Server Registration (VOTE)
 

I got this idea from Wiz's server listing post, where he wanted people to list their server name, type, description, webpage, etc so that the users could find servers they would be interested in without having to connect to each one of them. Now how can server registration possibly help in this regard? Easily, we make a page (and by we I mean me) that allows users to register and specify that information, one that displays a list of all servers that have been active within the last 3 days, and one that allows users to edit their information in case they change their server type. Registration probably wouldnt be mandatory so that users who dont want their server public dont have to. I think this would help people running servers get more publicity and players should find it makes it easier to find a server they might be interested in playing on.

Any Thoughts?

You could tie it to being green. In other words, green servers have more information available about them....

good idea, anyone else have any ideas?

Except that takes away the meaning of green. Stable dedicated server. It would instead mean "registered on the website" and there would be a flood of home dsl / cable servers on the green.

We could always make those servers "Legend Servers"

True true. Up to you i guess =)

I just think the true "dedicated" servers in server farms should be kept seperate from the everyday home servers. Otherwise itll be all jumbled together.

The first thing I think of is all the here today gone tomorow servers, what happens when there is information on 25 servers but only 5 of them are up anymore? You going to have a time limit where if a server isnt up for say a week there information is taken off?


It is a good idea, as long as there is a way to have information for server that arent up taken off on a regular basis or the forums will get spammed with threads asking were server X and Y are.

Could always post a time of the last update. Or have Dev's of the server send monthly e-mails to insure its still up.

This has already been thought of. Per my original post:

If a server isnt active in 72 hours (3 days) it is not displayed. It wont be deleted, it just wont show up until they are back up again.

good stuff then 2 thumbs up

Yes I like this idea.

I also agree with seperating home servers from high bandwidth servers.

As I host a home server I sure wouldn't want to be flooded with more than my comp/connection can handle, then getting a bunch of angry tells/ PM's here on the forums for connection issues.

I also think there should be a user rating system of the servers listed.

like a questionaire on various areas of server performance.

like a 1 to 10 rating system based on simple thing like :

server stability:
story line:
community feel:
GM personality:
responce to petitions:
zone performance (different than stability, ie: general issues, pathing, zoneing correctly and safe etc...) :
server speed (zone times):
update frequency:
character retention after server upgrades/updates:
Bugs (playable or not):

etc.... I am sure more can be thought of.

Also a population counter on the 5.8/5.9 server selection would be great. I miss that about seeing the Scorp server selection screen for 5.7

i say you let anyone register there servers. and take em off if they arent active on the list. like you said in first post :) dont do any green server only thingy or anything like that :lol:

Green means stable dedicated server? and exactly what do i have to do to get mine there? it is stable and dedicated . Oh and this does not sound like such a bad idea.

Dedicated as in a dedicated server in a server center? Or dedicated as in committed?

Heh.

I think this is a smart idea!!! lol i've been having problems with this and finally someone understands me :)

Could also (as I've stated in other places) is grant those users registering their servers access to the chatchannels from their server.

Nice additional bonus.

I hadn't thought of this when I made my "green server" suggestion. I can see it becoming a headache for a serverop.

This would work, but not with the questionaire. You'll find people who rate your server will most often be the ones with an axe to grind. The ones most likely to fill it out will be those who are angry over being banned, unhappy about something that has happened or serverops of other servers who want players to come to theirs instead of yours. Most responses tend to be negative for this reason. Happy players just get on and play.

Maybe there would be a way to quantify it using bandwidth, average number of players on, average time up during the day and number of days up. These and possibly other things could be used to rate a server placing them in order in the list and possibly changing them to green/preferred status at some point?

It is a dedicated server in what it is made of , an actual server box and dedicated as in we are very dedicated in what we are doing here, the only downtime will come from EQEMU loginserver troubles or the freak storms we may encounter , but then no one is immune to mother nature. I also have two backup servers here ready to roll if one goes down, they both have backups of the Database on them done everynight and everything is installed and ready to boot up should the one running now go down . I have twenty zones booted up at all times and ready with more if the demand is great enough , so far it has not been max has been 15 at once but trying to change that , so this may help .

Thats fine and dandy. but if its not on a high bandwidth connection at a datacenter somewhere it's not a "dedicated" server. No matter what way you wanna spin it. True dedicated servers have a diesel backup system for these "freak-storms" But only something as serious as a tornado would affect them.

I think servers should be in the green or legends servers that = time the server has been up and running without problems...

Take Scorps server.. its been around for ages.. it truely deserves to be on a legend list..

other servers should be in the green or preferred servers thats been around for awhile.. then the listing of other servers below it ..

i like the idea about listing webpages and more information about a server i think thats a great idea....

Player voting i disagree with.. coming from an Ultima Online EMu Community where they used a program called UOGateway.. they had many problems with this.. where players would continously vote.. making the counts not so legit...which in turn gave some servers a bit of upperhand...


which kinda goes back to my theory about servers.. Servers are not in competition here.. atleast I do not think so.. I have a player come on my server one day asking to be a GM and i Refused ... and he stated well i hope your computer burns.. and stop trying to be like Scorps server.. of course i laughed and my finger got stuck on the ole KICK button...


btw what happen to the player count on 5.9 login servers? i kinda liked that

anyways.. i think some of the ideas are great... cept the player vote stuff

T1 1.54gb connection

Ok. so you are in the top end of the home users. Still not a true dedicated machine with all the security and safety measures of a real datacentre. Lightning storms affect you, electricity goes out and so does the machine.

-- edit why did you change it to GB.. a t1 is not 1.5 GB. lol

ok , well thanks so much for your reply. just say no next time. I did not realize you had to have the same specs as eqlive servers to be considered a dedicated server here, hmmm, thought this was all about getting away from the beast , guess I was wrong

EQlive has like 10 computers strung together per EQ "Server" Handling like 10-20 zones per machine. They probably have lke 20 computers in their clusters now with the release of all the recent expansions. It was around 10 at kunark time.

guys, your getting off topic here, a requirement for having a true dedicated server is not going to happen. If you want to discuss why your server is better than someone else's than do so in another thread, stop hijacking mine! :P

Great idea and thanks Lethal.

Sorry about that Lethal your right. This sounds like a good idea.

At second thought after seeing Scorp's and Cutter's point on player votes, I see how that wouldn't work. So nvm hehe

Didn't think about all those who may think that servers are at war with eachother heh. I never thought of servers fighting for numbers, was only brainstorming how to offer better info to the users. Scorp has a great idea with quantifiing the servers registered. But something that tells the user that they will be able t log into the same server in a week and have the same characters etc....

As sotonin pointed out, SOE (The Beast) has a huge server farm setup....

We can only offer diversity in game play, just the mere thought that every server is different makes us better than "The Beast" IMO

Sorry Ed for the hijack, just throwing ideas mostly to you that expands that registration idea :-) no harm ment.

Noice, mark all whitetrash-tornadobate servers as undedicated.
anyhow what kind of bandwidth is needed for a stable server, with hopes of living off the tornado valley borders.
The Beast has more problems than a custom DSL driven server imho. :roll:
I have alwase belived, "You pay for what you get." :?
SOE pays for dedicated servers, customer support, and in return gets millions in software sales. :evil:
We pay for servers, do our own customer support, and in return get dedicated clients. If you think SOE has dedicated clients, your clearly mistaken, isnt that why we are here. :wink:
I do agree with a list that sports servers past the progress and into playable status, but ranking the servers based on what they run on is a huge mistake. When I start a server I dont expect to fork out the $400 a month for 10 dedicated players, and since my server is at the bottom of th list cause i dont pay the $400 a month what are the chances I can get it on the list. This is a building community, and ranking builds destroys the operator to operator support. :cry:

I belive it was Juran that thought employee ranking systems beased on progress within the workplace was the biggest mistake any corp. could make. He was the man who retooled the Japanise Enterprise in the 70s-80s. now we run on there archetecture. 8)

Maybe showing the total hours of uptime for the day/week/month/since birth, after server name... People then can decide for themselves who the stars are. Like Juran would have wanted, let the clients choose who the emplyee of the moth are, cause i can out perform my fellows for my boss, but what customer whants to talk to somone who's breath smells like poo? :shock:

That would work, except for the fact that total uptime is deceiving. you can be up for months and months but on a dsl connection past a certain point players will do nothing but nonstop LD, and that's not really a good server now is it?

Hey now lol, it says to the left that yer in Wisconsin :-P

I am too heh we get our share of tornado fun, just not like those to the south :-)

really not wanting to get off subject here and once again I do appologize Lethal but the question I asked was not answered and that was , what exactly do i have to do to get mine on the green server list? who would I have to talk to or what do I have to do , btw Soto where did you buy the diesel generator and how much room do I need for it?

lol i didnt buy a diesel generator.

The datacenter where my server is housed has one and is hooked up to multiple OC-XX whatever lines directly to multiple internet backbones. Thats how all the *good* datacentres are.

I have seen this question a LOT, and it took over a year for Scorpious2k to get green and that was with 99% uptime and a large player base. May not be so hard now, but i would think it would take a few months of being up with very little downtime.

mattmeck is correct.. a server should be around for awhile to be in the green and the qualifications are just that.. uptime

Im sure everyone here knows how frustrating it can be to start a char on a server.. log on. and say to themselves.. hey what a great server.. then build thier char.. find nice stuff.. meet other players.. and then 3 days later.. omg !!! the server is gone..

noone really wants to do that.. it can be very annoying.. so player now has to go to yet another server.. one thing the eqemu community knows is that tomorrow.. scorp and wr and peq is still around.. i am still hoping i can get that respect with my server as well....

Yes i understand all of that . But who decides ai have been up long enough and stable enough and dedicated enough to become eligible for green status?? can I have my players that have been on my server along time send a petition of some sort ?

That is one of the problems that this new server registration will fix. In the stats page we can determine how long a server has been up, uptime percentage, users, etc. Right now there is no real process for green servers unfortunately. What server do you run?

Server is the same as my website sig, Fates Destiny how long before this registration process is in effect? it looks like its got all the votes it needs , please check out my website to see how devoted me and my staff are to this, check the bugs forum and see how fast we respond or check out Fates Realm on the main webpage to see how involved we are, we are not doing all of this work to just drop it tomorrow , Also it is a 5.7DR6 server. I have put together a whole zone just for Halloween and will be doing the same for other holidays, drop in on it and check it out for yourself. I invite anyone that may be the one to vote on green names to try it out . Oh and one more thing , its all about quests, we get alot of people asking what is custom about it, Well it is the quests , there are many and all different from live.

Yah I understand that, talk to me on irc some time. I'm aways on just pm me when your available. I might be afk just I will respond when I get back. Some of the stats that me and Doodman will be working on wont be available with old versions, unless you specifically make the changes necessary and recompile. So the new servers will have more information displayed than the old ones.

I am for the idea of creating some sort of catalog list of servers. Big thumbs up :D