ya sort of. I was thinking we could stick with 2 servers. Lately, caca and a couple of other people have been playing and/or creating custom maps. I think we should have the usual rotation server(dustbowl, badwater, gold rush, warpath, steel, and gravel pit) and then have a custom server rotation(balloon race, wacky race, warpath --- if you count it as a cstom map -- well classic, black mesa, desert fortress, hunted beta, etc.), but just keep it with the same 5 or 6 maps. THis would allow people to only download that server's maps a couple of times, and from there on they'd be fine

The problem with a custom server imo is population. As of right now, we can keep rotation and bw/gr/db packed out in the evenings. make rotation a custom server, I would put money on the fact that it will not be full. The majority of people don't play custom maps that much, and as fun as they are, it won't be full. Maybe we should throw some more customs on rotation and have people nominate them if they want to play?

This goes back to my post on the Expanding Servers thread. I would really love to have all of these servers and have them playing all sorts of new, custom maps and have them fill up everyday, but the problem is we don't have enough people. We can't even fill the Rotation Server and Dustbowl/Gold Rush/Badwater. I probably had to fill this 3 times yesterday, just look at how unstable its population was, and that was on Saturday!!!

The reason all of these other clans and communities can have all of this stuff is because they are so big. They've been around much longer than us, and therefore have a lot of loyal players from older games they've run servers for, which means they have tons of donators to run tons of servers, and tons of people to fill them. I really like what me, caca and anti, and indeed all of you as well, have created, but I believe it is just too early to be doing this kind of stuff. It is certainly nice to think about it, and look forward to it, but I don't think it will be anytime soon unless we improve our growth rate by about 1000%+++. Holding events with custom maps is a strong possibility though.

I've been thinking lately about expanding to other games, including left 4 dead obviously and that is pretty much for sure by now, but perhaps opening 1 or 2 Call of Duty servers would do us good. Call of Duty has built a huge following and it would offer us entirely new people. Of course this decision is not up with me, because the bulk of the work would sit with Anti and Caca, and it is a completely different engine and setup to work with. We have to keep looking forward, because one thing that sort of limited us with TF2 was we made our group in March, when the game was released in October. This made it atleast slightly harder to gain regulars, as many people by then probably had found there favorite servers and played on them mostly. I know before we started this group, the only servers I played on were Doormans.

Perhaps if we were to run monthly/bi-weekly tournaments with prizes such as a free slot reservation without the requirements? New (or relatively new) members only? Put it in a message to pop up on the servers every map or so. Just and idea.

We have really considered that, but it would be a bit hard to track stats for just a 2 hour period, etc. Weekly or daily events would be a lot easier to track. I dunno, gonna have to talk to anti and caca on that one.