stop letting managers have the power to close servers
 

i think it's unfortunate that managers have the ability to close down their servers whenever they feel like, just because they are the manager. speaking strictly about servers who are either public or close to being public, it's very unfortunate that at any point a manager can simply shut down their project whenever the feel like it, no matter how populated and active the server is

i'll recount to two personal examples of this rule that i have experienced to really outline why this rule sucks. the first would be in the case of doomsday, where tifakhan was able to shut down the server even when the population was reaching an average of 60 players on a regular basis with higher numbers during more active hours of the day. instead of passing the server onto another manager, the server was shut down for good at the egotistical whims of the manager, resulting in the loss of my home server, making many people quit graal for good, and forced me to try and bring back the server multiple times as well as many others attempting the same feat. it was just bad all over, when it could have been avoided by having a global staff member simply remove tifakhan and replace her with a more active/enthusiastic manager

the second example would be the recent demise of armageddon, the server that i was managing with decus owning the actual server. as you guys know, we were about 90 (percent) done with the foundations of the server which would have allowed us to go public within a couple of weeks (if our staff was working to fix things up). however, the owner of the server (and hence considered the 'actual' manager in the eyes of graal) decided that armageddon would fail in comparison to other UC servers such as delteria, and that making a server that would only be used for 60-or-so players wouldn't be worth the time and effort. this was decided by one person, whom shut down the entire project even though the rest of the staff, especially myself, still wanted to complete the project. i could predict that had armageddon not been shut down, that we would either have applied and been on the classic tab at this point, or we'd be incredibly close and waiting for inspection. instead of a global staff member taking control of the promising and almost-complete server and pushing it to completion, it would closed at the whim of a disgruntled manager who seems to have quit and never signed onto graal since, thus making it virtually impossible for myself or any other staff to finish it

while these two examples are very different, they both outline the same problem with graal's server policy: managers can close down their servers pretty much whenever they want, and no one can do anything about it except perhaps stefan. if streety wanted to close down unholy nation, he could probably do it tomorrow if he felt it was a good idea, and then we'd have no more unholy nation, ever. if (whoever is managing era after deo left, squirt or chris vimes or salesman or whomever i don't know anymore) decided to close down era because they felt the server was going down a road it wouldn't recover from, they could do it, and it doesn't seem fair to the players who play on those servers

my suggestion is that we remove this ability from managers (or owners, whatever) once their projects have reached a certain stage of maturity. it's a better opportunity for graal if we instead establish new managers in the place of these server-shutting-down managers: graal gains no advantage from allowing managers to close their servers forever. it seems a better option to let them quit and for global staff to step in and either manager the server for awhile until a predecessor is found, or to appoint a new manager when the time comes. let's not let one person's decisions decide the fate of a server that multiple people contribute too

Urgh, you are seriously suggesting that the reward for someone paying money to start a playerworld project and then doing well with it should be a loss of control over it? This might have been a neat idea back in the day, but in these backwards day it just reeks of exploitation.

Well, when it comes to Classic servers, they can't just shut it down. I don't know of a case where that's been legitimately done (although more than one manager of a Classic server has gone rogue and deleted the content before leaving).

But in cases where the Manager is not the one who paid for the server, or, like I said, if it's Classic, they shouldn't have that power. But the examples you gave don't seem to be the case. It's their money they spent, they decide what to do with it.

It's typically the Managers who are the only thing keeping the server running though, if they quit the server is probably doomed anyway however that didn't seem to be the case in your Armageddon example.

Anyway I'm pretty sure me, the Era crew, and Streety have no plans of dropping our servers because we don't feel like it's worth it anymore. So that shouldn't be considered.

It would be nice if there was an incentive to bring up new servers to the Hosted tab, 10% off server rental maybe?

if ur server is good you shouldnt have to be paying graal so that graal can have a good server

u catch my drift?

I agree, Manager's of classic servers should not be able to close it down at a whim's notice.

However, if you are the Owner and created it in the first place and you're still helping run it, it should be your decision alone to shut it down.

They can request it be taken into UC status, from which I rarely see servers return. Kind've silly because a server should always be being worked on. :rolleyes:

This thread is silly. UC server content is under the control of whoever rented the server, or whoever that renter has placed in charge. Saying they can't close down the server if they want would be pointless because once the manager leaves, there's no one who would be able to keep the server running anyway.

And for Classic servers, I guarantee Sales couldn't just decide to shut down Era for good, Streety couldn't just shut down UN, etc. The PWA would no doubt take over the server and find a decent staff team.

doomsday was just like era and unholy nation, and the manager just shut it down. the PWA didn't step in and take doomsday into their own hands

especially for classic servers, the other staff should take over once the manager decides to quit. saying that once the manager is gone the server will fall apart is untrue

while it may not be an issue with any current management, i doubt the staff lineup for any given server will always stay the same, and who knows who will lead era or unholy nation years from now

I have to say the management on servers like Zodiac, UN and Era is way more now stable than it was half a year/a year ago..

Well, really, classic server managers have no say over whether or not the server is going to be shut down when it comes down to it. Like Grey said, they can request it be taken UC, but now, even that is pretty much the PWA's decision in the end.

To be honest it's probably just because nobody gave a crap about those servers.

The guy who originally made Zone (Dell) got perma global banned (by Angel IIRC) for trying to delete his content from the server while it was still UC. After that globals took over the server, restored the content and released it anyway.

Yea, the whole "you upload it to our servers, it's ours" bull****.

The majority of Zone content was significantly overhauled before the release, anyway. Writing some sort of hoverbike movement script is probably the last useful thing I did on Graal.

Though, a global ban seems a bit harsh :p.