is generally fine, i accept that.
I agree with you that there is no investment here. Just to pay and to have happy gaming on the return.
I also have to say that i have no such team and have no experience in such hiring. So, would be great if you will find that team (or maybe you with anyone like Lance together).
Then we should make a list of tasks that could be resolved by forces of such team.
Mousey's list is a good start, let me append and comment it how i see that:
- fix display glitches in new OSes - yes, great task for outsourcing team! I'd say, fix ALL glitches in new OS'es + add 100% working windowed mode.
- 24/7 autohosting bots for a variety of maps - i'd say, the only problem is $10-$15 per months payments. 1 windows VPS hosting + Lance's hostbot with simple extention for lots of maps will 100% cover that.
- system to let clan leaders assign icons to their own clan members - simple php-script, could be easily released by me or by any foreign freelancer.
- automatically recording all games, like on Fightcade! (Don't know if it's possible, but how sweet would that be?) - good idea, good possible option is auto attaching to OBS or another streaming video system. Also a task for outsourcing team. To release as a couple of functions to be included to loader or anywhere else.
- better ladder? integrate with ladder tab in server? - yes, another thing to outsourcing team. Even could be released separately from the existing project.
- improving lag/conflict/hosting issues? - not sure if it's resolvable. The only solution i see is to find VPS hosting based in USA or w/e else. It's the easiest thing: give me such hosting, monthly payments for that and i'll move the whole project server.war2.ru there. I'll give you the technical requirements if you accept.
- single email-verified account shared between website, forum & server, with a single profile on the site for stats, replays, game history (I personally think this is very important, especially for getting new players involved) - interesting idea, i thought about that, still didn't find any beautiful solutions, i think that deserves a separate thread to discuss the details.
- lots and lots of advertising & cash prize tournies - also good thing, just pay and enjoy.
Also some additions from me:
- to update combat, to add music, add several languages, add map editor and sereval utilities (war2observe, war2insight, gateway editor, etc.). My plan to do that myself one day. And i really release new versions from time to time, so i think i'll do that one day...
- to finish antihack. Also my plan. I don't see how to outsource this task to a foreign team, maybe just partially. We have conersations with Lance about that months ago.
After that it could be a good time to start advertisement campaign in social networks and elsewhere.
Also we should resolve some social problems, like old players ban and kick newcomers, "good" players don't want to play with newcomers, that barrier between different levels of experience is really a big problem. Also shit talking alienates some possible players i think.
Would there be a way to increase the DPI/graphics clarity if we hired a developer team?
I don't think that is a high priority task, i think it's quite difficult. What we can reach, is the same 2D graphics with maybe higher resolution (1280x1024 instead of 640x480 with texture sizes like 64x64 instead of 32x32 or w/e - just to make each texture x4 higher than existing). And will cost about $x0000. And i'm not sure that will not cause any new glitches in the interface...
So I have not forgotten about this project, but I've put it on pause until I have more free time.
Nice to see you still here, Lance! I hope you'll be back in a few months, me too i hope. Well, my work busiest time is not Oct/Nov/Dec, i just have some important things in my personal life. I hope that problems will be resolved in a month or 2-3 months also.
So, let me know when you will have free time, we began some projects with antihack notifications and pvpgn server, i hope we will continue that one day...