Ooh boy, another news post… and all within the same month! Heheh… yeah I know, it’s not that humorous. I’ll shut up now ;-)

So, what do I have for ya this morning? Or this evening? Or… well, nevermind what your perception is, here’s what I got. Been doing a fair amount of research and reading up on what’s hot, what’s expected to BE hot, and what isn’t in terms of game titles that folks like you and me are playing/will be playing. The voting poll I’ve got up right now is also a decent indicator, since it’s feedback from people who directly visit this site. Based on all of that, what I’ve decided so far up to this point is this – if/when I bring back the Hardfought game server, I will definitely NOT be running Counter-Strike again. Why you ask? Well, there’s like 27-28,000 servers already out there (back in our heyday, it was more like 8-10,000) running CS, and about 56-58,000 people playing at any given time. You do the math gang… that’s roughly a 2:1 ratio of players vs. servers. That’s a helluva lot of empty servers out there :-) Having to try and build back a community based on that game again, drawing the HF die-hards from servers they’ve found to replace Hardfought, so on and so on… just ain’t worth it. I’d rather be on the forefront of a new game when it’s released, like Doom III or Half-Life 2. You KNOW HL2 is gonna be fuckin’ hot… I could probably put up a HL2 server port from day one and just watch it fill up without having to do a damn thing :-P So… the current game plan is to hold back a bit and watch and wait. HL2 is due out on September 30th of this year… that’s not too far off. During that time I can be watching for bigger and better co-location deals (the one I have my sights on right now is pretty damn good, though). Also, I am gearing up to jump back into Neverwinter Nights… that game has come a long way since the start of the year, both in player-made and official content. Persistent worlds are very doable, and are about to become even easier to manage here in the next couple weeks when Bioware releases their 1.30 patch, which includes an intergrated database for storing data on a permanent basis server-side.

Am I babbling too much yet? Dunno, don’t care ;-)

Anyways, that’s where I stand at the moment as far as hosting games are concerned. Of course any of that can change at a moments notice… heh :-P But right now that’s my plan, and it’s a solid one at that. Now, some of you may have noticed over the past couple of days that I’ve been doing some theme modifications to the site, like the new folder icons on the msgboard and the dark smoke/cloud background on most every page. Oh yeah… the fading text. Jury is still out on that one. I like it, some don’t. Lemme know what ya think about the change on the msgboard here (EDIT – ok, I got rid of the fading text. Shuddap). I think I am done tweaking the look and feel of the site for now, don’t wanna go too overboard with it. I just wanna get as much shit wrapped up and finished as possible before I leave for Hawaii… dunno how long I’ll be without my computer when I get there, probably about 30 days or so :-/ Ah well… I’m sure I can find plenty of things to do while I wait ;-P

Alright, time for bed I think. Lemme know whatcha think of the theme changes to the site if ya like, or about any games that might be worth hosting, or any ideas/feedback for creating a persistent world in NWN. Direct all flames to SaGe^KS :-) G’nite folks…

K2