Are you fed up with empty servers

[stile62]

Are you like me totally PISSED OFF with all these perminently empty servers that could be being used, why not send Barrysworld a nice reminder of who exactly is helping to pay their wages.

If like me you intend on not renewing you membership next time please respond to this message so as we can make it nice an clear to BW exactly whats going to happen.,

I'm affraid I've had enough now of trying to find a game of CS here, they've had enough time to sort out some solution like opening up the servers for free for maybe 2 or 3 days a week with member preferences, reduced membership fee or something else, so BW, UP YOURS!

 

[S-Gray]

Sure Servers are empty... but you get more than Servers in Subscription, i find it far more worthwhile with their FTP/Website so.. i aint moaning.

 

[Cdr]

It is annoying that there is absolutely no-one on the servers, as this is the main reason why I subscribed.

Before the switch any free time I had was spent on the SOF2 servers (which were almost always full), as time went on the servers became less and less populated, to the point where you're thinking 'whats the point of sitting in this empty server waiting for someone?'

I then moved onto BF1942, and again, when the game first came out, the servers where quite popular, but now it's tailed off again.

The other 'benefits' of the webspace and the 'fast' ftp server, although good - the main selling point and the reason behind many people subscribing was the prospect of cheat-free gaming, on fast servers.

And at the moment, the only reason it is cheat free, is cos there's no-one actually playing on them

Sad state of affairs, and I'll be hard pushed to actually subscribe again next year (regardless of the price) unless the servers pick up again.

Lets hope the new advertising campaign that's in the pipeline will work and we'll have the servers bursting with people again.

 

[old.Psy2k]

Cdr smells of poo.

 

[Cdr]

I told you not to tell anyone

 

[old.D0LLySh33p]

He can't help it.

 

[Pro]v[etheus]

For those of you looking to play TFC check out the sticky 'Show your support'.

 

[Toilet-Duck!]

Originally posted by old.Psy2k
Cdr smells of poo.

LOL

 

[scooby-doo]

stile you're a prick.

dont really think it's barrys fault that no-one is playing.there are quite a few members now its just having the time to play thats all.
and as grey so rightfully pointed out ya get a lot for ya money anyway.so do us all a favour and crawl back under the rock.

 

[Mr Flibble]

Originally posted by scooby-doo
stile you're a prick.

dont really think it's barrys fault that no-one is playing.there are quite a few members now its just having the time to play thats all.
and as grey so rightfully pointed out ya get a lot for ya money anyway.so do us all a favour and crawl back under the rock.

bit uncalled for that. The main point of subscribing to BW is the games servers, not the FTP or anything else. If there's noone on the servers, there's no point in being subscribed. Sorry but it is Barrysworld's fault as a company that there's noone on the servers.

 

[scooby-doo]

do apologise.well for calling him a prick at the very least.

 

[-adz-]

Webspace, pah you get that free with your broadband supplier anyway.. and usually more storage space.

 

[old.Psy2k]

Originally posted by Cdr2002
I told you not to tell anyone

Sorry Mr. ClanLeader Sir.

At least they don't know that you have fish for a stomach.

 

[jezz]

Originally posted by scooby-doo
stile you're a prick.

dont really think it's barrys fault that no-one is playing.there are quite a few members now its just having the time to play thats all.
and as grey so rightfully pointed out ya get a lot for ya money anyway.so do us all a favour and crawl back under the rock.

Erm yes it is "Barrys" fault. Im sure its obvious to all Pay to Play model dosent work.

This type of service could be supported by a big ISP as a service to attract gamers to its dialup/adsl services. What ever happended to BW's dial up they made money from eh?

One of the ISP's should pay to play not gamers.

 

[Will]

ISP run services with no pay-to-play model are supported by volunteers within the staff. There is no additional money in running gaming services.

As for pay-to-play not working, I think its pretty obvious that play-on-our-hardware-for-free-and-use-our-bandwidth-for-free wasn't working either. Barrydial disappeared because of unmetered dialup and broadband, there just isn't the demand for dialup for gaming any more.

 

[throdgrain]

There is for me ...

 

[Will]

Ok, I'll rephrase...Throd's dialup bill won't pay for all of Barrysworld.

 

[jezz]

Was BW in talks with some ISP about picking up the cost? What happend to that? Whats wrong with offering ADSL and making money form that?

It kills me to see BW the way it is now. I just had a quick look at the server page and 1 person playing with himself.

imho i cant see that BW have reached the membership required to support its self and i would worry about the long term value of any subscritions

 

[Will]

BW was bailed out by GAME when the costs of bandwidth and hardware became too much to bear, and funding ran out. GAME don't want BW to be here forever just eating their money, which is understandable, and so, once the software was all written and the bugs ironed out, BW became the subscriber only service it is now.

I can't disagree that the servers are empty, though it does depend on the game. Counterstrike has suffered more than most because of the volume of free servers that are perfectly adequate to run the game, whereas other games like Operation Flashpoint, which have a very low number of public servers, have actually done rather better than expected (well, I was surprised). Inbetween are games like Battlefield 1942, where the BW servers were very busy when the initial rush of players joined the game, but tailed off due to the delay of the 1.2 patch, and haven't really picked up again (though we had a good go last night).

I'm hoping that, when Game.net goes live and the service is actually being sold to new customers, things should pick up. If people are really lucky, they'll have a little interview with me free with every copy of Operation Flashpoint. I don't know if this will help Counterstrike or not, given how established a game it is, but newer games, requiring more powerful hardware, should make more of an impact.

 

[ECA]

I think the whole move to subs was fucked up.

There was NO notice given on the servers themselves, and it went immediately from all open to everyone, to all closed.

This of course, is never going to work, as the majority of players, dont read the website/forums.

From what I can see it should have gone like this

Step 1.

Advertise on the servers for a month that its going to P2P, and also note the price, and other services.

Step 2.

Allow LIMITED access for the public.

So in a 16 player server, 8 slots are free for all, the other 8 are subs only.

Step 3. Make it MORE limited. so only 4 slots are open from the public - only taken when there are enough subscribers to support it.

Step 4. Close of all access from the public.


Unfortunately, BW went straight to Step 4.

 

[Will]

The software would have needed to be very different to allow that, I believe. When you log on, it allows your IP address to ping the servers, when you don't log on, they aren't there. The system is designed for all games, rathr than Halflife (where I know you can do the sort of things you suggesed ECA).

I'm not saying the changeover was perfect, but I get the feeling the plans are slightly more long term, which is a good thing (funding ain't going to disappear), and a bad thing (empty servers right now).

 

[old.Hooligun]

Don't think GAME are the masters of long-term planning:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2583333.stm

Check out the bits about forcasting a 'bumper Xmas' in October
and the failure to promote price cuts.
Sound familiar ?

Makes me fear for BW.

First thing companies in trouble do is sell off non-core parts of the business and to lower costs.

 

[Will]

Ouch, that is bad. Weirder considering the industry news sites are talking about bumper revenues this year.

 

[b00bie]

There was NO notice given on the servers themselves, and it went immediately from all open to everyone, to all closed.

i remember information been show on the servers saying they were going to p2p before the switch, it was displayed across the bottom of the screen every so many mins.

Like its been said already it not games fault that there empty most of the time, they got enough subscribers, its just most of the subscribers play on rival services.

Wait until the other game service providers switch to p2p and see if the numbers pick up.

Since p2p started BW has taken aboard sugestions from subscribers and the state of there service is now 100% better than the how it used to be.

b00bie

 

[ECA]

Originally posted by b00bie


i remember information been show on the servers saying they were going to p2p before the switch, it was displayed across the bottom of the screen every so many mins.

Like its been said already it not games fault that there empty most of the time, they got enough subscribers, its just most of the subscribers play on rival services.

Wait until the other game service providers switch to p2p and see if the numbers pick up.

Since p2p started BW has taken aboard sugestions from subscribers and the state of there service is now 100% better than the how it used to be.

b00bie

It said the servers were moving, please see www.barrysworld.com


At least thats what it said, and is still saying, on the CS servers.

 

[S-Gray]

Hm, if i recall, they displayed it, but some info got cut off across the screen

 

[Deady]

I think it could have been done better.

Instead of going instantly from "open to all" to "closed to non subscribers".

It should have gone from, open to all, to "Barrysworld membership accounts are FREE, but you need to have one and be logged in to play", and THEN to "You need to pay to keep you BW account".

This would have introduced people to the idea of logging in first before they could play, without costing them anything.

You could also then use the email address they signed up with to inform them about P2P and what it means.

Rather than having an RCON SAY message that didnt appear properly and missed off half the message.

 

[Maljonic]

I played on BW for over a year before I found out that there was a whole website industry type scenario going on but if I hadn't I would have been confused about what happened to BW. I keep seeing people in town that used to play cs and tfc on BW and they asked me what happened to it; when I tell them they say like "Oh, thought it was just fooked and gone offline. Play on BY or Demon (yuk) now anyway"

I play CS on a clan server and if one of the clan wants to get on when it's full the highest pinged player not in the clan gets booted off. Maybe BW could have automated something like that, lowest pinged none subscriber gets booted off when a paying customer wants to join a full game. It would encourage ppl to pay and possibly speed up the game.