So DarkIllumina's thread brought up a danged good point. Won't rehash it, but gave it all some thought and well, basically here's my thoughts on what there is.

Steamgroup for wdfnews community has been created over a good period of time/games. I'm only familiar with it due to TF2 (only online gaming game I play), so I'll plead ignorance when I say something not accurate. But I'll plunge ahead regardless. There's a lot of folks who joined that community when they played TF2 (or another older game) but have since gone on to other pursuits (life, new games, whatever.) This means a large portion of that player database does not care about the one game that's still being hosted by wdfnews, namely TF2.
Considering the effort being put into the Tempest 2.0 by Braqr and Drakhen, amongst others, it'd be nice to keep it full, keep donations coming in (hopefully), especially from new players (no, not as huge a population as once, but there are still new players arriving at the server who weren't aware of it before and like what they find), to grow out the community once more. So my question is the above poll, what to do with the steamgroup.

1- This is the safest option that still provides for growing out the player population on tempest, and thus creating a larger group to keep the server active, thus keeping more people playing it and then getting pointed towards the forums (and thus the community, allowing for new games, etc etc wild dreams etc.)

2- This option would seek to revive that listing via being more active with game invites, maybe chat invites, whatever. Catch is it's going to be pretty much " Come play TF2" , which understandably will piss off some who don't care for the game anymore. In some way it'd have to come from an authority to tell folks " look, we're doing something again with this group, it's TF2 related, if you don't want to stick around, we're bummed but understand." I know there's been a consensus in the past on only inviting once per day to play, but I don't see how that's the most beneficial to the server, and thus Braqr's pocketbook. If the thing's jumping it makes sense, once a day to get reg's in for a partytime or something, but otherwise leave it alone. But if it's empty, and drakh shows up at noon (all times pacific), hits up the list, it doesn't quite make sense to not also have someone hit up the list around 5pm or 7pm after a lot of westerners have finished dinner, and easterners have finished pleasuring their significant others/furrehs/whatnots.

3- Overall safest option for the list. Do nothing, don't rock the boat, just leave things as they are. I don't aim to be a pessimist, but i'm pretty sure others have noticed this forum not having the life-blood it once did, and the server not being as rockin as it once was (heck we populated 6-7 servers for a time there.) Leaving things as they are doesn't = dead wdfnews.com, but i don't think it's bad logic to say keeping things as they are will improve things much.


These are my thoughts, I'm not trying to pass off any authority that these things will happen or anything, just figured with all the work others have done, this poll would be a small way I could contribute towards helpfullness. That said, I do respect the folks who started up and grew this community originally, so pissing them off with invites to a game they have no interest in anymore serves no purpose either. So please read this as respectful and not as trying to pick a fight.

And yes, furrehs=lame.

I don't think there should be any more steam groups. There's already one for pDs, one for WDFnews, and it would be redundant to have one for the server. I think the problem is not many people keep up with them as it is - adding more would be counter productive.

I think I may have had a change of heart on this subject.

Originally I disliked the idea of what would effectively be "subgroups", but maybe they're not a bad idea. While we may be low on the activity scale at the moment, I like to plan big.

So lets say we have a TF2 server, maybe two.
Lets say we have a couple L4D2 servers.
Lets say we get ourselves a BC2 server.

Should the main WDFNews.com group get periodic invites for all of them? Those will add up, and in a lot of cases the recipients won't even own the game being advertised.

So to me it actually makes more sense for WDFNews.com to only be about the general community's goings on; announcements about outstanding members, new servers coming online, new games being adopted, etc.

Then we'd have groups for each game that deal more specifically with that game. Announcements telling people to get online, new addons, new admins, etc.

That would make logistical sense to me, and Bloodz has already set up a pDs/L4D2 group we can utilize.





With Steam knowing what games people have, it's too bad announcements can't be restricted to those people who own certain ones. Maybe I'll suggest that one to Valve...