What is the deal with that NA server?

[jenz]

This post is kinda long.

We already wanted to cover this topic some days ago but the person who was meant to post about it has been endlessly delayed for days. So i just kind of want to explain the situation and atleast list some reasons to justify myself as to explain why we decided to do this. Also just so things are kinda clarified.

We created an US zombie escape server located in Chicago. This brought some attention and of course also made some few people angry as they saw this as an very aggresive move against gfl.ru. It is okay if they want to be angry they have reasons to be.

How ever we created this server because we were and still are concerned about the current state of NA zombie escape. If i may say so with due respect GFL.ru is currently going through an period of rather intense population decline.

Our goal was to establish an safety net or atleast to try and "wake somebody up" over at the gfl higher up team.
What do you mean with a safety net? I mean in the same way that Unloze was a safety net for i3d/n3xt players when n3xt died out. The people from i3d that still wanted to play zombie escape atleast had some options to go to. They could pick between eufrag & unloze, and well they still can pick between us both. How ever if gfl.ru dies out the majority of american players will have no other place to go to because there is no other NA server left.

Only a certain ammount of people would be ready to go to the other servers that are left around the world in case gflclan.ru completely would die out. But a majority of its NA players would simply quit Zombie Escape as a whole if .ru gives up. That would be an Immense loss for the Zombie Escape community as a whole.

What do you mean with "wake somebody up"? With due respect it does really not appear like anybody over at .ru who is in charge still tries to improve or do things. So i decided to try something myself so that not everything stagnattes. The hope was that some potential competition would make the management try a bit harder to improve the overall situation of gfl.ru.

So what now about the unloze NA server? We tried for the past two days to populate it and had fun doing that and also somewhat success with reaching around 25-30 players both days. How ever as it appears draining resources from the EU server to our NA server kinda caused more damage to the EU server than we had hoped would be the case. As in all of a sudden every admin was present on the NA server with nobody really taking care of the EU server anymore.

Because of that reason we think the safest option to follow right now is to abandon the NA project again and just to only focus on the EU server. Worst case scenario by having two servers running is that potentially we could harm the EU server too much without Achiving enough with the US server.

Well about zombie Escape in North america as a whole, we hope it improves somehow, althought it looks grim with the current situation. We gave it a try ourselves. The main reason for abandoning it although is because of the Damage it could cause our EU server.

So yeah that covers the NA project.

Our intention was not really to harm gfl.ru but just to have something kinda ready in case gfl would decrease even further, although a bunch of people view it as backstabbing just.

 

[Backy]

Hello,

What specifically can be improved though? GFL is always open to suggestions and many changes have been made. Nothing that is direly needed or has been requested has gone unanswered. I believe this is blown a bit out of proportion. It is indeed a dry spell for GFL and Zombie Escape/gaming in general due to the Spring semester of classes being in full effect. This has happened to all servers of Zombie Escape (including old powerful #1 GFLclan.com) since many years ago. GFLclan.ru does give the vibe that no one is really doing anything, but that couldn't be further from the truth. There have been weekly events for a long time now as well as the server settings and plugins being kept up-to-date and run smoothly. Not to mention the fact that all of this code is uploaded for the public for all servers (including this one and others) to use (or was until very, very recently).

Anyways, the point is that GFL looks a lot worse than how it actually is doing. European players often misinterpret the population because they are playing at a prime hour (6 p.m. +) when at GFL that is actually only 12:00 p.m. where people are busy. I will reference the 2 population graphs so you guys can see the trend in population:
Unloze - https://www.gametracker.com/server_info/151.80.230.149:27015/
GFL - https://www.gametracker.com/server_info/ze.gflclan.ru:27015/

Take note that Unloze spikes in population for the prime hours to play in the Eu timezone but then drops completely dead for 10 hours or so. GFL on the other hand is catering to a different timezone but also a more global audience in general. GFL never drops to 0 players and hovers at at least 10-20 players for 18-20 hours of the day with also a healthy spike at our prime hours. The graph is much more gentle and gradual with regards to players coming and going from the server. SO yes, at times it may seem like "it's dead because 20 people on Mako" but just remember that everyone is at school. You don't see many people complaining at 6 p.m. + CST saying "Oh I wanted to play Unloze, but it's dead" (since it would be 12:00 a.m.).

Personally, I think that European communities for Zombie Escape have been more tight-knit in general and Unloze does an impeccable job at that. For those that are NA or more global and/or want the more casual, laid-back but just as up-to-date (but more so behind-the-scenes) managed experience, they can go for GFLclan.ru. I think right now we have a great balance (for what is possible with this old game) in the Zombie Escape global scene, but we are going through a dry spell. I am confident that opening this server would have led to the demise of likely itself within a few months or possibly GFLclan.ru (if the stars aligned). Overall, it would have segmented the population and led to a negative yield for the Zombie Escape community. I am grateful and open to new servers and competition (as well as Unloze looking out for NA's), but I don't think that this is the time. I am have nothing against new servers or competition, and I enjoy playing on both communities.

I just thought I would clear this up for the misinformed people, or those leading others to believe certain things because there are a lot of rumours going around. The biggest problem I can see for GFL is what would be described as too late to turn back. That is, leaving the main GFLclan.com community and all of its resources (even though they were being stolen from the community). The huge steam group and community as well as domain name much better than .ru would probably yield 25-50% higher population.

tl;dr
GFL is fine but going through a dry spell. Look at game-tracker graphs. If anyone has ideas for GFL we welcome you to suggest them. And '.ru' is probably a bad idea to attract people to the server ;)

Edit: Just throwing this out there to see who bites - Now that I am reminded by others, the obvious solution would be to merge the communities or something along those lines. Then there would be an extremely powerful community with many resources. For me this move makes A LOT more sense, but I believe many people would be too short-sighted or selfish to agree to. It would also take a lot of politics at the higher-up and Owner level. If done properly, the end result would be extremely beneficial.

Thanks,
Backy

 

[twolf]

Hey backstab next time site your fucking sources, A.K.A. me, but anyways backstab is 100% right you guys are overreacting and this happens every year in ze regardless of the amount of overall players css has,
cmon jenz I thought you'd be aware of this trend by now?

 

[jenz]

Hey backstab next time site your fucking sources, A.K.A. me, but anyways backstab is 100% right you guys are overreacting and this happens every year in ze regardless of the amount of overall players css has,
cmon jenz I thought you'd be aware of this trend by now?

i feel a bit like a fool right now after reading that

 

[Backy]

Hey backstab next time site your fucking sources, A.K.A. me, but anyways backstab is 100% right you guys are overreacting and this happens every year in ze regardless of the amount of overall players css has,
cmon jenz I thought you'd be aware of this trend by now?

Sorry Dad. I won't forget next time.

 

[jenz]

well so much for me being the fool... the comeback never happened and NA ze has been dead for years