Unfortunately, Anzio like a lot of other things has become a useless waste of time and a burden to its members.
Anzio was the brainchild of one of the best members DoD has and ever will have-- Sumac.
The concept was to create a new niche for eGO in the form of an eGO run DoD Friendly Fire server, the first our organization has ever had. That dream took months to come to fruition because of problems that still plague eGO and DoD in particular. However, Anzio was ultimately released, saw a solid start, and was supported by the community.
Although we usually think of community support as a great strength, for Anzio it has become a weakness in several senses.
1. Anzio is only filled (normally half-filled at best) because of a dedicated bunch of DoD members who spam their friends list, put out announcements, and do an outstanding job of filling the server to the best of their abilities. Having been one of these people I can say that the task becomes tiresome and the responses to fill Anzio become less and less frequent. However, the members who do this should be commended on their perseverance and tenacity.
2. Successful servers don't rely on DoD members to thrive. While Donner and Avalanche have several eGO members on at all hours of the day, the vast majority of players are pubs. I don't think this fact is up for much debate; successful servers are successful because of pubs. Take a look at the player lists for our top servers and you'll find a solid 80% are pubs. Take a look at Anzio and you'll be hard pressed to find more pubs than eGO members.
3. Anzio is essentially a public eGO member's server. Want to wind down after an event and play with only eGO members? "Hey let's fill Anzio." I can't count the number of times I have seen a pub join, take a look at the overwhelming eGO presence then leave. Whether they think they interrupted a clan even or if they grew uncomfortable around an all admin team, most pubs leave Anzio soon after seeing the roster.
4. Changing a server's dynamics could help fill a server if it met the majority's wants or needs. By majority I mean the majority of people playing on the server (pubs), not the majority of votes in this thread. If a problem arises or a need is not met then it would be a solid decision to make a change to better the server. However, Anzio doesn't have a strong following of pubs and it isn't able to stay full no matter who or what happens in the server. The problem with Anzio never filing up is definitively NOT that there are 10 assault classes playing on one team.
In the past the machine gun class was blamed for emptying the server. Did limiting the class help the server stay full? No. Will changing the amount of assault classes help fill the server? No.
5. In the same lines as changing the server's dynamics, would changing Anzio to an FF off server help? Maybe. However, the main problem with Anzio is getting the server full and keeping it that way. While there are a lot of diehard Anzio fans, the server is still failing. The problem with DoD is that it is an old game with people who have been playing for years on servers they know and trust. Mostly, there is not an influx of new players who are tempted to try new servers. Many servers are FF, many allow cussing, and some of them are eGO servers. Most DoD players have a few servers they play on and rarely frequent from their favorites.
6. DoD has had to remove a lot of servers because they were failing. The Sniper server, Flash, Palermo (I think), Argentan, and Colmar. I probably missed a few. All of these maps died because we couldn't keep them full. Not because we didn't try, but because successful maps need to be filled by pubs. If you browse around you can find running servers of most of these maps. But why did ours fail while others thrived? Who know and who cares? We have successful servers and failing servers seem to drag our members and pubs away from other servers. "Hey let's fill Anzio" often means "Hey let's empty out Donner!"
Anzio has only been half successful (if even that) because it has been filled with a majority of eGO players. When our members leave the server it empties out. We have tried changing weapons classes before with no change and now the "best" option put forward by your leadership team is to further restrict weapons.
A lot of you know me and those of you who don't should know that I don't pussyfoot around a subject.
Anzio is a dead server, your leadership team is making an attempt to save it so when it does fail they can wash their hands of it., and who could blame them for trying? I say this because I have been a part of this before and you are all likely to see it again. I hope that your recommendations can save Anzio but it would be best if you added a fourth option to the poll that says "Take Anzio down so we can concentrate on servers that have a chance."
