Future Gameranger update...!!

[BFG]

Ive just recieved this in my inbox... anyone else got it allready?

____________________ GameRanger News and Status Update ____________________

GameRanger has been provided as a completely free service for four years.
However, it became clear that the costs of development and maintenance
would no longer be sustainable. GameRanger would be forced to close down
unless a different approach were taken.

This change began in 2003 with the introduction of a new Premium membership
offering loads of extras for a modest yearly fee. Unlike many other
services, the existing free membership was not removed. I hope this will be
enough to keep GameRanger and the Mac online gaming community alive and
thriving, but it needs your help...

Premium membership has been available for almost a year now with new
features added throughout that year. The most significant Premium benefits
are described here:
            <http://www.GameRanger.com/premium/?139309-1000>

Even more exciting than that, the next major feature is close to
completion.. ladders, rankings, and ratings for competitive play! As a
Premium member, you will be able to see how you compare to other players
and experience the electrifying rivalry among friends and foes. With the
exception of a few that are cooperative-only, all GameRanger games will be
supported. There will also be multiple ladders per game to cater for the
different styles of gameplay that each game has.

This has been an extremely popular request, and a lot of design and thought
has gone into its creation. Before it is completely released, it will be
publically trialled just to make sure everything is running smoothly, but
of course, you will need to be a Premium member to participate.

ooooh sounds interesting....  

[kami]

Yeah, it does sound interesting, wonder how he's going to implement it...

[kos.viper]

Now all we need are GameRanger Headset Communicators and it will be just like Xbox Live!  

[Cutter]

lots of people (including myself) have been talking about not renewing premium this year. scott has now givin us a very good reason to. this should be sweet. may even bring a spark back to some older games. all the arguements about who truly owns at a game can now be answered.
i have a question though, i know it's basiclly not worth it for scott to do anything for os9 (as he's stated in the past). however, since he stated all games (except co-op) will be involved in this new system, will os9 users (the rs and r6 ppl) be left out in the cold? or will this truly be an "all games" deal?

[crypt]

lol @ vipe. I sure hope Evill does a nice job with this. I doubt that this update could be botched like the last major feature (voice chat) because it's something all new that mac users haven't experienced yet, should make for some fun competition.

[BFG]

So u premium guys havn't got this email yet??

Well i was among the guys who was basically not gonna renew premium.. should this appear though and (as we get to test it out first) actually work well then i might double take and feel the money was worth it though...
This year on premium though... big mistake

[c| Lone-Wolf]

I dunno, im skeptical.  Granted, im not a premium, and i have no intention to be, but looking at what Evill said, and what ive seen from other games that try to have rankings, im not so sure about how its going to work.  I mean, incorperating scoring tables for -EVERY- game that is supported on GR (minus the co-ops)  is going to be so immensely time consuming it isnt even funny.  Since every game works and is played differently, you would have to come up with a different kind of table for each one, plus a whole lot of extra stuff so that every game saves the desired information, then sends it to the storage server so it can be tabulated and posted.  
So then how is it going to be shown?  Website? From my experiences with the UT ranking system that didnt work so well, but mebe scott could figure out a better way.  Who knows, but im gonna go play Halo =)

[c| Splinter]

I've recieved this email BFG.  And I like many others don't plan on renewing.  

[BTs_Lee.Harvey]

Tfrom what vell said in a main chat.... the host of the games can select if the games will count on the laddrs or not... but only premium players will get ranked.


seems like it will basicaly be a stat ladder

[crypt]

I do plan on renewing, I think we must support Evill in his future working on GR.

[FukEvillAndHisWallet]

Fuk Evill and his wallet and his gay non-features trying to entice savvy people like us into paying him 50 bucks for lame non-value-added hype.  I would pay 20 bucks a year to not have to hear him cheerlead fluff and to just play.

[crypt]

Fuk Evill and his wallet and his gay non-features trying to entice savvy people like us into paying him 50 bucks for lame non-value-added hype.  I would pay 20 bucks a year to not have to hear him cheerlead fluff and to just play.

Dumbass non premiums like you plague this community.

[|MP|Buccaneer]

* |MP|Buccaneer Looks for a moderator to delete the useless coward's uninformed prattle.  

[Typhy]

I've recieved this email BFG.  And I like many others don't plan on renewing.  

Splinter, if you're just in it for the features, then perhaps premium isn't worth it. I'll leave it at perhaps.

Let's take a look at what you get for 50 bucks:

A tracker ( the new feature ), probably much like a more comparison based version of the AA:O tracker.

In game voice chat: while rarely used as the only voice chat option, I for one have found this very useful from time to time.

Buddy List groups: I would love to have had this back when I was always searching for CBs, and I look forward to getting to use it for finding RvS CBs this upcoming season. It lets your organize clans, friends, everything. While some may regard this as just a useful little thing, but relativly useless, this alone is worth a lot of that money to me.

Chat rooms: About 3 years ago, a Battle League rules meeting was scheduled, however, because Bondo was a moderator, and refused to install Rogue Spear, there was no way to hold this meeting, seeing as there was no game that all the participants held in common. I think the end result was everyone downloading Rogue Spear Demo. Again, a helpful little feature, and very nice for clan leaders.

The ability to bitch about things: I didn't buy premium until August - about 6 months after it came out. In this time, I felt that I didn't really have the right to complain about anything. I wasn't giving him anything, so why should he feel compelled to listen to what I want?

Now let's take a look at the price, 50 bucks. Sitting in my games folder right now are: MOH:AA, MOH:SH, GHR, RvS, RS, R6, UT2003, UT, RTCW and JA. That's $530 worth of games ( Spearhead's only 30 bucks ).

Probably 97% of my gaming time over the past 3 or so years has been spent RS and RvS on GameRanger - several thousand hours of gaming. I'd say probably 2 thousand, 500 hours.

Now, for the sake of an example, we'll say that ALL I do on GR is play games. That comes out to 2 cents an hour. I look to my left. There are 2 quarters, 1 nickel, 4 pennies, and a dime sitting on the table. 59 cents. That's 29.5 hours of gaming on GameRanger. Now: *Flick, flick, flick, flick*.

That's how much I care about 59 cents. You can undoubtably find that amount of money sitting around the hall of your school, in 2 minutes. 59 cents is nothing, but what can it buy? 29.5 hours of gaming on GameRanger.

One last example: My computer origonally costed just under 3,100 dollars ( extra battery with it ), add a 90$ mouse, 2, 2 dollar mouse pads, a $300 airport base station, 2 112 dollar 512MB sticks of RAM, $40 headphones, 4 $200 external HDs, a 79$ replacement power cord, and the 20$ yearbook I use as a supporter for the mouse pads. Add that all up, and you get $4,661.

Add that to the 50+ DVDs around me, the several thousands of dollars worth of applications I have on here, the DVD-RWs, CD-RWs, Routers and Switches, and you're talking almost 10,000 bucks.

Ok, for anyone who's still with me. . . What this boils down to is this: Anyone who's whinning about the cost of premium, pull your head out of your ass and take a look around you.

[Supernatural Pie]

My computer origonally costed just under 3,100 dollars ( extra battery with it ), add a 90$ mouse, 2, 2 dollar mouse pads, a $300 airport base station, 2 112 dollar 512MB sticks of RAM, $40 headphones, 4 $200 external HDs, a 79$ replacement power cord, and the 20$ yearbook I use as a supporter for the mouse pads. Add that all up, and you get $4,661.

Add that to the 50+ DVDs around me, the several thousands of dollars worth of applications I have on here, the DVD-RWs, CD-RWs, Routers and Switches, and you're talking almost 10,000 bucks.

Ok, for anyone who's still with me. . . What this boils down to is this: Anyone who's whinning about the cost of premium, pull your head out of your ass and take a look around you.

***Snipe looks around him.

My computer originally cost 1,000 dollars ( Ebay/CD-RW ), add a 40$ mouse, 1, 10 dollar mouse pad with 2 wrist supports, a $300 airport base station that I personally didn't buy, 1 80 dollar 512MB stick of RAM, $40 headphones which were a gift, 1 $200 external HD which was a gift, and a slideout drawer with a plank of wood (actually, extremely convenient...more than it sounds) I use as a place to put the mouse pads. Add that all up, and you get $1,430.

Add that to the 0 DVDs around me, the several thousands of dollars worth of applications I have on here which my parents bought (graphic designers), the lack of DVD-RWs (Cause I was a cheap bastard who got the CD-RW drive from ebay), a CD-RW here and there, no routers or switches, and you're talking almost 1,500 bucks.

So lets see.... I'm looking to buy a G5... a very low end model (but i'll go for the dvd drive this time... ) possibly something in apple's "special deals" section, or an education discount while pulling out the superdrive. Either way, it'll end up costing me about 1400. OH! Then I have to buy a moniter. I'll go for a low-end one of those, too... 1500? 1600? The point is, 50$ goes a long way towards that, and once I have my G5, and summer comes around, and I get a job, then maybe I can start giving my money away as charity. Until then, I'm sorry, but I simply cannot afford Premium. And by afford, I don't mean I don't have the money, I mean I won't have the money to spend on an investment of greater value to me.

[BFG]

Fuk Evill and his wallet and his gay non-features trying to entice savvy people like us into paying him 50 bucks for lame non-value-added hype.? I would pay 20 bucks a year to not have to hear him cheerlead fluff and to just play

Kid if thats the most intellegent thing you can add to a conversation don't bother... And you refer to yourself as savvy??

[KoS.Rebel]

Vipe doesnt this sound like GR is trying to turn into XboX Live? After thinking about it and if evill sees this i wanna say one thing. If there were more people that had macs and played the games i would more then likely buy premium. But the straight fact that i cant play on the most popular server for RvS there is no point in buying something i dont use cause im restricted. Sounds like a good idea with the stats thing, im eager to hear how it works, but as i said before, im in no rush to buy premium because my gaming experiance is limited as is on GR. I cant wait for CoD because i can play with PC's, more servers, and less mac people that are out to ruin other's fun. GL with GR Evill and others, enjoy the update premiums.

[crypt]

Soon enough, there will be lots of servers up, I hope. I just wish i knew how many GhR kills i have, i'll have to start over damnit.

[c| Splinter]

I like having my head in my ass, Typhy, it keeps me warm.

To me, the current GR feature set (tracker included) just isn't worth the $50.  

Voice chat: I have never used it, and infact I have the option turned off for 2 reasons.  1) It screws up my microphone, it cuts the volume setting I have in my system prefs in half, thereby making no one able to hear me. 2) If I want to talk with you, then I will call you or allow you to call me.  I like the option of keeping the annoying people out of my ear.

Grouped Buddy lists: nice but i could live without.

Chat rooms: I see how this can be useful to get the clan together when people don't all have the same games installed, but lately c| has been using iChat for group and private discussions.  And much more importantly, we don't have ban happy admins booting you in iChat.

The only real benefit premium has to me is that I don't have to jump through hoops to get a piece of voice comm software to run correctly.

All that being said, I would pay $9.95 a year for non-premium in a second. Aside from it's facist tendencies, overall GR a decent program. I use it almost daily, and I definitley like to support applications that I use a lot.

If the feature set became something that was worth the $50 fee to me, then I of course would keep paying.  And it is very possible that in the future it will.  But seeing how most of the chat i do, be it voice or text, is done in other applications, gameranger is basically just a game finder.  Maybe i'd pay a one time $50 fee for a game finder, but not yearly.

[crypt]

The way I've seen it is, if your parents will pay for it for you, then you support it, but if it's your hard-earned money, you don't want to. I know for a fact that I will renew premium.