We've had some recent developments that I thought warranted a "State of the Community" address, to get all the new info in one place and state some plans for the future.

Out With the Old

The old Tempest, generously rented by bragr, supported by donations, and kept working by bragr and drakhen, is gone. The recent lack of interest and donations in it lead to bragr rightfully not renewing it. I've seen to it that bragr has been reimbursed for the costs of the last rental period, so all the loose ends have been tied. And no, bragr, I need not a nude photo nor a trip to your dungeon. I insist not, in fact. There would be too many things I wouldn't be able to un-see.

Also, don't spend all that money on one dealer.

In With the Little New

To ensure we have a TF2 server and to capitalize as much as possible on the influx of new TF2 players, I've put up a 16 slot, official maps TF2 server and called it The Tempest. Add "junior" on the end if you want to be specific.

I know 16 slots aren't a lot and even with that there's occasional (but rare) lag, but it's the best my little old server can handle. Any more than 16 and I suspect we'll see a significant drop in performance. It's done remarkably well over the past 2 days getting and staying populated without any of us having to seed it and, even better, I've seen some folks come back a few times, so it's gaining a following for us.

At the moment only Muff, Rumour, Drakhen, and I are admins/gods on it. In the near future I'll start a thread to see if anyone else would like to be one on it. And probably some threads to discuss map rotation and plugins (though know now I intend to keep it light-weight).

And Out With a Little Bit More

To ensure the Tempest Junior runs as smoothly as possible, I've taken down the Prophunt, Trade, and L4D2 servers. Prophunt seemed to be a fad that died off fast. The Trade server never really got to working right. And the L4D2 servers, while regularly used, weren't used much by any of us and didn't seem to bring any interest to WDFNews.com. That and I failed at keeping them all updated. So no real losses there.

The Road Ahead

I still intend to buy a new server, focused for game hosting, that we'll be able to run a few game servers off of. That should hopefully get us back to the old days of having multiple TF2 (or whatever) servers of various modes. But saving is a slow process. I get $100/month to put towards personal pursuits like this, but that also goes towards gifts and shit.

That said, the donation link on the left now points to my Paypal account dedicated towards WDFNews.com.

When I get a chance to figure it out, I'll be sure that donations of a certain amount gives first-rights access to the TF2 server, and I'll see if there are other kinds of rewards I can offer. Raffles for giftable games, maybe? We'll see!

And of course... the new site. With the focus of my attention coming back towards the community here, I'm hoping to plunge myself back into that code. I actually got a decent amount of the code rewritten during my last round, but crashed into a wall of disinterest when it came time to begin working on the forums code (it's a general CMS, so not just forums).

I think that's it for now. I'm sure I'm forgetting something so expect some edits.
As always, hit me up if there are questions, problems, or an interest in helping.

Yeah, I'm toying with the idea of having a company redesign the look, but that's low priority and not certain. The biggest problem we have is that Whut doesn't have the original Flash file--if he ever did. So there's no way to change those little links along the very top. There's an image version of the header which is much the same, but doesn't have the groovy animation. That's what I'm using on the new site right now.

Whut actually suggested rebuilding the site from the ground up under another name. I have GamerSyndicate.com which is general enough that it could technically work, but I'm not ready to make any leaps like that. Even if it has the WDFNews.com creators blessing, I don't want to rub the community the wrong way. Ironically I always intended to make a gaming site (hence why I have that domain).. I just didn't expect to inherit one.

you could also make a call to the larger community (us and people who we havent seen in a while) so as to maybe have us work on it, I know there are a few of us who are artistically inclined and would be more than happy to work on it. plus it would keep things in the community. and probably be free.

as far as a name change is concerned, maybe its time. I know I love being a part of WDFNews, but i also know that it has changed dramatically over the years. Given our current situation of pseudo hibernation, we might benefit from a name change and an image refresh.

going off of that, i also feel that we should hold on on really drumming up interest in our community until we are more ready to deal with it. having a tempest running is great and fantastic, but i also think we don't need to worry too much about gaining a following until we get our ducks in a row as far as what the new site is doing and if we can ramp back up to more servers.

I would certainly be willing to put my photoshop (read: GIMP) talents to use!

So you say you want to buy a new server but did we not buy a server about 3 years ago that we paid for and had installed at the data center? and sirus what have all the files for the website, he is the one that built them so you might want to talk to him about it.

Yeah...the tempest hasn't exactly been getting much use from what I've seen recently...

Well maybe whut has the server or maybe what we are using is the one that was there im not sure Ive been busy with life work and some other games that don't run on steam and steam servers and kinda hit and miss on the forums so im sure i have missed stuff going on around here

we're in a ghost town sorta, its fun popping in occasionally to see if any other ghosts have wandered by (oreo lately, DCMH randomly, etc) but there's no central group thats actually being creative. I thought minecraft might succeed at that, but it didnt happen ( dont know why, played it once for five minutes and then said "I have no idea whats going on, and dont really care to find out".)

Rik, what'd a budget be for a new 24 player server? Same for a new site that ditches the old and dieing and brings in something new? Nothing wrong with keeping the Penguin Doom Squad and just ditch the ode de WDF's ego.