Ok guys, let me start by saying that everyone that played the beta seems to be in agreement. Not too thrilled about Rush game mode, (I'm one of them,) and everyone is tired of the Port Valdez map. Being tired of it is fine and it would probably still be ok if it was conquest game mode. Here's the problem with Rush game mode,..... It focuses all of the fighting down into one small area, there's really no flanking, and once you mow down the trees, you can see the attackers coming before they even land from the initial base. This game mode does exactly what it's supposed to do, which is concentrating the fighting to a small area. The problem with this is the same problem as CoD and CSS,..... there's no really in-depth strategy to it. I am much more fond of an entire map being open to me so I can take a squad of a few guys around the edge of the map and start capping flags from behind. It allows you to get away from the spawn camping at the front and forces your enemy to fight on multiple fronts simultaneously, which also forces their team to split up, making it easier to divide and conquer. Now, the Rush game mode will be really popular with CoD and CSS players because it effectively takes this huge map and cuts it into a bunch of small maps with a lot more upfront fighting..... nothing wrong with it, but you just lose a decent amount of the tactical end of the game, so I'm not a fan of it.

Second,..... being that the game is now only 4 days away, anyone that has ordered from Direct2drive.com is going to be able to pre-load the game 2 days early. That doesn't mean that we can play 2 days early, it just means that you can download and install it starting 2 days before the release, so you're absolutely ready to go as soon as they launch the game on the second. The fore-mentioned will be increasingly nice if DICE decides to release the game at some odd hour when Gamestop or other retail stores are closed, (probably won't happen, but you can never tell.)

Third,..... For everyone here that has forgotten, we already have 2 BC2 servers on layaway that are based in Chicago. Usually when you pre-order servers, it takes the providers upwards of 12 hours to get the servers entirely ready for us, so if you're playing the first day, chances are that we won't have our servers up and running immediately, but before the first day is over, we should have. I am going to talk with Sev, (since he'll have the info for one of the servers,) and have him post his login info to his server in the support section when he gets it on the second, (only if he's working,) so that way the Support people can work on getting it all set up while he's at work.

Fourth,..... I have been doing a little bit of recon on how we are going to admin these servers and it appears that there is going to be a web-based tool through MYIS to roughly get us started and there are 3 individuals that are working on seperate dedicated versions that will fill in the gaps, (like the BF2CC and 2142CC programs,) but they're not up and running yet, so we'll have to make do for probably a week or two with the web-based admin tool until the other versions get polished enough to operate correctly. BTW, I am NOT saying that everyone is going to be an admin for our BC2 servers, but I feel more inclined to give out admin more easily in the past because it would give our membership more of a reason to play on our servers, which ultimately give us the ability to get games started quicker. Side note*- I don't know how many people it's going to require to start a game in BC2, but I have a hunch that it will actually be fewer than 6 players, (which is how many players it takes to start a game in BF2 and 2142.) Just remember that if you're an admin, we're all adults here and you will be held accountable for your actions as the server will still log who does what to the server. As the game is starting, do NOT ban anyone unless you are 100% sure he is hacking in some form, and I mean 100%. All but one of these maps are going to be entirely new to us, so there may be someone that finds a very obscure spot on the map that allows him to take advantage of being a sniper or whatever and he ends up with like a 30:2 K:D ratio. That looks like a hackers score, but he may just have stumbled into a very good spot. Also, there are quite a few guns that pack a hell of a punch that were over-powered during the beta. If you get killed by these guns repeatedly, the guy doing it is probably NOT hacking, he's just running this over-powered gun. What I'm getting at is the only time you should ban someone during the first month or so after the game is released is if a group of ten guys goes after one guy and the one guy instantly head-shots everyone and escapes without a scratch. Short of that, kick him, but don't ban him.

Fifth,..... We need to build popularity of our servers, that is TOP priority. I'm willing to let quite a few infractions of our rules slide during the first month or two to try and keep people on our servers for as long as possible. You have someone vehicle whoring, let them. Someone is spawn camping without trying to take flag, whatever. The only language we should kick for is anything racist, but if someone is saying fuck, bullshit, or the like, just let it go, (unless squabbling between 2 players gets really out of hand, then just warn them or kick them.) Note*- For racist language, I'm just saying kick, not ban. Same goes for anyone that has a problem with the admin, just don't say anything back if they're giving you shit and if they absolutely won't stop verbally attacking you, give them a quick kick, but do NOT ban them, no matter how offensive it is, and do NOT egg them on. Obviously, after we get a pretty solid player base, we'll start refining this and treating trouble-makers a lot more aggressively, but to start with, our top priority is to keep warm bodies in the server as much as possible to keep our numbers up and a game going.

Sixth,..... The two servers that we're starting out with cost us a decent amount of money every month and nothing pisses me off quicker than when I log into the game and I see 5 friends online and everyone is playing on someone else's server because ours is dead and they don't want to help get it started. Don't get me wrong, if it's 2am and our server is dead and you're the only WGO member online, by all means, don't waste your time camping as the likelihood of getting a game going at that hour is pretty unlikely. But, I fully expect that if you see one or two other members online and it's 8 in the evening, you jump onto one of our servers to help start/sustain it. No one likes camping, NO ONE. Don't be an asshole and say, "I only have an hour to play, so I don't want to camp." Could you please just fucking take one for the team. When I get on in the morning, I don't want to camp on an empty server either, but I/Sev/Fly/others do it anyway because we know that we may miss a little game playing time right now, but later when we get on, there will be a game going that we can enjoy and not have to worry about playing on another server with some dumbass rules and shitty admins. You're part of a community, quit being so damn selfish.

Lastly,..... I was just thinking about the servers and realized, "Oh shit, we don't have any names and/or rules set up yet."
So, I want the rest of this topic to be about potential:
map rotations
game modes
rules
server names
language filters
... basically everything that is needed to start up a server, and think fast because we really only have 4 days to come up with all of this stuff. Fly/Sev/myself can kind of throw up some generic rules and game modes/map rotations on release day, but I would rather hear from everyone else and see if there is some consensus on things that you want and/or things that you don't want. Note that just because you make a suggestion, doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to take it, but we will try to please as many people as possible, but we can't please everyone, so just keep that in mind.

After reading this post, please try to keep all of this in mind as we prepare for BC2 in four days. If I pissed anyone off in the sixth section of this, I'm sorry (sort of,) but just remember, we're paying over $120/month for you guys to have a place to call home (in both BF2 and BC2,) and we spend a lot of time doing stuff behind the scenes that you may take for granted, so before you get mad at me for trying to make you do something you don't want to do, think if you were giving someone $120/month for a car payment, but when you get the car, you realize that it comes with no engine and it serves little more purpose than being a paper weight for your driveway... you'd be a little pissy too.

I personally enjoy the rush game mode. There are lots more rush maps that look great to play on, especially that night map and just to toss my thoughts out on our servers is that we have one running conquest and the other running rush with every single map for each mode. There are other game modes that we haven't seen yet but I'd think we have an opportunity to launch with a super rotation on our servers that gives everyone a chance to play every map. There's always a possibility that we could put multiple modes on one server also if the conquest mode will be our #1 and rush, squad rush, etc is over on #2.

Just like Stinky said - we'll need all hands on deck to get the servers going when they're ready and we'll just have to see what the ranked server requirements are for starting games, hopefully we'll get server news soon...

For server rules - I don't really see anything serious except for excessive cursing or racist outbursts. I kind of like that you can't go raping the spawn point on an uncap area because it's now off the map for the other team and you'll die quickly if you go into the forbidden zone. Vehicles - first come, first get it as far I'm concerned.

Server names..hmmm that's a tough one.

BC2 Conquest Domination or maybe BC2 MCOM RUSH FIGHTERS

I'm sure we'll have more, better ideas for server names.

Only thought in my mind that hasn't already been covered by the prior comments is...

I wonder if the admin tools will let us setup infantry only mode or not. If it doesn't, thats the end of that story. If infantry-only is an option, I'd like to add a little of that into the rotation and see how that style of game-play goes. Perhaps I'm just stuck in my BF2 thinking mode...but although I like the vehicles sometimes too.... infantry only sure was nice to goto at times (much of the time for me).

Not sure whether that will be a winner with the destructible environment and ability to knock down trees and buildings with vehicle-based weapons and the fact that you'd presumably lose much of that effect if the heavy vehicles go missing....

But.... something to think about....

Well said and I'm in agreement.

A glimpse of the admin tool interface that I've seen so far show no hints of infantry-only options...... (at least not yet)....

Ditto Sev's post. All maps on two servers running different game modes. (Assuming we have 2 rounds per map) This enables us to:

1. Toss out "loosing" maps on each server.

2. Possibly toss out a game mode? (Under which case we choose again).

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I am on mid-winter break all of next week, so I should be free to help, just xfire if there is ANYTHING in particular you need. My physical copy should arrive soon! It has already shipped 2nd day air!

You boners and your infantry-only poppycock!!

Alright, the main reason, Fly, that they even invented "infantry only," in the 1.4 patch in BF2 is because the vehicles were too powerful and too hard to take down for normal pub players. So, instead of trying to rebalance a 3 year old game, they opted for a mode that would just take out vehicles altogether. In 2142 we ran with vehicles on because they were not near as overpowered and easier to destroy. In this game, as far as I've seen, none of the vehicles are really hard to take down and there's not really a lot of them, so I wouldn't worry about it. I'm not sure that I would run one server entirely on Rush game mode.

I hate to bust your bubble, but if one were to follow the speech you gave, they'd say "Now is not the time to be picky". I understand you don't like rush game mode, which is why I (and I believe Sev) said to have another game mode running 24/7 alongside it.

Now IS the time to be picky. The time that it's too late to be picky is on March 3rd. We have 3 days left of being picky before we get rolling.