Mojo (DayZ)

I was bored for a few hours and ended up making a new bandit skin (if you go to the BI forums you can actually see me asking "are you serious you have to hack the P3D to get it to work? I just wanted to make a new texture, not a whole-new RVMAT!" [give me a break, I haven't made Arma models/skins in half a decade ;)]). Anyway (and no, you don't have to edit the P3Ds, thankfully Max Power reminded my stupid ass of hidden selections after about five hours of me wanting to put my fist through the f'ing monitor), it looks pretty good for a bandito, using hidden selections to swap the camo: Of course, it looks even better if you actually do hack the P3D, unfortunately, but maybe I just can't figure out how to use hidden selections to swap out the shemagh [like I said, five years]: Basic design focus was on giving the bandit a hodge-podge collection of items that look scrounged together. A faded Flecktarn vest, perhaps from German intervention in Zombie-plagued Chernarus, a Flora camo combat jacket, based on the idea that Chernarus, like Belarus, might be a few years behind Russia in camo usage, still using the camo, and the kind of flat olive/khaki combat fatigues you might find from raiding an army/navy surplus store (with some well-worn patches and holes). The shemagh, which might or might not be usable with hidden selections (srsly, five years), has been replaced by a paisley bandana in scary red, the universal face-hiding colour signal for stay the fuck away from this guy (I didn't want the bandit to be overly green, either, the point was to move him away from tactilol into more outlaw territory). The radio on the chest is now a cell-phone, just to make them a little more low-tech and grubby, and the boots similarly have the soles rubbed shiny from walking and are flecked with mud where the ground can't grind it off. I had to put little skull and bones flags just to work with the normals and ambient shadow maps, where they're rendering flags in those positions. Not my ideal choice, but it was necessary to keep it from looking too weird. All of it has some little texturing details that you can't really see in those pictures, such as a linen texture base on the bandana and fatigues that you can see eg. here: http://i.imgur.com/tlNhx.jpg so it doesn't get too boring and flat to look at. Anyway, just wanted to give something back to the mod team for giving us a wonderful experience and the game a lot of us thought a lot of other games were going to be (ahem, STALKER) and give the player base a bit of a shiny pearlescent coat while the devs work on getting all the cylinders firing.

As a test bed for the community support team, in between actually setting people up with FireDaemon Pro this morning, I took screenshots, documented, and then put together this illustrated primer. Then I argued with my wife a little over car insurance. Then I exported it as a PDF. It is a step-by-step guide for getting your servers and hives executed and monitored in FireDaemon Pro: You can download it here (PDF, 591Kb) It's still a little (very) rough, obviously, as it's a sample/example. It should be enough to get a complete server admin newbie going from not even knowing if he has a 32-bit or 64-bit OS to being able to switch to Session 0 to monitor his servers in real time. As such, host feedback would be greatly appreciated. Yes, the fonts will improve, especially if I sit down and do custom typography. Yes, the layouts will be standardized. Right now, though, my bladder is holding back about ten liters of pure coffee and I just wanted to get a rough idea together for you guys. Enjoy, and get ready to fall in love with FireDaemon. P.S.: Yes I know I used two hyphens as an em dash. I hope I choke.

Connection spamming does not get you into the game faster. It gets you into the game slower. It also crashes servers. Every single server out there running DayZ runs two support programs for it, hive and hiveauth. These connect to the same DayZ master servers. They process the client connections and save your progress. "Trying" another server does not get you into the game faster. It is the video game equivalent of getting frustrated that you need to wait in line at the roller coaster, so trying to run to the line for the tea cups, then getting frustrated that you have to wait in line there, so running back to the line for the roller coaster, only to find that you ONCE AGAIN are at the back of the line. What, exactly, did you think would happen? Only, it's worse, because you know what? You aren't just leaving the line. You're leaving a dead husk behind. That husk will move with the line and need to be processed along with everybody else. The master servers will need to be informed that your connection has dropped and now they need to process that. You don't just stop taking space, you create more space in the queue you take up. IN OTHER WORDS, YOU ARE COMPOUNDING THE VERY PROBLEM YOU ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT. On top of this, it is extremely unhealthy for servers to be subjected to this many connections. During primetime & weekends, servers can be subjected to more connect/disconnects than they will be subjected to over a 6-10 hour server instance sanity period in about, oh, ten to twenty minutes. 1. You ruin the game for yourself and accomplish nothing. 2. You ruin the game for other players by forcing them to wait longer or crashing the servers they're on. 3. You really, really piss off the administrators of the servers who are forced to deal with the mess you cause while simultaneously trying to calm you the fuck down. The internet is not magical. Every server shares the same network, and communicates with the master database in the same way. You do not "connect faster on Server X" because yesterday, or the day before, that server worked fine. When that server was working fine, so was every other server. You will find that typing *sigh waiting for server response AGIAN* is, surprisingly, because every server is subjected to this at the moment. We, being Owl and myself, have begun investigating ways to sync repeated connection spammers across multiple servers to weed out the worst culprits of this problem. I will gladly share our solution with the other administrators, and in all likelihood any admin worth his salt will gladly take that solution, and there will be many of you out there trying to play a brick on five or ten servers because your connections will be outright refused by the actual, physical box or VPS running the arma2oaserver instances. Is it a solution I want to implement? No. I'd rather be playing with my dog or listening to music or making love to my wife or even playing and having fun with the vast majority of good, decent players who understand that as frustrated as they might be at the moment, so is everybody else. But I have a new responsibility now, and you (you being the 1% impatient children who throw fits and temper tantrums and ruin it for the 99% of the other players who are calm and patient and understand that the Internet isn't magic) are making me clean up your mess. It's much, much easier to ensure you don't have the ability to cause that mess in the first place. BUT WHAT IS CONNECTION SPAMMING? Connection spamming is when you spam a server with actual connections, ie: connect - disconnect - reconnect - disconnect - reconnect. Enter spamming is when you break your thumb hitting spacebar or enter just trying to get into a server. Is that the best? No. You're wearing out your keyboard. But when you do that all you're doing to the server is going "Hi, can I join?" and the server goes "no." In a nutshell, when you connect spam, there's an entire process after the server says "yes you can join" that it makes sure the connection is compatible, the so-called client/server handshake process (ie: you're not trying to connect with an altered copy of the client or something ridiculous like, say, a VLC browser plugin running on Google Chrome or something), then you commit your connection (a successful handshake), are given the player info and all that. At this point the hive programs, which are two external executables which hook the server executable, pick up on that and go through the routine of getting information from the master server, the central database, whatever you want to call it, returns that information to the server, attempts to load you into the game, and executes unit initialization functions that give you your gear and whatnot. Tada, you've spawned. It's trying to do this all to create an avatar for you in a server instance for a server program that's clunky, and, despite the entire server admin bases' wishful thinking, extremely finicky with how it threads itself in cores (basically max out AI thread, max out core usage, move to next core), hilariously greedy with memory over time, and operates perhaps one of the most esoteric and picky virtual machines in history. It also has limitations of just how much of your resources it can use, no matter how much overhead you actually have (which is why you will very rarely see a server break the 50-player limit, with server admins preferring to roll out new instances -- for example, on a solid server, it's more stable to run 4 50-player instances than it is to run 1 75-player instance).

So, after doing a lot of leg-work for a few other server hosts, including MrSherenai of EU 21 and Lazer of Chi 10 instituting performance improvements, I came to the realization that even if you have a lot of experience hosting other game servers, ArmA 2 server hosting can often be confusing. Add in the process hooking aspect of the hives, and it can be down-right daunting. Now run it all on Windows Server 2008. Cry. I had earlier emailed the staff volunteering for a server staff position to alleviate their burden, but I received no reply. Well, there's only one thing to do when something is wrong in my world: Fix it. As such, I want to put together a volunteer host support team. This is totally unofficial, has absolutely zero staff sanctioning, and it's my goal that this will consist of hosts helping hosts, learning together to provide the best possible server & play experience, and paying it forward to those hosts among us who still need to earn their stripes. Right now, for any host, I am available through the forums, through Private Messaging, or on my TeamSpeak at ts3.monolithservers.com, for server setup and support. Availability downtime will be whenever I happen to pass out for four to six hours. I will show you: 1. How to properly set up FireDaemon, which has a 30-day free trial and a cheap licence cost of $50 USD. If you don't like FireDaemon after 30 days, hopefully by then you will be experienced enough to use whatever alternative program you want, or will have sufficiently high knowledge for us to set you up with batch scripting to handle server restarts, etc. 1a. How to switch to and manage Session 0, the Windows services session. 2. How to properly launch your instance with all parameters designated, without the use of batch files. 3. The hows and whys of why you want to create a sanitized install directory from which you can copy files to the actual instance directory. 4. The pecularities of OA's server, how to mitigate the problems those peculiarities cause, and how to properly configure your instance to create as little overhead as possible for the sake of stability and server up-time. 5. The use of the RCon GUI and BEC, two can't-live-without extensions for real-time game administration. Additionally, I will either go through it with you live, or, if you wish to grant temporary RDP access, document and explain every change I make so that you can understand what is happening on your server, why we're making those changes, and where you can find them in the future. Coming to me or anybody who fundamentally agrees with the goals and purposes of this community project means that you will never find your server modified without your permission or knowledge, or left disabled until you're forced to manually intervene. Everything I do, I will explain to you why it must or should be done, and ask your permission to do it. As I work on this project (the modelling I was directing and the texturing and foley I was doing on permanent hold), I will be collating clean, unified, illustrated, multi-format documentation for server admins to better understand their server environment. This is the ultimate end-goal of this project, a concise compendium of collected knowledge to be shared among hosts. This documentation will cover: 1. FireDaemon specifically tailored to DayZ (FD documentation otherwise exists) 2. An explanation of server start-up parameters 3. The RCon, RCon GUI, and BEC 4. Common errors or problems and ways to fix them. And will initially be published in English and French, since those are the only two languages I speak. Any translators for this will be so welcome I'd kiss you. With tongue. If any other hosts out there are confident in their ability, know that you can always learn more, and want to help out your fellow hosts who may be hosting a server for the first time, or unfamiliar with OA servers, drop me a line.

Huh. An analogy between intelligence and a light source. What was it a wise man said about analogies once? Please tell me this is supposed to be facetious. There is no way you think that the word "bright" used in this sense is an analogy. When I was 12 years old, I walked into an old folks home, took off my red-and-black striped hoodie, and proudly displayed my gynecomastia-induced breasts for the lonely old men. They stuffed folded, sweaty bills into my belt for the chance at a quick palm. I realised that for a 12-year-old with breasts, I was pretty rich. It dawned on me while I was counting my tips. Everybody likes tips, right? Here's a tip: When you grow out of your little j4g diapers, you will realize that one thing goons love more than anything else, more than gimmicks, more than convincing you j4gs to make your intro post in FYAD, is trolling other goons.

This is precisely what I was told -- that violating the EULA, TOS, and Privacy Policies from my publicly accessible TeamSpeak 3 server did not permit me from preventing users in flagrant breach of the covenant from accessing my chattel property. (Read: I couldn't ban people for breaking company rules, despite the company rules very clearly telling them that abuse of the terms would result in the server being rendered permanently inaccessible.) This very reason was why I stopped hosting a DayZ server and why I've consequently turned away all the people (hosts and players alike) having problems and asking for my help, it was far, far too overreaching in what the DevTeam thinks they can do with hosts. Now I'm being told that it isn't even true.

Huh. An analogy between intelligence and a light source. What was it a wise man said about analogies once? Oh right. That. Mojo: Smart enough to slowly collect the IPs of all goons and add them to firewall rules, but tragically too stupid to know how to remove them. Well, at least when you're sitting there with your brick, you can say "I KNEW I WAS RIGHT!" Isn't being right fun? Won't that be a good thing when I'm nice a dumb and you're suffering for it, but at least you'll be utterly, 100% correct that I'm retarded? I love you very much.

As far as I'm aware -- and correct me if I'm wrong here -- but video games exist in the real world and not a parallel dimension. I might be a Grade-A moron for using analogies (and here I thought they taught us how to construct valid analogies in University expressly for the purposes of illustrating the rightness of a concept' date=' not the wrongness of it) but I'm [i']pretty sure human norms apply broadly. I'm pretty sure that we can safely say video games were created by people, and if we know some other group of people governs by intent, and continues to govern by intent even when intent violates the letter as it exists, then it's normal to apply that intent-over-pure-function mentality to other things. Now then, since you're a Doctor of Stairs with a concentration in Having Them In Your House, perhaps you can educate me (and all my terribly stupid tenured professors) with a clear argu-- hahaha who am I kidding, of course you can't.

I do have most of what I think to be the good algorithms down for what I know exists, but I'm not sure the verbosity of the relevant logs so I'm wary to get too much into it before I know what data is available. I'd love to work with him though, what's his contact info? Yeah I know, I asked for fully verbose logging a while back and was told it was considered a waste of "time" and "memory". I feel your pain. Anyway, Owl is usually on the Chicago 1/20 TS at ts3.monolithservers.com. I'll also PM you his email, though with his work he doesn't check it too frequently, so you're probably better off catching him on TS.

Well, I spoke to Sykotix this morning, and if he's still game (my God, what am I volunteering you in to?) he'll be coordinating the effort from here on out. It's a matter of transcribing my notes from shorthand and giving him access to the assets. I EXPECT QUALITY ASSURANCE, SYK! Dear God don't let me give birth to some half-aborted thing. Red team QA the proofs if you need to (as a bonus, watching two groups fight over methodology and implementation is always hilarious), but please for the love of baby Jesus make it top-notch quality.

Pretty obvious, actually, given that I troubleshot him with machine translation. He posted about being unable to play for four days since the update, and that he was able to connect to the servers. Logical deduction lead me to believe I could troubleshoot him in English, since he had recognized the English word "troubleshooting" and posted a technical problem in there. Extending that logic, he didn't choose the forum at random, as he managed to find the correct forum instead of posting anywhere he pleased. The obvious conclusion is that, since the Russian boards are buried at the bottom of the forums, with no indication at the top of the forums (the first place a person would see relevant information such as localization options or where the localized forums were located) that there was a Russian-localized forum, he scrolled through the forums until he found that most fit his needs, operating under the assumption that the forums were primarily in English, and made an attempt to communicate. So when you ask "WHAT IS THIS?!", it's pretty fucking obvious what it is. A troubleshooting problem in a troubleshooting thread, correctly chosen, with an attempt to communicate in the only manner he knows.

And I consequently stopped hosting. I mean' date=' you know this. It [i']really is that simple. See how I didn't try to negotiate? I just accepted their decision on the rules, explained why those rules were unsuitable for me, and consequently decided representing the brand through hosting was no longer suitable for me and something I wished to pursue. People who don't like the language rules are completely free to do the same. The language rules never bothered me (in fact before any "official" rules came through I had a long-standing identical rule) and consequently never motivated me to quit. I really don't see the problem or contradiction here.

Shouldn't you be able to give unregistered users the capability of creating passworded temporary channels? Wouldn't that solve your problem of TS ghosting? Not without giving them blanket access to create Temp channels anywhere in the server, due to TS's permissions hierarchy making it an all-or-nothing proposition. Also not an acceptable solution. There is the option of channel group assignment to permit child channels of certain specific channels but this runs into channel depth conflict, max channel conflicts, and may require admin intervention anyway, making it a non-solution. Edit: There's also the undeniable reality of user ignorance. Using myself as a baseline, every user who connects has the right to the level of security I enjoy. Teaching the users how to effectively use TeamSpeak through channel descriptions is a non-starter and far less efficient compared to a TOS (Compare: "DO NOT COMMIT STALKING ON MY PRIVATE SERVER" hand-written in two languages and machine translated into another five with "Click this, now find this, then type this, then go back and message people on TS (not in game if you don't want people to know your pass!) then blah blah blah" hand translated into two languages and machine translated into five). It's inefficient compared to the other solution. Any solution less efficient than any other solution is not a solution.

What part of "there's no rule about this and therefore I use my own judgment to extend abusive use of chat to cover this contingency' date=' which does use the in-game chat system to deprive other players of their play experience, but not in a direct manner such as insulting them explicitly" do you personally feel conflicts with "there is a strict, explicit rule about this"? I'm just really curious about this, because I don't see a single conflict there. You obviously do, so, you know, feel free to share. I'd love to hear it. You mean precisely how I severed my hosting contract due to a completely separate rule that, unlike your example of some vague and undefined using a best judgment scenario, was a) made explicitly clear and b) made explicitly clear in a way I fundamentally disagreed with? You mean like that? I'm seriously wondering if you could clarify both of those a little, because I'm curious to find out if you're as clever as you think you are... or if you're as clever as I think you are.

I must also say, with regards to this thread in particular and why I resigned my hosting duties (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T THINK THE CHITOWN ORIGINALS ARE GONE, THEY'RE STILL RUN BY OWL), I think everybody needs a little clarification. I stated yesterday that the rules were standardized as a franchise, and if franchisees did not like the rules the parent brand provided, they could sever their relationship with them. I didn't like the rules; I severed my relationship. It was that simple. In regards to ALT-F4'ing: earlier in this thread, rocket made reference to EVE as a primary example of emergent gameplay and meta-gaming (and I love EVE and all its general dickfuckery). One of the things you couldn't do in EVE was just ... log out. Have a Titan sitting in a POS in nullsec and try to avoid losing it when the POS drops? (For non-EVE players, read that as "Do you have a giant, very expensive spaceship it took you months to develop the skills to pilot, sitting inside an invulnerable forcefield in a place where no AI guards protect newbies, and you don't want it destroyed when your opponents overwhelm the player-owned station generating that force field") Well, you can't. It's going to blow up and you're going to lose that ship and no amount of quitting will save you during PvP, and the only solution then is to disband BoB and move across the map. So, no amount of ALT-F4'ing will save you on my server. You will just lose access to the server. Or would have or should have, anyway. "We stalked a guy for an hour and then he left" isn't death dodging. People have lives and aren't there to die at your command. On the other hand, "we shot a guy twice, he disconnected, came back ten minutes later from a different position, and killed us" well get you got. "I had to stop playing" doesn't fly when you either a) have a pattern of behaviour of dropping every time a person engages you or b) don't stop playing. Regarding ghosting on TeamSpeak: Again referencing EVE and metagaming, I have zero problem betraying groups, spying on them, stalking them, and eavesdropping. None. It's happened, people have come to me as an administrator, and my reaction is "well, too bad." There is a point, however, where metagaming goes too fucking far. Back to EVE: When Goonswarm/Goonfleet took down BoB and BoB's offshoot corporations in EVE, part of the way that was done was with metagaming. That metagaming involved managing an "asset" in their group, a spy with high-level access. It did NOT involve violating third party TOS's. In fact, when The Mittani got himself onto the CSM, one of his presentations at the world's largest collection of spreadsheet Asperger's was to state that a player who had messaged the goons in game making suicidal ideations should be encouraged to "kill himself". Welcome to metagaming gone too far. This is undoubtedly metagaming. After all, how can a person act against you, be an opponent, cause a risk to your assets, if they aren't even alive to play? Of course, this is the whole "going to far" bit. CCP eventually decided that this metagaming was, in fact, a breach of the EULA. Now, there's a gradient between attempting to hound other players suffering mental illnesses into suicide and putting spies in their ranks, but let's start by defining what is black and what is white. Here is why I believe ghosting on TS is going too far: FIRST AND FOREMOST, IT ELEVATES THE ADMINISTRATORS OR FRIENDS OF ADMINISTRATORS OR SERVER REGULARS TO SEMI-GODMODE. Why? Because it allows a level of protection on their communications that pick-up groups and irregulars don't have. On our TeamSpeak server, we have private channels created for my guys, Monolith (composed of several Goonfleet/Goonswarm vets from disparate groups, ironically enough) and Owl has Rho Squad, an entire GF/GS fucking squad. Again, ironically enough. Other administrators to the TeamSpeak server can create channels and groups. If asked by any player on the server to create a private channel, they are under standing instructions to do so, either passwording the channel for ad hoc groups that ask for one, or creating an entire user group/permission system that restricts entry only to those assigned to that group. This allows communications security that can only be properly penetrated by a mole, which, again, I'm fine with. What the irregulars and PUGs on the server don't have is that. If they come into TeamSpeak and form an ad hoc group, there is no ability to police that group against forceful penetration. There are, however, checks against regulars and admins having their group forcefully penetrated. As such, it creates a layer of communications security available to administrators and TS/Server regulars unavailable to pick-up players, and as such elevates us above those players, which directly conflicts with my philosophy that all players can and in fact must play on a level playing field. The only way to effectively combat this is to create a penalty, a loss of priveleges, to effectively emulate 24/7 administrator presence. I do this by creating publicly open channels and an EULA/TOS that clearly states that a public channel is owned by the first person to enter it and, for the purposes of accessing that channel, may only be done so on their graces. Entering that channel without permission is tantamount to breaking a zero-character password. You consent to this when you enter the TeamSpeak server. You understand that you are breaking a zero-character password, that this represents a security threat, and that doing so is considered by me equal to asking me directly to be blocked from any server access at the socket level. Following people through channels is just another way of directly asking me, "may I please be blacklisted in the firewall?" Well, since you were so polite about it, yes you may. This is (or was) made very clear on every channel throughout the server (though I have since removed it since relinquishing my duties) so that no person may plead ignorance. Think you won't go to jail for breaking and entering because their front door had no lock? Think you won't go to jail for shoplifting because the store had no cameras up? Think you won't go to jail for rape because she wasn't wearing a chastity belt? You're very wrong. Locks, cameras, and other security measures exist as a prevention/mitigation system, not as something that, if lacking, gives you the right to do something you could not and would do if they were present. Period. As such, this does, beyond a doubt, elevate the administrator and other players to a position of privilege. This runs contradictory to my standards of excellence in the services I provide; namely, that all players feel comfortable in knowing that no person, be they me, friends of mine, or those who have made themselves known to me on a regular basis, are elevated in any way above them. Again, I reiterated: This IS NOT because it deprives me of a position of power over my players. This IS because it elevates me to a position of power over my players. This directly impinges on my ability to provide a guaranteed minimum level of service excellence to my players. As such, I cannot, in good conscience, provide hosting. Understand that these are not my only issues. For example, there is also the issue of the server namespace/nomenclature. Way back when we set the server up, we worked on stabilizing the first server before rolling out a second. I had started asking about another mission file so I could set up Chicago 2. At the time, there were no other servers running in the Chicago namespace. It took me five days of PM'ing and emailing to get that second mission file. In that time Chicagos 2 through 9 came online, and we lost valuable namespace even though we conducted our due diligence and made every effort to communicate, and without regard to the fact that we had proven infrastructure. Early adopters should be encouraged, not discouraged, from providing the service. This does serve as discouragement. I was asked to change from Chicago 1 Original and Chicago 1 Blues, as we used codenamed namespace to establish and protect our brand. Make no mistake: As much as I enjoy the other administrators in DayZ, and we have learned a lot from each other having each other's backs, we are in competition with each other for donations to maintain sustainability, quality of service, and player support. The brand is important to that. However, in the interests of cooperation, I agreed to do this. We as a society to not get without giving. And, for there part, as the staff responded, they were reasonable and understanding. Even still (and not to get that admin in trouble, hence why I will not name him here) other servers are still operating under the codename system. This wouldn't be a problem if I couldn't go into the server browser and see that Vipeax, a member of the staff, was using "NY" as his namespace. Not "NY [some digit]", just straight "NY". (Picture current as of 26 May 1:30am Eastern) Those of us who were early players/hosts of the mod will remember that the first person to occupy the NY namespace was Jonnerz of HostAltitude. NY1 provided by HostAltitude. I find it simply incredible (and I use that word in the sense of "not credible", not "really impressive") that the staff themselves are not aware of efforts being made to unify the nomenclature while members of the hosting community are being asked to do so. And have no doubts about it: Changing to Chicago 1 and Chicago 20 (I wanted to give the staff the peace of mind that I'd moved well outside the occupied space) has caused confusion among our players, who are asking what happened to Original and Blues. Regulars are having difficulty finding the servers, and our player count has dropped. Cooperation only goes so far; when one member of the staff isn't cooperating with what is being asked of others (others who are, in fact, supporting the player base that would permit this mod to have commercial salability), I have an issue with that. "We're busy" stops being credible when the problem persists six days after I was asked to change. I've also offered my skillset numerous times to be used at the disposal of the team, including human resources management. The placing of open calls for needed positions, the discretion to place those as temporary or permanent positions, the hiring and firing of personnel. Running two corporations, I've done it all. And I have the corporate filings to show for it, too. Those offers have gone unheeded, and I regret this. Any HR department (regardless of if I was present on it or not, that's just illustrative of known attempts to provide solutions) would act to significantly alleviate the congestion currently being experienced. That is simply two other grievances I have that has not been resolved in a timely manner and to my satisfaction as a host/provider of a service. I regret that this had to be raised on the public forums as it did, but with it being addressed to me publicly, and with the DevTeam often incommunicado due to the aforementioned congestion/understaffing, it may be that this is the only method by which to address the issue. Hopefully this will lead to effective solutions that satisfy both the DevTeam and the server hosts which support them. Nothing pisses lil' perfectionist me off like inefficiency, and if there's one thing that's inefficient, it's wasting a perfectly good loss of resources.