It's been quite some time

lol @bart simpson, asking where he's connecting from 3 times still no response.

There you go again with superlatives. So well spoken, yet still completely devoid of understanding that I can't be all or nothing. You have plenty of good about you, but the filth is something I could never ignore. Cheers and good day.

There are lots of strawmen in this thread.

Seems to be the nature of discussing UOR, actually.

i don't have anything nice to say to bart and i want the thread to remain civil
I don't think it particularly matters anyway, this thread isn't about me. It's about server performance in general - and there are many people who are not me saying that they are having issues. I think the implication that it's my connection is just a sugar coated way of discouraging the discussion - it's obvious that it isn't my connection, unless my bad internet is lagging half the world.

Correction: One day the server will just be @Pax Romain wondering where all the PVPers went.

Fact.

Dude, what are you even talking about? Have you actually checked the subscriber's forum? It is one of the most neglected, most frustrating forums that exist! People that donate to this Shard are supposed to discuss there and bring in their ideas. And yes, it was that way perhaps one year ago. And some really resilient ones are still trying it. I brought also my ideas in there as well as in the public forums. And then I stopped, because I got frustrated (partly from endless lines fabricated by Blaise). And now I am literally shaking my head when I open that forum. It is a shame how the ideas of donating vets go unanswered.

Now some stats about this subcriber's forum:
- Cynic has posted in total 6 times in it. 3 times in 2016, 3 times in 2015. The last time was February 2016. One thread from 2016 was created by Erlkonig, he had some ideas about Moats. There was no official Staff post in this thread. The other thread Cynic posted in 2016 was ALSO created by Erlkonig! He proposed to make fort powder stackable. Again no answer or reaction from Staff. Erlkonig is btw one of these evil bad TT guys that want to destroy the Shard by all means, e.g. with posting ideas for improvement in the subscriber's forum.

- Chris has posted 7 times in 2016 in this forum. In August 2016 he answered a "when will the next patch come" question. The post before is from March 2016, where he answered a "Why is the Forum so slow" question. As far as I can tell, not one of the player ideas have been discussed in 2016 by Staff in the forum (I dont know what is going on behind the curtains).

- And now I will do something, that might disturb some people. I am not sure, there is NO RULE or something that this is forbidden and it is not really a secret. I will post some facts about the financial report which was updated last time either in 1/6/2015 (the title of the thread) or in 7/1/2016 (last update of the original post). These are some numbers:

2013 Report
$1830 Donations
$91 Paypal Fees
$5400 Expenses ($450/Month)

2014 Report
$5285 Donations
$259 Paypal Fees
$6000 Expenses ($500/Month)

2015 Report
$7357 Paypal Donations
$387 Paypal Fees
$7800 Expenses ($650/Month)

As you can see, Chris heavily paid for the Shard in 2013 and had alot more expenses. Afterwards he only had minimal financial expenses, which I am glad and thankful he pays. But acting like he is paying huge amounts of cash every month in order to bring us some cool gaming experience is just not true. The player base is paying the bulk of this Shards costs. Don't get me wrong, I thank Chris alot for his invested time and money, but I really hate to see idiots come up with terms like "Free coffee always tastes the best" and "last time I checked your name was not orange" and bla bla bla.

It's just a poor defensive strategy to stop people from asking simple questions like 'what's going on with the ping?', 'is anything done about it?', 'must it be that way?' Every person that sabotages a constructive discussion is really aweful and should receive a lection in democracy basics.

EDIT: The report also says there is no advertisement programm going on right now. So, what might happen if you get "6 months free of hosting" for 2016? The expenses might roughly be the half. Now do the math and think again, when claiming that the Shard is operated in a big red minus. (Hint for the not so bright people: 7800 / 2 << 7357)

*deleted for reputation management*

Never did I say that it's a big red minus, I said deficit, and you proved that what I said is 100% accurate. The costs to run this server have always been greater than the donations. Whether by a lot like in 2013 or not so much in recent years. My 4am napkin math has a 3 year monthly average at $131 out of pocket from Telamon. For $131 I'd tell all of you to kiss my fucking ass if you didn't like how this place was run.

Minimal financial expense.. what a joke. The dude spends time creating, fixing, and publishing the game we play. Not to mention the countless hours he's playing customer service rep for all the people bitching, incessantly. Hell, the networking issues he helped me with recently he could probably bill $100/hr for professionally, and I got it for free. Who knows what other unpublished expenses he's taking on the chin. I believe he bought a staff member a laptop when theirs crapped out so that they could continue to assist with the server, this is another huge expense.

No one is stopping you from asking about the state of the server. Not me, not Blaise, not anyone. I even question it. However, when you've spent a great amount of time trashing this server and it's staff, not contributing, and being a general douche is where the problem lies.

"I know I've been accusing you of all sorts of things all year and being a gigantic pain in the ass. Thanks for the Christmas present, you shouldn't have. But, it's the wrong size so I expect you to exchange it. In a couple of months I'll check back to ensure it was done, otherwise you'll hear from me!!"

Do you not see how fucking ridiculous this sounds?

You've posted a whopping 11 more times than I. Holy shit.

I learned a lesson on these forums a long time ago and it's a big reason as to why I don't post many if at all suggestions or requests. No matter how great the idea there's always someone out there that's going to shit all over it just because it was YOU who came up with it. I add a thumbs up or down to other peoples suggestions as I see fit. If I don't care about it, like gardening, then I don't add any input to that topic.
Also, some of those developer sub forum discussions are already duplicated in public forums, some of which I've also already commented on.

You literally questioned the qualification of non-donators (every one of them is a potential donator once he likes it enough here or earns more money or whatever) to discuss the Shards progress or even be critical about it.

You and others tried to prevent these discussions by mentioning how much Chris pays out of his pocket for us and thus to shut up complaining. I proved that wrong, when I showed, that the bulk is paid by donations with a probably big plus in 2016.

I am fully aware that Chris does alot for the Shard. But it makes no sense to value his time in $/hour, because he choose to be the god of a Felucca shard "Designed and operated by passionate PvM and PvP experienced staff, that do not play here" (straight from the homepage). I don't charge anybody for my passion of this game too, because it's my hobby. The same goes for every Staff member, they decided voluntarily to do their work and hopefully enjoy it. Does that mean, other players have to utilize the Staff's will to sacrifice time in order to prevent discussions. I don't think so.

You know that I mentioned that forum, because you did. The message is: Don't act like being supporter #1 with more privileges than others. Being a donator comes with no privileges except access to the sucscriber's forum. And then I mentioned, how dead this forum is. Not because of the players, but rather because of missing Staff interaction.

#GreenNamesMatter

#WhyDoesMyPingSuck

#RockyMountainsFuckWithEastCoastAndEurope

#DDoSThatsSo2015

no doubt that i'm a douche
It's because I'm a douche that I'm able to ask the question that everyone wants to know the answer to but is afraid of getting dogpiled for asking. I'm not the only person wondering about the performance issues by a long shot.
Once again, you and others are trying to suppress the topic by attacking the speaker instead of discussing the issue at hand. I am a douche, but I'm avoiding flame wars and trying not to turn the thread into a shitty flame war destined for the trash talk forum. I'd appreciate it if you stopped trying to drag the discussion away from the server's performance issues by attacking me and whoever else posts.

@Chris hears of all the ping and lag complaints no doubt. As he's running around the shard in his GM garb I'm sure he experiences the lag spikes as well. Makes sense to run out the free hosting offered (can't imagine them giving more then a few months) but it does suck it's hurting European players the most. Lag spikes seem more frequent and sometimes longer than when they first started. All of us want the same thing a smooth running shard with low ping. Reassurance from staff that the wheels are turning and some outline of what the server game plan is would be nice. I'm pinging low hundreds currently, prior to move I was in the forty to sixties. Right after the move I was all over high two hundreds and up. Somebody will always be disadvantaged with server placement even though the prior location seemed to have balance for the player base. He's created a well rounded, fun server and we all want to see it thrive.

Edit: removing previous post. what I said has already been said, no reason to add fuel to the fire

For me personally, my experience on this shard equals or exceeds the fun I had playing on Atlantic back in the day. As a community we haven't yet been able to match the expenses of keeping it running, and if it wasn't for one person paying the rest of the costs, we wouldn't be playing here today. So cheers to those who are willing to keep it going

@napo I see you are reporting 300 ping average, where are you connecting from?

I am across the United States and my ping is 100, so... Where are you connecting from? Perhaps we can help you troubleshoot and improve it. This all depends however, on where you are connecting from.

I'm across US too and ping in mid-70s

You're connecting from Florida right @Zyler

yep

Texas and stay around 85-110ms. Pretty much the same as before.

I too hail from Texas and I too did not notice anything notable with ping which is just more proof that Texas is the best place on Earth. Have ya'll considered moving to Texas?