'Official Servers' in Trem 1.2

[Confess]

Hello,

Though I have long since had the opportunity to control/manage/owner a tremulous server which has been influential in the makings of tremulous, My server has influenced a lot of what Tremulous has become. I spent a lot of money into owning, managing, and making SST what it was - along with several other people. So, what I write to you comes from both the heart, along with a desire to understand.

Tremulous 1.2, as you may or may not have seen, has written into their new client that there are some servers which are 'Official', and others which are not. Learning from mistakes shows me that anytime there is an "Official" Server, power corrupts. Along with, when the Official servers are no longer supported, a game will die.

I spent a lot of time, money, and love on SST. The owners of Tremulous servers in most cases feel the same way, I would assume. It comes across as though you have made our efforts worthless by creating this title. You create 'Official' servers only for one reason, and that is so more people will come to your server, drawing players away from those which rightfully deserve it. When I totalled up the amount of money I spent on SST, I believe it came up to $1500-2000 + donations in 1-2 years. This is money I could have spent on several other things, money I worked hard for.

I see the benefits of having official servers, but I also see the downside. If you are going to label a server 'Official', I believe it should be voted upon by the people based upon certain criteria, of which all servers must be voted upon...Not any single group of people done behind closed bars.

This is not a personal attack on anyone, rather a plea for equality.

Either way, Happy gaming.
Confess/Meow11

[Undeference]

http://tremulous.net/forum/index.php?topic=12123.0

[Confess]

Thank you, then this is my opinion of his post. I really wish I could have seen this post beforehand. When I have time, I will go through and read it all. I understand the idea of not wanting people to have to try and figure out what Trem is/etc, I see that point.

[Aviator]

Thank you, then this is my opinion of his post. I really wish I could have seen this post beforehand. When I have time, I will go through and read it all. I understand the idea of not wanting people to have to try and figure out what Trem is/etc, I see that point.

It's not that they don't want people to figure out Tremulous, what I see it as is them trying to help newbies figure it out faster. Correct me if I'm wrong?

[KillerWhale]

A major concern was:
Most of the servers on the top of the list were modded in gameplay (ie: X) and gave new players the wrong idea of the game.

There was a period in which you'd frequently get players coming into a vanilla server and going, "wtf blaster doesn't do enough damage" and the like.

So, it's intended to allow players to get the right idea of Tremulous when they first play, but it will also have the side-effect of helping new players learn faster.

[Norfenstein]

I might be wrong, but I think the original (but no only) goal was to have a place where we could beta test 1.2 gameplay in a controlled environment. If we collected stats from everywhere we'd have no idea what modifications were tainting the results.