Cash Council

[dbodenheim]

I have to admit, unlocking awards and kits is nice. Im really tired of doing that away from my WiH friends though. Lets talk in this thread about setting up a 32 man ranked server. $$$ , unfortuately speaks in this thread. Dont shut the possibilty down before we gather the donaters. Its expensive, but we may be able to pool enough for a few months. Wont discuss publically what I will donate, but its serious enough to get the debate going. Serious $$$ donation thread.


I hate EA for doing this btw.

[Å|Ragan]

I finish my college career in two weeks, which goes to say that I am flat broke. As such I wouldn't be able to make a donation as large as I would like, but if this was taken seriously and the WiHadmins wanted to go ahead with this, I would be willing to make what ever donation I could.

[The Needle]

I will donate, my question is how much. I see that you can rent a server for as low as $5 per slot per month. Who wouldn't pony up $10 a month for a 32 man server?

[atomicbob]

I want to kill more of my friends, too.

I'm down with the donation gig.

:D

[GorroXXII]

should do what Cntrl Alt DEl is doing!!! first collect then make a private passworded server, and those theat pay get the password, and he plans to change the password every month, so to contiue to play you need to donate an additional 5 bucks, 5 bucks x 12 months = 60 little bucks :D but seriously I could afford the $5 a month, just brown bag it once or twice a week!!! But I think this would be a great idea, but I think there would need to be some higher level of commitment from the community IMO, because it would be an obligation to the admins. I am all for it, I hate not playing with this community it just sucks plain and simple, you juast get use to the voices and actions of teammates, makes it just so much more fun.

[Krunkert]

I'd be game for up to a $10 donation. We'd only have to have it for a month or two. All we really need it for is unlocking a couple slots, after that it would probably loose it's luster. After testing the weapons out all I really want to unlock is sniper and Spec ops.

[GorroXXII]

well I heard that it cant be passworded, so scratch that part that I had typed in :x

[jwolly2]

I've stated this on the LiT forums, but I'm just not enjoying BF2 as much as I thought I would. I never expected it to top CS for me, but this one's not even coming close. Looking at it, the thing that's made gaming more enjoyable for me lately was this community.

I really want the best of both worlds. I want the WiH community back in full force, along w/ the ranked servers so we can get the unlockables, attract other friends that will only play ranked servers, and continue to grow the community. I'm willing to put some $$ down to make that happen.

It would be terribly frustrating, however, to put down some $$, and not be able to play b/c the server is always full. I'm not advocating a private server at this time, as I'd like to see this help the community grow, but I'd like some sort of VIP system if available.

I'm interested to see where this goes.

[meltdown]

Just to fill in on the passworded issue which Gorro and I was discussing on our forums. As soon as you password a ranked server it still shows up ranked but it not counted towards the ranking because EA cannot verify that cheating/exploiting is not taking place. So yeah, soon as the server went up it would be full and we couldn't (or would be hard pressed) to get on.

[wihadmin]

Some of the cheaper places where you can rent for $5 a month are not what I would call "ideal". You guys are used to our servers w/o lag. The $5 servers are loaded up on a single machine like flies on a pile of shit. IE laggy as all hell. In addition, you might or might not have admin tools available. So it means that you'll be paying $150+ a month for a server that'll be so full that even you can't get on to make room for the rest of the people who are donating.

Please allow us some time as our provider is working toward a solution on ranked server. The owners are working hard at giving input to our provider in respect to the admin tools and other necessities to effectively managed a ranked server. The last thing we want to do is to put up a server and have it full and none of you guys can get on.

[The Needle]

Yup. I understand, thats why I said $10 a month instead of $5. :)

[Krunkert]

Hopefully a tool would be implemented that allowed players who donate a VIP status. This would automatically kick a random person to make room for us, thats what I'm hoping anyways.

[GorroXXII]

well, one thing about the adminstration on these servers, there always seems to be an admin on at all points of the day, so a simple hopping on TS and requesting a spot worked just as well for me, the VIP thing would be kewl, I have a feeling alot of people from this community will donate for a ranked server, I am sure WiH owners will handle this properly, they always have :thumbsup:

[jwolly2]

Please allow us some time as our provider is working toward a solution on ranked server. The owners are working hard at giving input to our provider in respect to the admin tools and other necessities to effectively managed a ranked server. The last thing we want to do is to put up a server and have it full and none of you guys can get on.

Hehe, sounds good. I'm glad to hear that you're looking at all the issue (performance, admin tools, etc) I wouldn't expect any less from you guys.

Just wanted to let you guys know that there would be a little bit of $$ support here if you decide to go that route. Hopefully we can find something that will serve us all well.

[monos]

Some of the cheaper places where you can rent for $5 a month are not what I would call "ideal". You guys are used to our servers w/o lag. The $5 servers are loaded up on a single machine like flies on a pile of shit. IE laggy as all hell. In addition, you might or might not have admin tools available. So it means that you'll be paying $150+ a month for a server that'll be so full that even you can't get on to make room for the rest of the people who are donating.

Please allow us some time as our provider is working toward a solution on ranked server. The owners are working hard at giving input to our provider in respect to the admin tools and other necessities to effectively managed a ranked server. The last thing we want to do is to put up a server and have it full and none of you guys can get on.

Tell us how much money is needed when the time comes you guys that are owners have always made room for us regulars when we need it and i myself have no problem kicking in my share to help keep the good gaming cheat free lag free eviroment available to me i do not need a guarantee of a slot since i have never really had that problem.

[Kev Kanos]

I have no problem giving whatever is needed. I dont see $10 doing anything. Right now we would need 54 people giving $10 a month to make this happen. That seems imposable, but, 27 people giving $20 seems more likly. I am not pressuring to give more or not but I see this as a community that is working to make games fun again and are doing a great job at it so when they need our help why would you say I can give $5. I understand some people go to school and cant give as much but dont limit yourself to only $10. I want this to happen. I hate this whole EA ranked thing. I cant belive they did this, but since they did lets have the best community we can.

[meltdown]

I don't think it's an issue of getting the money, I think it's an issue of being sure we can play on it. Most of the ranked server admins have the problem of they boot the server, and by the time they get in game and get to the multi-player tab the server is already full and they can't get on. I also don't believe EA allows any software to be used on the server in relation to the game other than BF2CC (which is only useable through RCON) for management or in regards to the BF2 server itself. This being due to the fact they want to make absolutly sure the server is as pure and hack free as possible. So the reserved slot/auto-boot program is out the window as well, even if we could find someone to write the program for us.

The BF2 ranked servers aren't something like our current BF2 servers, which is just essentially a blank slate windows box we pay for and where we can load on anything we want to on the server and change the configs and all to our heart's content. They are heavily monitored and restricted beasts unfortunatly, and if you want something changed (from what I have seen) you have to have the server co. do it, and you can't just remote terminal into the box.

[Kev Kanos]

Well that sucks.

[wihadmin]

If they hadn't gone and wrote an unsecure ranking system via scripts, then this wouldn't be an issue. You don't write your "bread and butter" features in scripts that even a grade-school kid can decipher and hacked around. You frigging build it into your compiled executable and only controlled data to be pass in and out from it.

What were they thinking?

[monos]

If they hadn't gone and wrote an unsecure ranking system via scripts, then this wouldn't be an issue. You don't write your "bread and butter" features in scripts that even a grade-school kid can decipher and hacked around. You frigging build it into your compiled executable and only controlled data to be pass in and out from it.

What were they thinking?

the problem is you assume they were thinking :jester:

[meltdown]

If they hadn't gone and wrote an unsecure ranking system via scripts, then this wouldn't be an issue. You don't write your "bread and butter" features in scripts that even a grade-school kid can decipher and hacked around. You frigging build it into your compiled executable and only controlled data to be pass in and out from it.

What were they thinking?

Thing is I think Dice always believed the ranking system would be "optional", and EA essentially made it required. Only reason I can think for Dice to do the things they did with the .Py files (such as allowing you to unlock everything through them for everyone). If you noticed the first people to get all up in arms about the unlocked servers was EA and not Dice, Dice originally was saying something like "We have zero clue what is going on, you shouldn't be getting removed for that", then EA came back and said "Sorry we aren't permitting it". I'm willing to bet the ranking system requirements are set on EA's side as well and not Dice's.

[SnaKe]

If they hadn't gone and wrote an unsecure ranking system via scripts, then this wouldn't be an issue. You don't write your "bread and butter" features in scripts that even a grade-school kid can decipher and hacked around. You frigging build it into your compiled executable and only controlled data to be pass in and out from it.

What were they thinking?

Thing is I think Dice always believed the ranking system would be "optional", and EA essentially made it required. Only reason I can think for Dice to do the things they did with the .Py files (such as allowing you to unlock everything through them for everyone). If you noticed the first people to get all up in arms about the unlocked servers was EA and not Dice, Dice originally was saying something like "We have zero clue what is going on, you shouldn't be getting removed for that", then EA came back and said "Sorry we aren't permitting it". I'm willing to bet the ranking system requirements are set on EA's side as well and not Dice's.I think your right about that Melt. These are marketing ppl making these decissions not the game developers.

[Nutcracker]

I'd be willing to throw in $10/mo as well to keep it going. While I'd much rather play CS:S, BF2 isn't bad and I enjoy knowing I can come play with some decent people who don't feel the need to:

Cheat
b3 31337
Curse every other word (though if my mic was constantly on, I'd probably fall into this category)
Spew out racist crap every 5 minutes

So even though I'm not a big BF2 fan, I've still been mooching off the servers here for a few months and would be more than willing to donate. Sign me up!

- Nutcracker