And we wonder why people quit this game? Here is one possible reason

[Wormhole Surfer]

How is losing interest in playing because you have lost the ability to connect to people you've made friends with a bad reason? For example, just today I had the opportunity to chat with Jacklyn. Haven't spoken to her for over a year, she didn't know who the hell I was on the name I am using.

Would this Jacklyn not have recognized you if she saw the name Ephemerall or Ephemeral- or something? No, you're right. It makes much more sense to use a name nobody recognizes when it's absolutely necessary for people to recognize you.

Your "eph" signoff at the end of every post is making much more sense now.

[Exalt]

This might be one of the few technical questions in-game that I don't know the answer to but I'm curious what the costs would be in regards to maintaining our own biller? Would we also have to create a "chain of command" so to speak so we have people to contact in the oft chance that the server goes down?

I already talked to Demonic about this. The cost is very small, around say... $300 a year. That's less than my phone bill every month. I already stated I'd pay $25 a month to have our own billing server so we can get rid of dealing with faggots like Mom who hold grudges against Trenchwars because their shitty zone is dead.

That being said, we have how many thousands sitting around in donation money? $300 a year, with like $6000 sitting there doing nothing? Assuming we never got a single dime more from anyone in donation money, which I find hard to believe, that's decades of server time.

[kthx]

Put me in for a benjy as well if this happens.

[Ephemeral]

New biller server should be paid for with donation money. I would be willing to then donate a matching amount to cover the original donations.
eph

[kthx]

I am sure Qan/Demonic could answer that a bit better, but I do know that being under the thumb of an outdated organization doesn't help any efforts to rebuild the zone.

If its feasible I say first threaten the SSC and if that doesn't work then go to each zones ownership personally and offer the invitation to join our new zone with somewhat equal majority. Any zones that join offer their respected players and staffers (respected) chances to get on the council were creating, and have the council control not just changes within the zone but actually run the entire zone. Obviously we will still need "bang" ops and other people who have powers that not everyone on the council can have or understand, but generally speaking get rid of the role of sysops, and deans and every other "power" role in staff. Staff applications, promotions within staff from ZH to ER everything is decided by the council. Get rid of mods, have a few Smods on who are knowledgeable with the bot systems and who have direct numbers of people to call when the billing server dies or when the zone needs to be recycled etc. If this ends up happening I see you talking about a new way to run the zone in terms of what we can do with the physical aspect of the zone, but it is also a chance to change the soul of the zone itself. I think that staff needs to be completely erased basically and that there need to be only ZH's, ER's, Dev, Smods, Bangops and The Council itself. I can't speak for everyone but a change like that would honestly get me interested in being a part of the council itself, and would probably get me into playing again as I could see a future for this zone.

Todays shitfest was just another prime example of how our staff procedures have run their course in every way, shape, and fashion. This could fix the zones image and make the game a less corrupted place with a council that would be incorruptible with the right mix of players.

[Demonic]

This might be one of the few technical questions in-game that I don't know the answer to but I'm curious what the costs would be in regards to maintaining our own biller? Would we also have to create a "chain of command" so to speak so we have people to contact in the oft chance that the server goes down?

That would be the crux of the matter, TW would have a finite date unlike it does now. Granted ppl could eventually walk away from the game, leaving perhaps 1 or 2 people in the zone, but as server/biller is free it would still be there. If we had to pay for biller/server I guess it would give tw perhaps a 5yr shelf life assuming no further donations were received. Generally costs are based on # of packets sent/received so hard to be exact LF.

[LF]

That sounds like a winner. ding ding ding.

This might be one of the few technical questions in-game that I don't know the answer to but I'm curious what the costs would be in regards to maintaining our own biller? Would we also have to create a "chain of command" so to speak so we have people to contact in the oft chance that the server goes down?

[kthx]

That sounds like a winner. ding ding ding.

[Shaddowknight]

Set up a bot ingame with current server, and have !signup password, and it will auto add your name to the new billing server. Emails to old players to reserve their names could he sent a month in advance, with another round a week before. Enough to give plenty notice and not be too bothersome. Also allowing the bot to do it keeps dev/staffer eyes out of it

[kthx]

Easiest way to solve this would be to setup an email account, have people email you their names and a password (not their names password but a separate one). After the new billing shit was setup people could say this was my name and my squad, this is the password I sent you in the email and you could give them their names and squads back. I would consider giving SSC and ultimatum though before dealing with this, tell them were going to do this unless TW has multiple members as head of the SSC, tell them to cut the bullshit out with fake zone population stacking and releasing versions of the client without our zone automatically listed. What they can possibly do about it, absolutely nothing.

[cash.MONay]

yea based on a discussion I had with exalt/kthx and a few dev it seems this was already on the radar. Apparently we had permission to setup a new biller, but it was black balled by an old sysop. Now where that stands currently, I am unsure but would presume to have permission we would have reasonably advanced with it. New biller could also mean new server, ie. ASSS and for those of you who don't know what that means, it would be a huge upgrade adding functions such as recording twl games and playing them back in game for example, no bots as server controls it all therefore bots cant crash unless server does.

If we had to seek permission I don't know what that would mean in terms of existing player names and squads, I would presume they all would reset but it would give powers over name/squad resets in general, or bang for that matter but it was interesting to learn this either way.

I allow you to do this Demonic. You have my permission. God Speed.

[Demonic]

Still seems kinda pointless to have two seperate entities to run a single zone (essentially). Without the SSC there is no TW. Without TW there is pretty much no SS anymore. Both entities need to work together more, as the failure of one effectively dooms the other. No offense to any of the other zones, but as was said earlier, Trench Wars IS Continuum right now.

yea based on a discussion I had with exalt/kthx and a few dev it seems this was already on the radar. Apparently we had permission to setup a new biller, but it was black balled by an old sysop. Now where that stands currently, I am unsure but would presume to have permission we would have reasonably advanced with it. New biller could also mean new server, ie. ASSS and for those of you who don't know what that means, it would be a huge upgrade adding functions such as recording twl games and playing them back in game for example, no bots as server controls it all therefore bots cant crash unless server does.

If we had to seek permission I don't know what that would mean in terms of existing player names and squads, I would presume they all would reset but it would give powers over name/squad resets in general, or bang for that matter but it was interesting to learn this either way.

[Morh]

The SSC have always been useless. They have too much power over the individual zones, since they controll the billing and bang. Most of them have always considered TW to be the newb zone and are reluctant to help anyone from here. Good that you finally got some help. When I got all my names hacked back in 2005, it took several tries over a year to get my names back...

[Shaddowknight]

Heh if only that simple, SSC control all elements of the zone including hosting/bang so on and so forth, with no SSC this is no zone, or game for that fact as it hosts them all That said, I never had an issue with spacehiker when I need something doing, and I apologise Eph since you said L_E was handling it I didn't bother chasing it. Space is available 5-6am my time or 12-1am EST. Makes it difficult for me or MM to do a huge amount beyond sleep depravation :P

Still seems kinda pointless to have two seperate entities to run a single zone (essentially). Without the SSC there is no TW. Without TW there is pretty much no SS anymore. Both entities need to work together more, as the failure of one effectively dooms the other. No offense to any of the other zones, but as was said earlier, Trench Wars IS Continuum right now.

[Exalt]

Heh if only that simple, SSC control all elements of the zone including hosting/bang so on and so forth, with no SSC this is no zone, or game for that fact as it hosts them all That said, I never had an issue with spacehiker when I need something doing, and I apologise Eph since you said L_E was handling it I didn't bother chasing it. Space is available 5-6am my time or 12-1am EST. Makes it difficult for me or MM to do a huge amount beyond sleep depravation :P

Demonic, you need to do something about this. Trenchwars needs someone with SSC control, because EG is going to be dead in a year if not sooner, and Trenchwars is literally going to be the last zone left in this game eventually. What happens when all the SSC ops quit playing and Trenchwars has no control? That's game over, no? It's ridiculous that the most popular zone for over 15+ years now has no SSC ops. Absolutely ridiculous.