Seeding a Server

Filling up your server; one of the biggest issues with Servers running on-line, multiplayer fps games.  When I  played just MMORPGs, it wasn’t something I thought of. I was in my kinship, and alright there had to be a certain number of players to run an instance or a Raid, but apart from that, you could happily play/quest on your own or just with a couple of people. A small kinship could happily function by itself.

It’s not quite the same with an online multiplayer fps. For starters, games often only take off once a critical number of people have joined. Before that number is reached, players are basically hanging around, entertaining themselves. But they need to stay as just by being there, they increase the likelihood of others joining to make up that critical mass.

So, for a clan or community server, you need that core of players who are willing to do that.

TF2 has something called Quickplay, BF3 has something similar. I’ve written about Quickplay before, but essentially it’s the insta-join facility that you can use as a new player when you start up the game, directing you to Valve-approved servers where you can start playing. The WDG server has now been running the Valve-approved configuration for a few weeks now. Previous to this, we were finding that the server wasn’t filling. People would join briefly, see the server was more-or-less empty and leave, understandable, they wanted to play a good game of TF2 straight off, they didn’t have time to wait. Now we are getting players through. It still needs that core, but maybe after a couple of maps, people start to feed in, though the rate does vary, and the server fills, and stays full. We’ve checked the server status and currently it rates at

Standing: Good

Trending: Upward Fast.

Basically this means, that new people are joining and staying. Apparently, when anyone joins, the server score is deducted 15 points, then for every minute they stay, the score gets incremented by 1 up to a maximum of 1 hour. The whole system intends to weight itself towards busy, well-run community servers to try and ensure that new players experience the best of TF2. So from that alone, our Server should do well. We have our seeding core of Clan and community players and, as well as new players, when the server is full, we have our more experienced regulars dropping in and out to give them a proper flavour of the game. And we’re seeing regulars who haven’t played for a while, stopping by for a couple of maps, easier now the server is staying full which is a great outcome.

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