NGUK : The bigger picture.

[wolfeeh]

stu- you fucking child

stu - ^^ says it all

d r e ad - it must be said you did start it, because joke or not, that was the dumbest thing you could possibly have said about BT, talk about setting the tone. it was a llama comment. simple.

ANYWAY time for my £0.02

i've been on the net at home for around 6 years.... online gaming for oooh 5 of them.... red alert.. dark forces... tfc... cs.. flf..... tribes 2...etc... games come, games go... my first few years of online gaming were with the zone and westwood's pants internet peer to peer thing... then along came the world of server based play.... TFC! played that on force 9 mainly.... huge crowd of dedicated, friendly people... lot of whom are now BW users i understand... anyway, then came cs init... where was the only decent place to play cs for years? BW. now... there's a bit more chocie of where to play.... jolt... bw.. etc.... so am i gonna play on all these servers? am i arse. i'm gonna stay here. this is where my community is now... if i have to pay for it, then so be it.... one thing's for certain: subscription fees are going to weed out a LOT of lamers... certainly some genuinely people are going to be lost to the community because they can't or won't pay.... but think about all those cheats that are going to be going... a cheat is going to get caught at some point... and then he gets banned (forever probably) now is there anyone stupid enough to pay money for a service, then risk getting thrown off that service? i doubt it.

another interesting point about subscriptions is;

clan servers. everyone WANTS them, but how do you pay for them? granted you occasionally get a stinking rich clan member to pay for themm, which is nice, but not especially fair, or a viable option for the masses. so my idea is?

well; your paying a subscription, i assume you have some sort of login, and account... a simple (i imagine) extension of this, is to specify a clan(s) that you want to make a contribution to a server for. and the money is automatically debited along with your (monthly?) fee. simple. you could even have some code that dynamically adjusts your server fee based on new clan members, etc.

oh yeh this is meant to be a discussion on netgames. pity

 

[stu]

wolfy - you fairy!

you company man!

 

[Durzel]

As an aside, I can't understand how anyone can "hate" a service that is provided to them for nothing. I couldn't personally give a rats arse what "lame" things NGUK (or indeed anyone else did) - ultimately they provided servers that thousands of people have played on at some point in time. The worst you can be is indifferent to it - neither caring or appreciating the fact that it exists.

Half of the problem is that people think setting up GSPs is easy, or think its their god given right to be provided with servers to play on whenever they feel like it. God forbid any volunteer help should forget to patch a server within 5 minutes of a patch being released.

 

[old.Kurt_Angle]

Originally posted by BlissedUp


Lots of software manufacturers are pissed that they only get income when a new product is released and would prefer to get a steady stream of income like most businesses.

What?

I presume this would be a completely endless 'stream' of income, as such it would surely out weigh the cost of a payment for the product.

The software manufacturers sell a product, in most cases they don't run a service.

If i buy a music cd, should i have to pay a fee everytime i wish to listen to it?

I just don't get it, maybe iv'e got the wrong end of the stick or something, but a product is completely different to running service. And yes these companies should provide support/service for there products for free, thats how most other industries work.

 

[Durzel]

What with the proliferation of CD keys (trying to cut down on piracy, ergo increase ones revenue) a lot of software companies are finding that they have to provide ancilliary services (i.e. auth servers, regular patches, etc) besides actually selling the game itself.

 

[Mellow-]

Originally posted by Kurt_Angle
If i buy a music cd, should i have to pay a fee everytime i wish to listen to it?

Not at all. But thats when you're using your own cd player etc. Paying for a GSP is necessary because you are using their servers, bandwidth etc.

 

[old.Kurt_Angle]

Yes but thats a Service mellow. I agree paying for a service isn't a problem, but paying over and over again for a product is.

 

[old.BlissedUp]

Originally posted by Kurt_Angle
What?

It's a kind of futuristic thing, where we as consumers will actually own very little but instead buy licences to use things. It's kind of here already with most software as we dont actually own the software but we buy outright a licence to use it indefinately. A lot of software manufacturers would prefer it if we didn't buy a lifetimes licence but instead paid a monthly subscription to use it because this provides them with a more regular income plus they get paid more for product. I paid £29.99 for Half-Life 2 years ago and can carry on using it, pass it on to my children whatever. If instead Sierra charged me £5 per month, the total would be £240. That's just an example btw. The trick is for developers to pitch the price just right so we think we're getting a bargain but end up paying more for it. It's really complicated though, I could have played Half-Life for a couple of months and then stopped so there's lots to consider but from what I gather, that's what corporations would like us to do.

 

[Will]

You mean like Microsofts .NET strategy? I'm soo looking forward to that, so I can try Linux...

 

[old.Kurt_Angle]

Aye i get the drift. But you know im gona say it's a total rip off. It will allways seem that way to me when virtually ever other product in the world has a set price. In truth is this is the future for computer products, then imho it has none for the home market, it's just a pure con.

 

[old.Vectrex]

I posted this in another thread in reply to one of Durz's posts, but it's relevant so I'll repost it...It actually agrees exactly with what Stu said which is fairly odd when it comes to myself and him...nm I spose. Basically says what Ted said too...

I don't think I'm far wrong when I say most gamers are students of some sort and, by definition, are generally skint. If you're going to provide a service to a group of people who are notoriously short of cash of course they're going to go elsewhere if they can get something for free. Not meaning to pick on Durz but when you were a student, if BW had decided to start charging you to use the 'public' servers, would you honestly have payed when you could have got a similar service from elsewhere for free? Common sense should apply really when it comes to that point.

Before the flames begin, I understand that some gamers aren't students and do have money, but I'd bet 5p on it that most BW users and probably UK gamers come under the 'student category,' whether that be school, college or uni.

I think now that the market is changing and more and more GSP's are going to heaven (or hell?) there is and will be less choice. Eventually someone (BarrysWorld?) is going to start charging and the ones that don't will go the way of the ghost because, as everyone knows, you can't keep spending money forever without getting any money back. It's a just a matter of whether BW or whoever can survive the initial mass exodus of users when charging starts. As soon as the last of them die out people won't have a choice and will have to start paying. It's just going to take one company to try to ride out the storm and charge for their services.

I agree that critising 'free' services that are pretty damn good as soon as they make one mistake is a bit silly really, but at the end of the day that's human nature. How many people can honestly say they've never thought 'oh ffs' when a free IRC server dies, a server goes down unexpectedly or you can't get hold of an admin when you need one? I think everyone tends to forget how hard people work for these things, even the people who've seen it first hand like myself. Whether or not you translate that brief thought into abuse in #barrysworld or where ever is where the difference between the morons and the slightly-more-clever-people shows through.

Dave

 

[Mellow-]

Originally posted by Kurt_Angle
Yes but thats a Service mellow. I agree paying for a service isn't a problem, but paying over and over again for a product is.

The idea is, you pay for the product (i.e the game) once, but to use it on a GSP you pay. Hence paying for a service over and over, but only paying for the product once.

 

[Embattle]

Dread running off to tell his friends how nasty people at BW are http://forums.nguk.net/showthread.php?threadid=6518

 

[~Lazarus~]

Read the thread.

Thought Waz made the best point - there are twats everywhere in life, best thing to do is ignore them.

 

[old.roobus]

Everytime I see a GSP in trouble, i get that weird sense of deja vu. Same problems every time : too little incomes for an expensive service that has been given to users for free. Remember the massive threads on WP arguing the points for and against and then STILL not actually implementing anything.

We still haven't got many (any) pay 2 play services out their for us to make a comparison of service. GSP's will remain the unstable companies (much as they will gather loyal communities) they are at the moment - until someone (probably BY by the look of it) actually do dip their toe into pay-2-play.

 

[Embattle]

BW are working on their P2P service but it takes time.

 

[Ch3tan]

Didnt know where to put this exactly, its about NGUK so i'm dumping it here. Its from the reg who nicked it from eurogamer

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/21337.html

there is an interesting point at the bottom of the article

the big problem is that nobody is left who can physically access the servers, or even log in remotely. In the event of a patch...(239 server ports)...nothing can be done to bring the servers up to date, and they are destined to fall into disuse, clogging up the UK Master Servers until somebody decides to block them.

Its been over a week now since the techs walked out, no one has been tehre to update and service the servers. In teh upcoming weeks NGUK will have a big test, if no one is bought in to takeover then we will see how loyal their customer base is. This test will be the release of hl1.1.0.8 and cs1.3.
Does anyone think Cs players will stay on a service not offering the latest patch?

 

[MYstIC G]

well they won't stay no matter what they say or anybody thinks, remember all the hastle when BW was slightly slow off the mark with the last CS patch..... mental

 

[Furr]

Er i dunno this

First Wireplay

Now it looks like NGUK

Who will be next dum dum dum....

Any way the Blue yonder gaming has aquired all the old WP admins so thats where most wireplay users have gone,

NGUk i did'nt really like that much and jolts still around

so there will be

Barrysworld
jolt
blue yonder/ Ex-WP community

 

[bodhi]

This is all very very boring

 

[old.roobus]

Bodhi - this will effect everyone. We all need professionally run servers to play on, with a decent standard of admin and speeds. The more companies that offer admined servers with a decent connection in the UK the better.

It might be boring but it is important for everyone

 

[DAN200]

I think i'll just say that despite by love of Barrysworld I never make a point of playing on their servers, or any one elses for that matter, I just play on which ever ones The All Seeing Eye tells me are the fastest. And I'll will probably continue to do this.

Oh and Fur0f, you missed out UK2.

 

[Grom]

UK2?!

Cherrrr-ist.

I went on them about a year ago. Ping 35 from Gamespy on ISDN - not bad! On server. Seems laggy, bit odd. Choke 98.

Ah.

Went on again last week. Ping 30 from Gamespy on ADSL - better than BW... On server. Choke 98.

Right.

UK2 servers are the most poorly setup and adminned servers in the UK. Constant choke of 40-100, zero bandwidth available. Nice bans and kicks from power hungry admins, who also change gravity and stuff for their mates to jump on boxes, or change map if they are doing badly. Avoid.

I play mostly on european PB-monitored servers now, it's a lot more fun, far less laggy than Barrysworld (which really is terrible now) and you learn new stuff from some good players.