My experience with Multiplay server hosting (it's not good.)

[laramie 11]

My friends and I decided getting a server a week ago, so we went about doing so. We decided on Multiplay due to it's high popularity and we felt that paying a bit more might mean higher quality. This is a log of our ongoing experience with the company;

*Days are rough estimates though close-ish*

Day 1:

scripts.log doesn't include any data in it... file a ticket

realize that the hosting service doesn't provide ftp access, feel stupid for not checking beforehand

Day 3:

the web admin tool updates to include scripts.log in a special location, because we are active admins we find it quickly.

Patch 1.7.2.5 rolls out... Multiplay performs multiple unscheduled reboots, with no ingame message, to install and then rollback. The notification on the website portal consists of 'We rolled back' without any reason. End result they retain patch 1.7.2.5 but are on a baseline Arma2OA version.

Day 4:

Spend a few hours on live chat talking to someone as to why we are on the wrong arma version and why they rolled back, when asked if we can expect it to update I get the super helpful response of 'nope'. Try to explain why having the wrong arma version is bad to staff, end result is that the boss folk at multiplay want DayZ running on baseline because it's too hard to keep up with the updates. This means checking 'Hide wrong Arma2 Version' in DayZ Commander means you will never see a multiplay server. Not sure about six launcher as I don't use it.

Server population dies, as does the population across all multiplay servers.

Day 5:

Multiplay notifies me of the location of scripts.log (answers the original ticket)

Day 7:

scripts.log reaches it's size limit and locks, still waiting for a response from Multiplay on if deleting it will start a new log. This means we are unable to use the most useful anti-hack tool a server admin currently has... the log file.

Battle eye updates with new admin tools, Multiplay claims it's broken and does not implement it. Making Multiplay server the goto place for hackers since their scripts.log is locked and they don't use the Battle Eye admin tools. The only advantage is because the servers are generally empty this doesn't effect much.

Day 8:

Post on dayzmod and get flamed (I'm guessing).

For your information,

Both defcon servers and host altitude allow full ftp access and run the latest arma2 version allowing their servers to actually show up on server browsers.

Thanks!

[PK Richie 507]

Find another host and put it down to experience :) Maybe do a new post writing a review of your host so others don't fall into the same trap, maybe even multiplay will see this thread and decide to clean up their act.

[Loque 13]

We are currently having a the opposite with multiplay - the server is very fast and seems to work well, seems to populate fine too (no matter what version we have been on), they have also updated it to the latest version recently - in short I feel like they are putting the effort into making the servers as amazing as they should be in every resepct... however:

1) I agree the random reboots without any message is not appreciated - however I think this is something to do with their setup (I spoke to a tech personnel on the phone and he told me they are trying to get this fixed).

2) They could do with some links to documentation about the logs and how to configure the server properly - to save time dealing with random support individuals (as naturally, some are better than others).

Other than this I would really recommend them, I was able to call them and speak to someone who knew their stuff on a sunday(!) - doubt you will find that elsewhere, combined with a very fast server on a great connection - hope they get the niggles sorted!

[Dwighty 3]

I'm renting a server from multiplay.no, and I think these guys are fucking awesome. Since I'm a total scrub at this I've filed a two insanely stupid support tickets and both have been answered within 45 min.

I guess service might vary from country to country, but the thing about no FTP access seems pretty weird. I have it through my game-panel.

Your sure your not just fucking up?

[laramie 11]

Yea, the ingame panel isn't ftp access you just upload a file and ask for it to be applied manually. You could never run something like BEC on it. It's just a restricted upload portal.

For example of the ongoing issues, I logged on today to find all my logs unavailable and the dashboard no longer shows players on the server.

[venthos 605]

This is why I have never and will never go with a 'pre-packaged game server' product that's essentially the game server equivalent of Shared Hosting in the web hosting world. You get nothing other than a control panel and therefore are at the mercy of the host to manage your server for you. You also can't install any customizations beyond what the control panel allows.

If you can afford it and have the knowledge, move to an unmanaged VPS/Dedicated Server and set things up yourself. You'll remove the bottleneck and be able to actually maintain your server as you desire. It's not all that much more expensive, I'm paying $60/mo for an unmanaged 3-core E5-2690 VPS w/3GB RAM.

But yeah, when purchasing a pre-packaged game server with control panel only access, you're essentially reduced to a "Wallet Admin" as I call it ;) Basically just providing a credit card/funds and not much else. For service quality, you really need to handle it yourself with your own unmanaged server.

[Gogster (DayZ) 626]

Shouldn't lump all control panel services in together, from what I remember Multi-plays is a custom written one. I've used a few GSP's using cPanel (including our current one for DayZ) and find it does everything we need. It also help that Gaming Deluxe tend to have the new versions into the 'install updates' section of cPanel within 24 hours without fail.

[venthos 605]

To each their own. Not everyone has the knowledge (or is willing) to sysadmin an entire box. I just can't stand the "training wheels" feeling of game server control panels and require the freedom to customize and install whatever I feel is beneficial to me.

[U.G.N - Jedi Panda 1319]

Guys I'm also hosting a 50 man server with MultiPlay based in London, UK. I can only sing their praises, they have been fantastic for me. I have asked them for a lot of help over the 2 ish weeks my server has been up, and they have always helped me fully.

With Multiplay there is no access via FTP for DayZ at the moment, but everything is accessible via the ClanForge panel so it really makes no difference, but you would have known this before buying the server.

They've helped me when I've fucked up the server.cfg they found my errors which were preventing the server from booting. They've helped me with setting up the script logging and with Rcon problems I was having with BE Rcon and Arma 2 Rcon. They've also set me up with a new profile now BE have released the new script detection features, and its working perfectly. They've also helped me with DayZ specific stuff which really is beyond the scope of what they should be helping me with, but fair play to them :)

I knew before I bought with Multiplay that they are one of the more expensive GSP's, but you get what you pay for, 24.7 live support, and excellent customer service (in my experience).

Edited August 17, 2012 by Sgt.Leon

[U.G.N - Jedi Panda 1319]

With regards to your Day 4.... Multiplay clearly stated in the Clanforge news area that they were rolling back the Arma beta files to the earlier version because of stability issues. This didnt cause any problems for my server, and it was well populated the whole time. You're taking this out of proportion saying that you will never see any Multiplay servers as they are all out of date? What a load of bollox, you really dont know what you're talking about!

[girthbrooks 5]

With regards to your Day 4.... Multiplay clearly stated in the Clanforge news area that they were rolling back the Arma beta files to the earlier version because of stability issues. This didnt cause any problems for my server, and it was well populated the whole time. You're taking this out of proportion saying that you will never see any Multiplay servers as they are all out of date? What a load of bollox, you really dont know what you're talking about!

funny, your response almost sounds like you work for multiplay. all we want is a server that the majority of the player base can join. and yes, once sixupdater and dayz commander made 1.7.2.5 and the latest arma build easily accessible, and most players had them, our server population dropped DRAMATICALLY. not sure what you did to keep such an overflowing player count on your server, but our server was barren for a few days. they've since figured out that the most recent arma builds are in fact stable and have updated, so player count is back to normal levels. the problem here was lack of communication/knowledge in customer support. the scripts.log thing was never explained. there was a day where it wasn't even available, then the next two days it was a version from days prior. now we can't see the player list from the control panel. no, we aren't stupid and yes, we know what we're talking about. thats why laramie created this thread.

[ZiiP_Scottyboy 17]

We have multiplay server and to begin with they were a bit slow at getting up to speed with the Dayz update process. They still are a bit slow to react to changes in Dayz, but have really got things up to speed quite quickly overall.

With regards to scripts log not logging, that was probably down to Battleye changing the format required for the scripts.txt file. They did it quite discretely during an update not really explaining to people. Once we changed to new format scripts log started logging.

When 1.7.2.5 came out we had players on the latest beta patch but our server was as Multiplay explained in clanforge news on an older version. Server ran just fine for our members and guests.

funny, your response almost sounds like you work for multiplay. all we want is a server that the majority of the player base can join. and yes, once sixupdater and dayz commander made 1.7.2.5 and the latest arma build easily accessible, and most players had them, our server population dropped DRAMATICALLY. not sure what you did to keep such an overflowing player count on your server, but our server was barren for a few days. they've since figured out that the most recent arma builds are in fact stable and have updated, so player count is back to normal levels. the problem here was lack of communication/knowledge in customer support. the scripts.log thing was never explained. there was a day where it wasn't even available, then the next two days it was a version from days prior. now we can't see the player list from the control panel. no, we aren't stupid and yes, we know what we're talking about. thats why laramie created this thread.

Six updater has not had 1.7.2.5 on it so probably most of the problem was your player base using six launcher which updates beta versions but did not update to 1.7.2.5. This was well documented in the crazy hotfix 1.7.2.5 post. Anyone who manually updated to 1.7.2.5 and ran six launcher were reverted to 1.7.2.4. Not multiplays fault. I think you will probably find that numbers are down at the moment as alot of people are disgruntled at the state of patch 1.7.2.5 which has not addressed issues it was supposed to.

The player list missing from your control panel was down to a bug in their update to use access controls this morning. Lasted for about 1hour tops.

I think all in all Multiplay have catched up quite quickly to the customer demands for running DayZ. Most of our problems stem from people updating games incorrectly as opposed to server settings.

Edited August 18, 2012 by scottyboy

[U.G.N - Jedi Panda 1319]

My server is often fully populated even at 3am. Its weird, even I wasnt expecting so many players for a new server, but its the server name that attacts people :)

And no I certainly do not work for multiplay, loL !

Edited August 19, 2012 by Sgt.Leon