Well shit… don’t know how to ease into this so I’ll just spit it out. The Hardfought game server is shutting down around September 21st, indefinitely.
It’s been a good ride for quite awhile folks, but the proverbial ‘Fat Lady’ is about to sing. The company that co-locates my game server is going out of business and are ceasing all operations the third week of next month. I’ve known about this for a few weeks now and had been actively searching for another home for Hardfought… but either the price is way too high, their network sucks, or both. The best deal I could find (reasonable price and a decent network) was for $450/month, limited to 1Mbit bandwidth, unlimited transfers. Oh yeah – before I could even get my server in the front door, I’d have to convert my server from it’s current mid-tower format to a 1U rack box (slim case – 19 inches wide, a couple feet deep but only 1.75 inches high) and that’s another $2500 I just don’t have right now. To keep Hardfought CS/Q3 alive would literally put me in the poor house. Now some of ya might be saying ‘Hey K2, we’ll donate money, we’ll even pay to play every month, it’s OK!’ … well, it’s not unfortunately. Actually having paying customers as it were opens up a whole new level of things that could potentially go wrong, some of that in a very legal sense, and I just don’t have the time or funding to bear that kinda responsibility. Donations are one thing, but actually holding a paying account… there’s too many bad reasons to do things that way, not even gonna bother typing it all out here.
If ya couldn’t tell already, I’m just typing what I’m thinking… just letting it flow. Hell I kinda do that anyways, but not this freely, so just bear with me. Kinda pissed off about all this at the moment. I know this is kind of a rant, but hey, it’s my web page…
If there was any other viable recourse available to keep Hardfought CounterStrike/Quake3 up, believe me, I would’ve found it already and you wouldn’t be reading this kind of news post. The deal I had with Directlink/ArcDSL was good… very good in fact. I didn’t realize just how good until recently. By all rights I shoulda been paying them about eight times more than I was after looking at how much bandwidth (and more importantly how much data was being transferred per month) we were using. This is probably why they’re going out of business in the first place… rofl. Ride the wave while ya can, baby! No looking back! They were giving too many people cheap deals for too long, and it’s come back to shut them down. Go figure.
On the bright side… and yes, there *is* a bright side – the Hardfought LAN Party is still good to go for this October. I wont have to scramble for a dedicated game server to bring at least :-) You also have a good solid five weeks left to get in some serious CS playing… heh. Also, I’m keeping the web server up, that’s not gonna change. All you guys n’ gals will still have a place to chat and stuff on the msgboard and IRC chat. Remember those plans I had for making a Neverwinter Nights server and running it from my apartment? That’s still in the works as well. In fact, I just dropped a SCSI drive in that server last night. Ooh wouldn’t this be funny – Hardfought converts from FPS games to RPG, lol… :-P Not entirely by choice mind you… ah well. Hey… maybe another good deal will come around in the next few months or so and I can revitalize the game server again. Unlikely the way the tech sector is right now, but it’s possible.
Lemme close this post by saying this – Hardfought was… IS more than just a server. It’s more than just another place online to play. It’s a community… it’s *family* it a very real sense. It’s a place where people can come together and share a past time that they all relate to and understand and enjoy. It’s a place where you can pretty much talk about whatever you want, whenever you want and where your peers actually listen to what you have to say and offer there own opinions. It’s a place where you can jump in IRC and meet the people you play with and interact with them on a personal level, at any time of the day or night. Hardfought IS the best goddamn server that ever was and ever will be, because of the dedication that’s been put into it, the admins who help maintain it, and most importantly because of YOU, because without YOU there wouldn’t BE ‘Hardfought’ to begin with. I’ve seen other servers come and go, I’ve seen their player base and their admins, good and bad – they can’t hold a candle to this. Be proud gang, you can say you used to play at and be a part of the best game server that ever was.
Probably be awhile before my next post. See ya around folks…
K2