Request For Donations - Feb. 2010

[417]

It's time to renew the SGTLS server again for another six months. The cost is $91.21 and it's due by 03/02/10

Please donate a few bucks towards it's cost this month!

Even though you might not play on it very much anymore it's still the second most active server for the mod and it gets used regularly.

If no donations are received then due to continued financial hardship for the clans leaders the server players slots will be reduced to 14 instead of 22 in an attempt to help reduce it's cost.

If you have a few extra dollars please consider donating it to our servers costs here.

Thanks & Frag On!

[417]

Update: March 2010

No donations where received to assist with the renewal of the SGTLS server (as usual). Luckily I was able to scrape up enough $ to pay for the server without having to sacrifice player slots.

Activity in SGTLS mod as a whole has dropped considerably not to mention within our specific clan.

If the inactivity continues it might be time to discontinue the existing divisions and officially retire the clan

[999]

Well Im sure there's lot of people like myself school. And its this time of year that exams are happening. Im sure there would be an increase in May, another in July. Meanwhile 417, you might wanna find who made the Left4Dead mod on DOD:S That mod suggest that a game without AI is still capable of making workable bots.
Might not use the full zombie thing but meelee bots will draw people atleast.

[417]

Word 999

I have seen you on Steam and playing on the server again lately. As always "Real Life" issues come first which greatly effects our specific clan's members activity.

With that said though, activity within the clan has been very 'dead' and continuing to decline for over a year now. With the effort involved to maintain the clan as whole and it's activity being almost nonexistent it just doesn't make sense to continue to do it. Myself & Zip would much rather play our favorites mods then spend what few hours we have to maintain and conduct clan related duties on a weekly basis.

In addition we are both in a position where we can no longer be able to foot the bill for the clans numerous cost (which include: web hosting fees [yearly fairly large bill], domain name fees [yearly small fee], licensing fees [yearly medium fee], gaming server fees [monthly high fees] and voice communication server fees [monthly small fee]) and with no donations ever coming in and no one being active it simply isn't logic to continue.

As per SGTLS the mod's activity overall has come to an almost complete stop. I directly relate this to the following: it not being supported any longer, the community being dead, no new map content being made, no stepping up of it's community members to develop the "community dev" team and it not being marketed to new players by it's existing player base.

I had great hopes that SGTLS would survive until the IW staff can work on it again but it's future isn't looking good. I still like to play it and plan on hosting a server for it if I can afford it (weather or not the clan officially retires or not).

Our server is still used everyday and is the second most popular for the entire mod. The issue with it's under utilization really exists in there just not being a decent US player base for the mod (they majority of the player base is in other countries). The only way to address this is to recruit more players that are US based and produce new content/maps on the server (which I don't have time to do).

I hope SGTLS can survive this low and become a flourishing mod again at a later date. I have a feeling that the SGM mod will be the next StarGate mod to be released though which will kill SGTLS completely unless it gets more popular and the community get's more active across the board.

I agree bots in the server would help get it played on more. I looked into it a while back when we where playing with them and have revised it since then but have had no luck in finding a way to make it a reality for our server. I went as far as offering $ to someone to develop a working bot for the OB source platform and no one even nibbled at the idea.

Simply put if the mod doesn't have a large community with lots of people willing to work (yeah I mean really work) for free then it simply will cease to exist within 1-2 years of being released.

The latest trend with gaming is that people don't play any one particular mod for any length of time anymore which makes it almost impossible to build a community for them which required people to donate work to it to keep it going.

The only thing nowadays that are long term successful are mods/games that have income coming regularly where there can be paid staff to support them (MMO's are a perfect example).

Gaming continues to evolve and new games continue to be released constantly. As gamers get younger and younger and the technology being made better no one gamer in their right mind would stick with one mod for any length of time.

With this trend I predict that long time running clans or gaming organizations that are mod/game specific will become a thing of the past. A community of gamers as a social organization that plays multiple different games which doesn't run servers or target any specific game platforms is going to be the only ones that survive.

We have embraced the changing times by embracing new mods but they come/go quickly and not enough users volunteer their time/$ to help keep them running and the division eventually dies. In order for [AE] to survive it has to have an active community which it hasn't had for almost two years now. If it is to survive it will need to become more of a social network then a gaming clan but even that will require that it has active members who help maintain the clan by donating their time and or $ to keep the clan going.

Even with that said, the ability for gamers to keep in tough with their gaming friends through gaming platforms (IE Steam Friends) has made being part of a gaming clan/organization not as desirable because most gamers are just looking to have someone else to game with when they are on (which is very easy with a large friend base through a gaming platform friends/messaging network).

The future of gaming is in a state of flux to say the least and it's going to be very interesting to see where things go in regards to it over the next decade. I've got a young gamer son so I'll be involved with it for sure in some form or another but how invloved I can be all depends on 'real life' allowing me to spend time in the gaming realm and have the necessary equipment to do it (gaming rig/extra money to spend on hosting servers and buying games).

Time will tell how things go, it always does....

[82694]

Can you break that down to me in 50 words or less.

[999]

Well as I say before, set a time when we have a gaming hour. Start easy let say:
Saturday 1600 to 1800 PST (If you set something like this I'm willing to go on during that time. With the exception being two saturdays in April. As for SG TLS goes we might have to considered that crappy $20 Stargate game release by a license company.

[417]

82694:

After all these years your still not used to my wordy/lengthy replies - LOL!


999:

I don't even remember what our official playing nights are. I think they are on Wed./Sun. but seeing how you and me are the only active SGTLS mod division players and we have both been busy I didn't bother with trying to keep up with scheduled playing nights.

With the mod activity being super low the only time to play and make it worthwhile is in on the weekends really. I'm game for a Saturday early afternoon or evening time. I'm in the MST zone (GM-7) what time zone are you in up there in CA and what works best for you time wise (evening is better then afternoon unless it's early for me).

I'm more then willing to setup a Sat/Sun time block to be on the server.

I don't think you are aware but my gaming rig is out of service (video card got to hot and fried the motherboard) so I really can't play for crap using the only other system I have which is a work issued laptop.

Usually what I do is just go in and mess around on the server until someone joins and then try and play (it's more like get slaughtered) until enough people join and a decent game gets going and then I just spectate the game.

Have you even looked at Stargate Reistance? I checked it out and it's to limited in regards to stargate features, is way to much like every other UT mod and doesn't look like it's going to be supported either (company filed for bankruptcy). I'm not planning on doing anything in regards to it.

SGTLS is still the best SG mod out there IMO and I will continue to play it until SGM comes out.

Our alliance clan [SG-X] has dropped off the face of the earth but might play on the server if we setup a playing night and bug them each time to play with us.

I guess what we really need to do is recruit new players to the mod in the US/CA so our server gets played on more.

BTW - I'm not sure if you are aware of it as you have been AWOL for a while but we have stats setup for the SGTLS server which you can view [http://aeclan.hlxce.org]. Now that your playing again your climbing up the ranks

[417]

Humm, it looks like I'll have to take back my availability to play SGTLS on the weekends.

I have been accepted as a member of the private beta testing team for SGM and will have to devote a considerable amount of time to it which will prohibit me from spending time playing SGTLS.

The server is still being used daily and I will continue to try and seed it when I can. Whenever possible you can help out 999 by idling in the server to 'seed' it as well.

With the continued complete inactivity in the SGTLS community I don't see it going anywhere (which is very sad!). Luckily we'll have SGM to switch to when it gets publicly released.

[999]

Are you referring to SGM as Stargate Mod?
Sorry been busy with my finals lately...

[417]

Yes, SGM = The Stargate Mod

I'm still popping in and playing SGTLS every now and then but most of time (what little I have) is going to be spent in SGM to help develop the mod further. It's more in an advanced alpha stage overall but the there are regular playtests (3 a week) and a lot of active team members so I see it having a great future.

BTW we have a new prospective SGTLS division member called Bikdu. If you happen to see him in the server and can hop on for a bit frag with him some and private message me your opinion of him please.

When time allows he will be conducting a tryout with me but if he can play with either one of us first then that would suffice as well.