Untitled

Hey everyone.

 

There has been a lot of things happening recently, as I'm sure most of you are aware. I'll be discussing some of them, but I'm not going to stand for any slander, insinuation, or any breaking the forum rules in this thread. If you're not going to read my post, don't even bother commenting.

 

Firstly, the current state of SS. The community as a whole has never been larger and more active. The forums are more active than ever, with an average of 99-100 posts daily, and we're so close to reaching 100k posts. We've got a new forum feature planned that'll be completed very soon, so keep your eyes open for that. Starting up the forums was the best idea I've ever had in my opinion, and it definitely shows, considering how far they've come in 2 and half years. The amount of good content on here both from users, and custom development projects both ingame and forum from myself, Dellkan, Blazedd and various others is completely outstanding. I don't think there's another community who can tote as much custom content that we have, and all the inter-connectivity of it all either.

 

The servers however, as many of you have pointed out, and noticed, are no where near as active as they used to be. At the time of writing, RP has 10 players, Fretta 4, compared to the usual around this time which would have been perhaps 30, and 20. There's many reasons for this, however I don't want to dwell on that too long. Some the cause of SS, but the majority are simply caused by the game, gamemode and players. Do not discuss that in this thread. Whilst I'd love for the servers to be more active again, I think that time is over. Honestly, I wouldn't do anything different, and I think the same outcome would have eventually happened anyway due to lack of interest after time. Please go ahead and prove me wrong though. If you guys can get the server back to it's popularity, then please, be my guest. The whole of SS will thank you.

 

When GMod 13 is released, it's highly likely that we'll have to run a near-Vanilla version of DarkRP for a while, as our backend rewrites and all custom SS things simply won't be ready. Parts of our gamemode and various addons are already compatible, such as the new and improved SSAM (SammyServers Admin Modification) which I did a while back, but the majority of the gamemode itself isn't. From my point of view, if we run Vanilla DarkRP, that is just going to completely kill any chance the servers have of recovering.

 

For a while now, I've been kind of fed up, and disappointed in the community and the majority of players in it. I can't help but blame myself for not paying enough attention, but people have come to think they have a right to be here, and a right to insult others as they please. My personal opinion? This all started when we opened up Teamspeak, but I won't really expand on that too much. I was pretty peeved when everything that happened with Chicksaw was instantly pinned on me (porn sites, DDoS, forum trolling). It's also quite ridiculous how it's totally fine for Chicksaw to troll SS with 5+ accounts but for people here to do the same to him? Stop the damn world. Anyway, enough of that rant.

 

 

Now let me address some things that have been asked of me various times.

 

It's been said that the website is simply a place for me to exploit you all for ad revenue. That's ludicrous. Here: http://puu.sh/PzA4 - That's the ad revenue from yesterday. The only reason there are ads here is because it actually equates to a nice sum of $50 or so every few months, which isn't bad. If people really despise the ads though, I can remove them.

 

It's also been said that I don't care about the community, or SS. Do you really think I'd still be here if I didn't care? I didn't invest hours of my time developing, maintaining and supporting SS for nothing. I love SS to bits, and I would hate to see it die away. People just need to realise that my time available is completely static. The community grows larger every day, but the time I can spend on it doesn't. Forgive me if your suggestion isn't implemented quickly, or at all, but if it's a good one, and the majority of people want it, and it's feasible, it'll be added eventually.

 

 

So, the future...

 

I can say for certain that this website will never be shut down. I'm the kind of guy who'll always have servers to play with. The Minecraft server will also stay online for however long NodeCraft survives (hopefully a considerably long time into the future). NodeCraft has been a great success so far, and we anticipate it being even more so very soon, with the release of our control panel.

 

The GMod servers will stay up for as long as people still play on them. I've considered shutting them down many a time before, but that's about the gist of it really. We'll deal with GMod13 when it's released, should people still want servers. As always, I'm happy to give up hours of my time maintaining things, as long as it's appreciated and people still want to play.

 

What will become of this website is really up to you guys. I've often envisioned to be some kind of social hub for our community; a place where you come to find people to game with, hop into Teamspeak, and play a few games.

The new chat system was really the first step in this, opening up chat rooms and such, but I really didn't advertise that well, and that's entirely my fault. Feel free to post suggestions or comments below.

 

So that's all I have to say really. Feel free to post any comments below, but I'll be deleting any flaming/insults/baseless blaming etc. You're also welcome to PM me if you've got a more lengthy question.

 

Don't even bother commenting if you didn't read the entire post.