Thread: The Death Of Bad Company 2 at TPG

All,

It is with regret that I must inform you that the highs as well as the BC 2 admins, have voted to kill off our server.

The reasons are varied, but chief among them is the lack of VoIP in the game as well as lack of developer support. I have included my original post from the high forums for more specifics.

Originally Posted by Potemkine

It is my opinion, as well as WileE (he'll chime in when he has the chance to poke his head in) that it may be that time to discuss the future of BC2 at TPG.

We all know the history of this game, but I will give a brief overview just in case. The game had a 1 month BETA in February of 2010, and was release March 2nd. September 2 will be the 6 month anniversary of the game's launch. When we first launched, we ended up having to have 4 32 man servers. It was the biggest launch success for TPG in its history. But what goes up, must come down. The server population quickly dwindled to only warrant 2 servers and not 4, and this is despite trying every single game mode possible. Whether it be teamplay based or not. We just didnt see the traffic to warrant 4 servers. As time wore on, we had to cut our 2 servers down to 1 server. 1 server was constantly filling while the other laid dormant. No matter what we did, we just couldn't get BOTH servers to fill consistently, and this was back in June/July.

Of course, this goes without mentioning the days, and weeks I, Arreo, and WileE spent combing and harassing admin developers to give us a half way decent tool. It wasn't until May/June (a full 3 months after launch) that we were able to replicate our normal command hierarchy with appropriate powers with an admin tool. Part of it was that it just took a TON of time for the various projects to mature, if any did. BFBC2 admin died before it really got started. Wolfcon was a flash in the pan and ProCon was the only reasonable choice. As mentioned, it took 3 months for us to get our powers lined up as needed.

Now for the biggest complaint of all, drum roll please: VoIP. BF 1942 launched in 2002 and had VoIP. BF2 was launched in June of 2005 and had VoIP. 2142 launched in May of 2008 and had VoIP. This game was launched in March of 2010 and DID NOT have working VoIP. We have been struggling, nay, fighting with this game for the past 6 months without workable, reliable, VoIP. TPG cannot enforce its ideals without voice. There is only so much one can do with text, and even then, constant flurries of text can begin to encroach upon the level of hindering gameplay at some points. 6 months out, and it fails to carry through on one of our most basic requirements: VoIP. It is just unacceptable.

Not to mention all the resources it ties up compliments of the ranked server agreements for EA. If a server is to be hosted on the same box, that shit needs to be locked down tighter than a girl's school dormitory when the boy's school comes over for prom. We have lost a lot of ability to tweak the BF2 and 2142 server since we loaded BC2. We have also lost the ability to pull chat and server logs for those servers for longer than 30 days. CC only stores them for 30 days, then after that, we are shit out of luck. No getting them back. Its tying up our best box, and admittedly, it laughs at the resource demand, its services could be better used elsewhere.

Let's move on to the numbers as I know many of you like numbers. The first 2 are some graphs that I have pulled off of Hypernia and the third is a graph showing our server ranking, all for the past month. Try as I may, I was unable to go back farther, but even if I was able to, they would just prove my point even more. Our numbers are dwindling.

Hypernia's tracking for past 30 days:

With max and min for 30 days:

Game tracker's server rank for past 30 days:

There are a total of 6,810 servers according to GameTracker...WORLD WIDE. As of 7:45pm EDT 8/30/2010 (primetime) there are less than 800 servers with any players on them. This is counting world wide servers, and ALL game types. Of those 800, only about 600 servers have enough people to have an official game, which requires 4 or more people to start.

No matter how you slice it, or dice it, BC2 is dying. It is a dying game here at TPG and world wide. I think its time to excise this cancer and focus our resources elsewhere.

WileE and I took a straw poll amongst BC2 admins, 8 admins total including me, WileE and laggy. 1 said keep it till thanksgiving to see if there is anything better, 1 said they were ambivalent, and the others said to kill it. Dex, if I remember correctly, you were voicing your displeasure with the game, and I know Arreo is fed up as all hell with it. Those polled make up THE CORE group of admins that play this game with the exception of 1-2 which weren't online at the time we conducted our straw poll. Lets make it official now.

How say ye?

This game was broke and doomed from Day 1. Its time to lay her to rest. The server will remain online until 11:59pm CDT Wednesday the 8th.

Its been an honor to be an admin with this group for the past 6 months, but the time has come. Get your fix in.

Well this is disappointing. I was just about to get into BC2 again, it will be missed.

Darn, I think I only played like twice on the BC2 server(s). Better get my last little bit of playtime on the server while it's still up!

agreed - sad to say but this is one that EA/DICE killed....again.

Sigh.


At least we'll not have the drama that seemed to flow in behind BC2. Fun, had promised, failed to deliver, good bye.

It was a pleasure playing with all of you in BC2 on TPG!

Good call, I adore the game with voip, but too many issues as mentioned and a shitty approach (eas) to actual adminin the server. I won't miiss it -i Unistalled this game a while back due to being tired of hoping to get the full game I paid for... Thanks dice/EA for giving us free shit that was already in the game that really helped quench the unsatisfactory taste in my mouth... Adios BC2 enjoy early retirement. No voip. What a joke.