Anyone looked at Jolt lately?

[DaGaffer]

Its rather different. I didn't realise it was under new ownership.

 

[ECA]

Who are the new owners?

 

[DaGaffer]

Company called Ferrago. Don't know anything about them. They run play.tm as well, which rings a bell. Quick blast around the forums and it looks like clan servers have gone.

 

[throdgrain]

Havent looked at them in years.

 

[DaGaffer]

Havent looked at them in years.

Me neither. It was a work thing that made me take a look. Looks like the last of the old school GSPs has finally bitten the dust and they're turning it into some kind web games service.

 

[Ch3tan]

I looked a year ago, was looking for CSS servers to play on. The site was a mess, I could not find any server listings apart from those of clan servers. The forums and community elements had taken second fiddle to just selling things and content reviews.

The site now looks just as bad, and god the forums are slow. I wonder how they will make their money without the clan servers?

Oh well, there goes the last UK GSP.

 

[MYstIC G]

Jolt died when Weebl & Bob moved house tbfh.

 

[GReaper]

Company called Ferrago. Don't know anything about them. They run play.tm as well, which rings a bell. Quick blast around the forums and it looks like clan servers have gone.

No no, it's OMAC Industries who bought Jolt last year. They kept most of the stuff running as usual until December/January when they suddenly decided to concentrate on web based games and have ditched most of the gaming and clan servers:

Customer Announcement:

As most of you are probally aware Jolt Online Gaming Ltd is now a subsidiary of OMAC Industries.

OMAC has, as its main focus, a growing network of Persistent Browser Games and Jolt will be aligning its operations with that focus.

As a result, we will no longer be offering Clan or Game servers for new orders or renewals after the end of January 2009.

Please be assured that those of you with existing contracts will be able to run your servers until their expiration date and renewals are still possible until the end of January, but only for a maximum period of one month.

We thank you for your custom over the last few years, and hope to see you on the forums and our new Persistent Browser Games.

OMAC outsourced the Jolt site to Ferrago, so they could keep it up and running as a gaming news portal.

It's a shame they didn't maintain the existing brand as well as they could've done. It just seemed like they added a new game to the Jolt brand, let a bunch of volunteers run it, then it deteriorate over time without caring. Jolt was one of the big three oldest providers (BarrysWorld, Jolt, Multiplay), looks like this is the death of Jolt as we knew it - so it's just Multiplay left.

 

[Mabs]

Jolt was one of the big three oldest providers (BarrysWorld, Jolt, Multiplay), looks like this is the death of Jolt as we knew it - so it's just Multiplay left.

wireplay anyone ?

 

[GReaper]

wireplay anyone ?

I knew I'd forget one

 

[MYstIC G]

Wireplay goes up and down more than a whore's draws.

 

[Embattle]

Haven't been there in ages since I got banned by a mod for trying to be funny....clearly I failed

 

[Wazzerphuk]

You've always failed at humour Embattle, but never mind. Wanking pigs isn't my strong point but Rebecca Loos is good at that. We each have our own talents, eh?


Are there any league setups like there used to be anymore, how does clan gaming work these days if there're no GSPs? I fell out the scene a few years back and am interested to see how it's developing with all these new media frameworks and online games...

 

[Ch3tan]

Isn't it all done through the dedicated league websites these days? Been a while since I was in a clan so out of touch as well. Best to ask the KEA boys.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

They're so disorganised and sloppy they can't even spell their own names without clubbing together and shooting some animals, falling off ladders, and generally being foolish (It's their 3-step plan to spelling success). How would they know?

 

[Ch3tan]

Their individual skills (failings?) combine to make them an unstoppable force when together! That and lots of bacon.

 

[Nate]

I'm sure I was on a tf2 jolt server the other day, some clan called ::nG:: seemed to be running things on there.

 

[adams901]

There are still a few clan servers running, some had long term contracts.

I think the last one ends in september... Plus the public servers are still running for the time being.

 

[lecter]

DaGaffer probably has a better view on this. But is a GSP still not a viable business? The costs are down thanks to moores law, hosting, bandwidth etc. Broadband is now pervasive across the uk. Games sales are one of the few growth sectors.

I though jolt died when nildram sold to pipex and pipex to tiscali.

 

[MYstIC G]

Multiplay still seem to be doing ok.

 

[Poag]

There's a few other gsps aswell.

Like killercreation and Inx-Gaming who I've recently moved from to.

Not so much leagues as servers. Leagues are mainly ED and ukesa based. With ettf2l for tf2 peeps. Sure there's lots if css leagues also.

 

[GReaper]

The old model of trying to be everything to gamers (leagues/ladders, website, forum, entire community) seems to be declining, but gaming server providers are still doing fairly well. GSPs used to dominate with a community due to the high costs of hosting servers, they were the ones running large numbers of servers and able to build up a brand.

These days any clan can probably rent a server for less than £20-25 a month, which isn't that much when it gets split between an entire clan.

 

[Yaka]

christ things have changed somewhat. what happened to bigfoot? i bumped into him playing css a few years back on a jolt server

 

[mank!]

i believe bigfoot is still playing wow.

multiplay are still going pretty strong, i pretty much only use their servers for tf2 and only play on my "clan" server for l4d now.

 

[DaGaffer]

Multiplay have been quite smart and are doing lots of server and community management work for publishers, particularly EA. It was one of things we'd started to do before GAME.Net died (hence DAOC and that funny smell coming from OT) and there are quite a few companies making good money at it since the rise of social networking.

 

[Yaka]

makes me miss bw even more:/

around this till hours after thered always be servers filled with good peeps playing q3a/ut/cs/tribes and various decent mods. i miss that now i just tend to read books till 3am:/

 

[Deebs]

BW rocked! All these conversations bring back memories, so many of which I am fond of. I thought I was good but I was shit. Names? Cenobite, Sujoy, TedTheDog, BigFoot. They are the ones that stick in my mind tonight. Oh and Base32a b or c.

 

[SAS]

The old days ...

 

[MYstIC G]

BW rocked! All these conversations bring back memories, so many of which I am fond of. I thought I was good but I was shit. Names? Cenobite, Sujoy, TedTheDog, BigFoot. They are the ones that stick in my mind tonight. Oh and Base32a b or c.

Don't forget ^Barry^

*sniff*