On 11/24/06, Jimmy Huang <jimmyhua73 at yahoo.com> wrote: > >I get bad lag on continuum. warped is much better >actually. :-P My experience is the opposite. I consistently have been getting 250 to 300 on warped and 190 to 210 on continuum. It may not seem like much, especially if you haven't played over dialup in a long time, but playing at 200 vs 300 is like night and day in may respects. >Sturgeon is popular now! Let's face it! One could argue it is popular because it was the only decent server running bots which has good enough lag. When I started playing netrek there were at least 2 paradise servers that were full virtually 24x7 but we had about half a dozen bronco servers also nearly always full to balance things out. As I've stated before this is, at least in my experience, a historic juncture for netrek in that for the first time we had a 2 month period with literally zero bronco games yet sturgeon was filled every night. As Niclas pointed out before sturgeon there was bronco games every night. Newbies who've only played for a few months or even a few years do not have the same emotional investment in the game as those of us who've been playing for over a decade. I'm all in favor, in an ideal world, for a plurality of expressions of netrek. I wish we had a large and active enough player base to keep bronco, sturgeon, hockey, chaos and paradise servers going 24x7; as an aside we could do that with probably 1/1000th of the active World of Worldcraft (WoW) community ;-) However we must be realistic and like a surgeon who's desperately working to save the patient's life some hard decisions may need to be made. The vast majority of the old timers and clue have spoken through their absence and it seems clear they'd rather not play netrek at all rather than play sturgeon style netrek. Personally I find sturgeon to be a fun distraction and I do appreciate Bill's hard work and efforts in client and server development. However I don't love sturgeon nor derive the same satisfaction from it the way I do bronco pickup. On another sad note we've not had a single bronco clue pickup game in nearly 16 months. I think those who've played in clue games and especially organized league netrek will agree it is the single most satisfying form of netrek for clue and it's the most educational form for newbies. There's always been a very symbiotic relationship between the popularity of netrek overall and the health of league play. I personally know at least a dozen established old timers who told me they retired from pickup because there was no longer a thriving clue game scene. Empirically I have witnessed the truth of this myself and it is sad. I believe that the way to resurrect netrek and ensure it's future health is to: 1) Take measures to grow the player base: a) Client side development (some eye/ear candy) b) Healthy bronco pickup servers c) Variant servers that will get people interested but then direct them to bronco to really learn how to play. If sturgeon is thriving yet bronco is dead there will NOT be any possibility of bringing back tournament play since most clue and old timers just do not find non-bronco games appealing. Some may argue that you can have sturgeon "clue games" whilst most would probably find that to be an oxymoron as much as paradise "clue games". d) Promotional efforts. Joe is basically the only who has done much on this and I appreciate his efforts. e) Also draft leagues were an important mechanism in helping players mature from the newbie level of understanding to be ready for clue play. The last draft league was years ago as was the last clue league (bronco). 2) Weekly or at the worst semi-monthly clue pickup games. 3) Eventually have healthy clue league(s). I don't know what the correct solution is regarding sturgeon and I sympathize with the points that Bill and Carlos make however I feel that our primary concern must be to ensure bronco stays alive. If bronco dies netrek is dead and we started to see that happening. Back to Allegri's "Miserere" :) Zach