Hello
We always know our DayZ is a niche proposition, we don’t run killfeeds or Admin Tools or mods or false advantages, and we don’t have a content Agenda. We’re basically official servers but with some people working hard to keep cheaters and bad people out.
We also don’t need to have a god view of the server because there’s no agenda to use people as some kind of media fodder.
DayZ comes and goes in what it wants and right now our style of DayZ is not what people want to play generally, it’s a very niche proposition, but we always felt it put players first and was a leveller playing field than maybe some other servers
Our wipe days (the 1st of every month) are a good time to close a server down without killing peoples characters unexpectedly and we’re going to take that opportunity this time around to close some servers. We review servers every wipe and for a while have not had to consider closing a server down
It looks like the 1.13 update is coming, if that arrives on stable before 1/7/21 (7/1/21) we’ll lock off the below servers at that opportunity, whichever comes first
Namalsk 2 and Namalsk 3
We fired up 4 Namalsk Servers to try and make sure everyone had somewhere to play, we thought these servers would last maybe a month or 2 but they did much better than that. But now it’s time to close the less popular servers off. This was actually a discussion since Namalsk 4 causes so much overhead, so we’re going to be reducing the ping limit by a percentage on Namalsk 4 since most of the badness is generated from further away
Livonia
This server has gone stale and Livonia has currently run it’s course we feel. It was fun to have something new but the ARMA map was probably more of an internal exercise of ‘can we’ at BI. Thanks to Adam and the team who we know worked really hard to port it over.
Chernarus US
We never wanted to run a US server as we fell the playstyle there is much more guns and modded. It did really well for a while but it generated a lot of unhappiness for the Admin team with incoming abuse about this and that (generally racism and transphobia) but while it did well we accepted that as part of the deal. But now it’s time for it to go due to waning popularity and the overhead
The Beginners Server
This server was fired up as a prep server for Run Die Retry and that’s done for another year.
Rostow
This server was set up so folk could have a look around on Rostow which seemed an interesting map. We’re going to withdraw the server from public service for a while but it may come back up with a different map or rotating maps, but Rostow has gone stale and there’s been no updates for a while
Player Population
We may also be reviewing player population across our servers. We’re not fans of ‘pack them in’ high numbers that some server chase as a facilitator of shortening the game curve and increasing interaction probabilities and never really have been. We’ve always leant towards trying to give players space to build out a character by giving them more of the map, we’ve always felt that any more chancy interaction on a fuller geared character means more since it’s more surprising and there’s more to lose. Things like 100 player pop is like Oxford Street in summer 2018, stifling.
That’s that
Whilst we feel it’s sad and that there is a playerbase for our type of ‘let it run’ DayZ we feel that it’s not completely understood what we’re trying to do. Let players play without the suspicion of fishy business.
DayZ servers are ridiculously hard to run and even harder to run when you’re trying to be ‘hands off’, things happen, things will always happen beyond our control. In the last few years we’ve gone from 60% uptime (at the start of The Village due to external factors) to over 99% uptime. But every hiccup is immediately broadcast whilst the 99% uptime is met with a deathly silence. This is a downward spiral.
We’re constantly afflicted by people running around de-marketing our servers, however hard we work we’re not streamers, we don’t have a platform and we’re not someone people want to hunt on our servers. So we spend an inordinate amount of effort trying to keep servers happy. And we appreciate others doing the same with tweets and shout outs. But we’re constantly under attack from people trying to de-populate us and we don’t have much of a counter to The Community debasing us in large, unrelated forums is beyond our control
But those people are the reason. Aren’t they, Shia, quick to use us to advertise others in large Discords, even hammering the nail after being told to come to the right place. Got to get the bad message out
This is an example of the constant water torture to server owners and does not do any good especially when people are working so hard to try and keep servers populated.
We ran servers for us, the type of server we’d want to play on. We’re really glad so many people have enjoyed sharing the ride