DayZ Standalone Server Hosting Ideas

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BEFORE YOU SAY 0 POST RANDOM, DONT BE FOOLED. I HAVE BEEN AROUND SINCE THERE WERE ONLY 20 OR SO SERVERS. I HAVE JUST FOUND NO NEED TO POST ANYTHING TILL NOW.

With the release of standalone coming up and the inevitable amount of people who are going to want servers for it I figured I would take the time to give my impressions and what not on the current hosts of Dayz and how I feel they will be when standalone comes out.

First and most important let's get a list of all the current server hosts that are worth noting.

Survival servers

Vilayer

HFBSERVERS

Dayz.st

Xelaservers

Zaphosting

Defcon servers

And several other random short lived hosts

Now let me give a little run down of each host in the order of oldest to newest.

HFBSERVERS

Hfbservers is currently the oldest dayz host out there. They have been around since the early days of dayz and in the beginning were known to have the best and cheapest servers out there. This was back in the days when there was only one type of servers and that was an official server connected to the dayz hive. No fancy private hives and no extra bells and whistles. They were at that time the largest host in NA for servers. They gave the customer the most flexibility for their servers in the way of full ftp to their servers when every other host was limiting ftp. That all then changed when the hosting rules changed which required all hosts to pull it. They currently have the domain www.dayzserverhosting.com Which I can only imagine will be an amazing domain to have once standalone is out which also shows how long they have been around lol. Now they are not without their issues, They had during a small period of time a decent amount of complaints about server issues. The root of the issues actually had happened to be as simple as battleye having a faulty build where with a setting enabled servers used a TON of IO causing them to lag like crazy. Even after turning that setting off and the servers returning to their perfect lag free selves the owner publically apologized to everyone for the issues and vowed to change everything about the company for the better. Since then complaints about hfb have been few and far between. I have also noticed that hfb has done something some people have said is impossible, they have a chernarus server running (with custom buildings) and over 1400 vehicles on it, With OUT lag and crashing issues. This I think is pretty damn impressive lol.

Vilayer

Vilayer has been around almost as long as Hfbservers. They started mainly hosting servers in EU and quickly became the largest server in EU for dayz. They also started with official dayz servers connected to the dayz hive, and like hfb were known for their great performance and reliability except instead of NA like Hfb they were EU. They then started to expand to NA during the small period of time when hfb was having the battleye issues, I can only imagine they were getting some of the clients that were leaving hfb not knowing the real cause of the issues. Then during the time when private hives began to become popular and more and more people wanted them vilayer was the first to make their own custom dayz map (takistan) which then sparked the creative minds of dayz as a whole which lead to many custom maps being made and well you can now see how popular non chernarus maps are lol. I also did notice that they had basically taken the entire survival servers web based control panel and built it into their tcadmin, which was the first host to do this all within one control panel. Complaints about Vilayer have also been pretty low with most complaining about long support times, not really too many server issue complaints.

Defcon servers

As much as the name defcon makes me cringe I do need to make a short post about them as at one point they did host a small number of dayz servers. This host by far has the biggest negative light cast on it as at one point one of their support reps told a customer that he would give the customers personal details to every known hacker out there and called him a little shit. This is the only company on this list I will say to avoid at all costs.

Survival Servers

Survival servers has not been around nearly as long as hfb or vilayer but they definitely have some time in dayz hosting. I personally have not followed survival servers too much till recently so I will try to do my best to explain them. They started out by being the cheapest host out there, beating hfb and vilayer in price by about $10/mo there servers ran pretty good and there were few complaints about them for awhile. They were one of the first hosts to do a web based control panel for managing private servers and were the first to offer database access to your servers for an extra cost at the time. So they in a sense were the first to really allow people to customize their servers how they liked when on a private server. They have now more recently received a LOT of negative reviews and customers posting on the forums stating how poor their support was. They seem to be attempting to flex their TOS muscles a little too much on people. But that is really what it is there for I guess. At the moment it seems that the vast majority of activity on the forums about them is negative so im not sure how they will get themselves out of this hole they are in. I also have noticed they are seeming to have a lot of issues with things like tcadmin which hfb and vilayer simply do not have.

Dayz.st

Dayz.st came to be a little after survival servers, they were the first host to not use tcadmin (pretty much what every other gsp uses) This non standard control panel has its benefits and has its issues. The benefits are the fact that they can add pretty much anything they want to it as it is pretty much not being held back by anything. This has allowed them to add things like push button spawning of vehicles and a map which allows you to spawn vehicles based on a map of your world with once again the push of a button. Now with it being a custom control panel coded by the owner of the company you have some issues that tcadmin simply does not have. Things like changing your map without losing your ip and port are an issue with dayz.st, but not with the hosts using the much more developed tcadmin. I am also a bit surprised by the fact that the users control panel details are in the URL of the control panel in plain text this is INCLUDING the users password, That does not seem very secure to me. Now a negative thing about the owner of the company I have noticed. The owner seems to talk down to other hosts and he seems to act like he is running very large multi million dollar companies as he called vilayer "microscopic" in comparison to things he has done, He then does not back up ANY of his claims and simply says he does not need to tell people his personal life. I had seen another user post this a little while back and found it a very valid point that is why I am pretty much copying what he or she said. I find this a very bad business practice as if you are in to talking bad about other hosts and then apparently lying about things you have done that does not go well in my head. With all that being said I do not see dayz.st doing very well when standalone comes out as one his control panel will not work with standalone as dayz is all going to be steam based including the server files apparently. And all those extra little tools that people switched to them about will be gone as standalone will NOT support it. So they will simply be just like all the other hosts

Xela servers

I know very little about them other then the fact that they have been around for a decent amount of time and have had no complaints, They have cheap servers and from personally joining one they appear to be lag free. I did notice that the owner did use his thread as a sort of twitter like new system but thats about all I have to say about them.

Zap-hosting

They are a VERY cheap german host, I have from friends heard pretty much nothing but issues about things like multiple servers being on the same port and simple settings not saving at all. I have not seen many complaints on dayzmod.com but they apparently do have a lot of complaints on german gaming websites. I also do not see them doing very well with standalone.

And now here is where I talk about the other hosts that have come and gone. Host Altitude used to be a pretty decent size player in the dayz server hosting world. But they seem to have shutdown and been bought out by another EU host. I personally do not consider them a relevant host anymore as they are only hosting minecraft and websites now. Elipse host was also a decent player not too long ago, They had a lot of happy customers and seemed to be doing well. They pretty much appear to have vanished from the dayz hosting market and have gone back to minecraft and other source games. There are also some other random companies that have come and gone at the end of summer as they did not do well enough to stay around. None personally stand out too well in my head.

Now onto who I personally feel should host servers day ONE of standalone release. I feel that the dev team should go with those who have been around the longest and built the trust of the dev team up. So that should be HFB and Vilayer. I say them because they were around before there were really any requirements for dayz hosting other then no passwording and locking of your servers, and banning for no reason. When the dev team started to enact rules, they followed them to the T and applied them to their servers almost instantly. Plus the owners of Vilayer and Hfbservers have shown that they are not asses to each other and have even worked together on things to better the community. This type of footing and history should be the same that leads the community into standalone during its early days. I think maybe after a few weeks to a month other hosts should then be allowed in as hfb and vilayer will have worked with the dev team to iron out server side issues and what not. I just do not want to see server hosting be ruined by other hosts trying to either mod dayz to run their broken or half working tools, or have them try to sway the idea of DayZ that rocket has just to try and sell more servers. I almost guarantee that dayz.st or survivalservers would either sell servers for far too cheap to get customers or they would try making another map or something to sell more servers which is something rocket has stated he DOES NOT WANT. And I mean heck the owner of dayz.st has said it himself that he has and will continue to oversell nodes as it is the nature of website and game server hosting, Which is something will NOT work when standalone comes out as 99% of the servers will most likely be filled to capacity.

So if Rocket or Matt Lightfoot ends up reading this I would suggest you work with the oldest hosts first for getting servers up for standalone. Or at least acknowledge them as a recommended host or something as they have hosted servers for your mod and here soon game for SOO long, they have had to deal with bugs and issues that they simply could not fix and have most likely lost countless thousands of dollars from people who just do not understand something's are just a bug.

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This post reeks of bias to be honest, sounds like you have some kind of relationship with HFB and Vilayer and want them to control a monopoly on standalone servers. Obviously the devs are going to have to work with some hosts in order to have enough servers provided at launch, that doesn't mean they should limit hosting for the first month to only these providers though.

Edited December 3, 2012 by smasht_AU

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This post reeks of bias to be honest, sounds like you have some kind of relationship with HFB and Vilayer.

Feel free to look up everything I said, I have outlined all publicly available content. Everything is right here on the forums. I currently have never spoken to any of the owners of either of the companies except for a support ticket reply from ersan the owner of dayz.st. I simply hold a higher respect for vilayer and hfb as one they have been around the longest, and two they have not spoken negatively to any other hosts one this public mod forum.