OK first I'd like to say that I'm not one to point the finger at anyone else for the quality or style of their unpaid volunteer/hobby activities. I'm aware that even low levels of admin/event event co-ordination etc. can take up a large amount of your personal time. I'm glad there is anywhere left we can all play WC2 and thank anyone volunteering their time and effort to that end. I certainly don't have the time or personal resources to run a server so I'm glad there are still people who do.
idk man, it seems facile to reduce all ru's problems to the fact that it gives toxic people an equal right to use the server. there's so many other factors at play......
Well THB really don't think the war2.ru has a lot of problems at all:
Moron attacks aside, it has a reliable server that is almost never down, a nice stable easily installed client, a great website with lots of interesting stuff (plus the russian site which I can't understand but looks to have some cool features and a community), it has an active and technically reliable forum, discord, twitch, the status page is great, and 99 times out of 100 it all basically does what it should. Yes I agree a PvPGN update might be nice, but really the old battle.net system pretty much is-what-it-is.
The issue I see is one of one of the community. There are simply fewer and fewer people playing. There's players who love and play the game actively leaving, and really hardly any genuine newbies to speak of.
I myself have occasionally spent time playing stupid little ad-ridden browser games etc. Every day there are millions of bored people clicking of their web-browsers looking for something to play, but the few that end up here don't seem to stay long. Why not?
The best situation for a healthy server that is sustainable or even growing is that it should ALWAYS have some noobs, which means that there would also be noobs playing all the time.
That's right ... noobs in YOUR games! ... All the time! ... put one on each team and get them playing. Every single game. This would be perfect situation, but right now there aren't enough noobs to go round.
A
balanced game with some good and some new players is a
PRO GAME with a good host.
8 people constantly joining one game while 2 or 4 people play and the rest watch .... WTH? go make another game, if you're lucky you might get some noobs to join too!
..... personally, i also like the non-hypocrisy of allowing everyone the opportunity to play here. the modern mindset treats "toxic" people as if they are lesser human beings and takes great pleasure in ridiculing, shunning & ejecting them from on or offline communities. well, that's exactly the same thing that bigots are being shunned & rejected for doing, so how does that make sense? all this does is segregate human beings into two opposed populations that are constantly at each other's throats....
I absolutely want the toxic people to play. I would never see any group of people leaving the game as at all desirable. I want everyone to play. We are the community ... all of us that are still playing. The community isn't anyone's idea of what it should be, it is the people, it's us.
IMHO the cohesion and permiability of this group is the most important and pretty much only major issue with the game- server- whatever.
I firmly believe that there IS a happy medium where all of us can co-exist, attract new players, and enjoy the game, and when anyone ... really ANYONE ... for whatever reason, decides to leave the community it is a big FAIL and LOSE for us all.
I generally try to be civil when I'm playing, but over the years I have sometimes got into arguments with people - I have hurled abuse - I have sent nasty messages, raged, BSed and been a fully toxic dick. It happens. But we ALL should just be a tiny bit aware that we actually want people to play this game, yes even the one's you don't like, and not be SO nasty that they leave.
Just use some common sense. There are always going to be people you don't like in any group. Just talk normally to them when you have to - for procedural stuff or whatever, but apart from that just leave them alone. Grown-ups do that ffs.For those few brain-damaged permenantly toxic children, I think it's up to the rest of us - amins, players, whatever, just all of us - to let them know by whatever means available when they are way over the line and should pull their heads in.
Regardless of what anyone's personal philosopy is on anything, the fact is that by any means: making people leave the community is damaging the group and therefore doing the wrong thing by the community.- If we made the place so politically-correct and puritanical that someone had such a bad time with the atmosphere that they actually left, this would be damaging to the community.
- If we allowed anyone to be so consistantly and deliberately toxic that someone else had such a bad time that they left the community, this would also be damaging to our community.
These things would indicate that the situation
has damaged the community. The exact correct/most desirable path may be a subject for opinion and arbitration but the fact that it lies somewhere in between these extremes is IMHO undeniable.
...... i doubt that, people who have played here for 10 years aren't going to just quit because they couldn't log in a few times. minor week-to-week fluctuations are hardly anything to go by
Definately not. I don't think the bot attacks made any real difference to anything, they're just a symptom or the underlying tension in the community that IS having an effect... I think we had better turn that chill in the air into the teensy little wake-up call and all just start leaning a bit in the realistic direction.
Whatever the atmosphere in our community is, there sure isn't a line of new people waiting to get in.Awesome game. Great sever. So why not?
