TEN TIPS TO POPULATE YOUR SERVER

1. Don't delegate the head Server Admin job

Making your server a success comes at a price. You must must be willing to work hard at achieving success. If you think for a minute that a few guys out there you have managed to rope into admin-ing your servers will put the effort into making your server rise to the top of the gaming heap, while you sit around and do the big-picture thinking, you will be disappointed.

If you own the server (or are paying the bucks to lease it), then you are the boss and by default, the chief Server Admin. If you delegate the Admin job to someone else...your delegates will be running the server and you will lose control over its direction. For this reason it is vital that you assume responsibility over the operation of the Server and for this reason you must learn how to operate it.

Becoming an admin is one of the hardest jobs out there in the FPS community. You are the focal point for all the issues that arise. Those issues will be both technical and people-related.

If you are good at solving at least one of these types of problems, you just might successful. Techies with no social graces can cajole their friends to act as "greeters" on their forums, while social-butterflies can ask for help in the community to get over their technical problems.

If you do not feel you have even a smidgen of technical aptitude around computers (you do not need much - but you need some) and you are not good with people...do not become an admin. 

Before you think that becoming an Admin is too difficult, help is available to you. There are resources out there that can be useful inside and outside the gaming community.

So now, assuming that:

1. I have not discouraged you, and ...

2. You are now firmly in control of the reins of your server...we can get to business.

Let's first start off with some valuable resources for you to sock away for later study. We have prepared a starter kit of links for you that might get you going in the right direction:

The Server Admin Starter Kit
 

2. Have a Vision

Sometimes the difference between failure and success is a dream. In my life, I have found that successful individuals always seem to be able to visualize the end product of their work. 

Make sure you know what type of server you want to create. Visualize it in your mind.

Will the server only be for your buddies and you to play on? Do you want to create a competitive gaming server and enter tourneys? Do you want to create a clan? Or maybe even more...a whole community? Who do you want to attract? Understand gaming demographics:

Older people play slower gametypes/mods. Younger people play faster mods or stock (in the case of CoD4...given how quick a game it is).

 

Older folks might like having more gravity turned on...which slows everyone down. Camping flourishes...however, younger guys hate campers and high grav - so they might leave.

There's a growing tactical gaming community right now. Some of the older guys on your server, might like that better?

Well, whatever the goal, you must see it in your mind's eye. If you do not know where you want to go, no one can give you directions on how to get there.

3. Build a community

a) Clan or not a clan?

The very successful CoD gaming community, United Noobs {UN} show us that you do not have to create a typical clan to go along with your server. The UN is a community of players, but they are not the close-knit family that is usually seen in most clans. UN almost single-handedly popularized "community" over "clan" in CoD. This technique has made their servers number one in almost every category for the past few years. They attract the casual gamer who does not necessarily want to forge the relationships (or deal with the politics) that a clan association requires.

Having said that, clans have proven over time, that they are able provide a server with loyal players who keep coming back to play. Not having a clan creates vagabonds with no loyalty. If you are not going to be a clan server - player-retention will need to take on a different focus (something the UN has been able to do). Many people come on line to be part of something - make sure you have identified what that something is.

Sometimes a clan morphs into something much more basic and simple: an ad-hoc "competitive gaming" club.

That is the clan's purpose is solely to compete. 

Sometimes, the competitive squad and clan co-exist. Will you be fielding a competitive team? Many of the guys who play online a lot, do so to practice their skills for their CEVO or CAL or TWL competitive play.

Having a competitive team, or running mods that will attract competitive players will ensure that there will be a lot of traffic. If you are playing a modded server, you will lose all those guys.

b) Be Unique

One of the keys to any success is to be unique. If you decide to make a go at popularizing your server, you will need to set yourself apart from the rest of the pack.

Let us how others have done in this regard.

Let's do this by checking out the top servers on Gametrackers CoD4 global server list. This Sunday night, there are roughly 12,230 servers that show on that list.

4. Location, location, location

Players choose a server usually because they are nearby and thus they can get a low ping on them. For this reason, it is important to choose a server in a populated area.

For Europeans

#1 UK servers is the best choice. They are close enough to the main CoD4 centers in North Western Europe to attract Dutch, German and of course British players.

For North Americans:

#1 New York continues to be a very popular, but somewhat expensive location to base a server if all your players are east-coasters. The benefit of NY is that you get Europeans coming on which extends the usage greatly. If you can get the Euros to get on in the middle of the day and then your American players to fill in the evening...your server rankings will rocket!

#2 Atlanta is a really good second choice as it has the ability to rope in the north eastern US players, the Euros and the growing population in the southern U.S.

if you are looking to build a North American-only base of players, the undoubtedly your top choice is:

#1 Chicago: Excellent pings from just about anywhere in the contiguous U.S. Great server infrastructure. While Texas is becoming a popular server choice lately, they are achieving popularity through cost. Being cheap also comes at a price, ironically. Texas servers all seem to lag and currently are bested by Shytown's server farms.

5. Stock or Modded?

The plain truth here is that Modded servers typically make up a small percentage of the total number of servers in the community.

The biggest issue with modded servers is that any mod will filter the potential number of people that will enter your server. Furthermore, this filtering effect is made worse by the fact that servers will not show on your in-game browser unless you set "MODS" on. And most players...don't. Therefore, no one will even know your modded server is out there.

Playing a modded server is a "taste" issue. That's good and bad. The bad is that many people will not share your taste. The good? You will attract people with the same playing style.

The irony of modded servers is that over time...they outlast stock servers. If you look at CoD, or CoD2, the popular servers out there are the modded ones.

Because of these issues, admins who love mods, choose to run a stock server AND a modded server. The stock server is used to build an audience for the modded version.

Stock servers attract competitive gamers. They want to practice and they usually spend tons of hours doing so. If they could only practice on your servers, your usage hours will go through the roof and your server standing will as well.

6. Choosing the Right Style of Play

1. Pick the Right Gametype

cod4tracker.com is currently monitoring 18,897 players online on 17,950 servers. Of those players

For CoD4 game trackers show gametypes ranked in popularity as follows:

Totals don't sum exactly due to presence of modded servers running other gametypes. There are some modded servers out there running CTF. CTF has a niche market in CoD4. While all the rage in CoD2, the CoD4 game play does not support CTF very well, and only a few people can pull off CTF well (fritzmods.com servers come to mind).

2. Picking the right mode of play

Seventeen percent of all servers are currently running hardcore. Clearly it is a popular style of play. But it is polarizing players. Many, flat out despise it. If this trend continues, Hardcore will be marginalized in the same way as the "Tactical" community was in CoD2.

 

7. Choose the right Mod

If you are going to run a modded server, choose the right one. And without a question the leading mod across CoD-dom is:

#1 PAM: The competition mod buy Bulletworm (wormsworld.net). cod4tracker.com show 5417 servers out of 17950 total servers running this mod.

As cod4tracker.com does not make it too easy to track mods, we switch back to gametracker.com to rank the mods out there:

Right behind PAM, is the X4 mod which can be found supported at mycallofduty.com.

*Note:

1.Cracked servers are illegal servers that allow players to play without need for a game UID.

2. The value for the number of servers is to be used as relative NOT ABSOLUTE measures. It was obtained by counting the number of servers with the name of the mod in the name of the server:

**Note:

Promod is fast becoming the defacto standard for competitive mods, supplanting the PAM mod. 

8. Run popular maps

Running popular maps is the easy part. Over time, even popular maps get stale. Fortunately, IW, with nVidia's help, have provided us with four new multiplayer maps in addition to the large number of stock maps we had in CoD4. This has helped as the old maps were getting stale. Here is a list of the number of servers running various maps in the CoD4 world tonight.

*Note: Chinatown data unavailable.

The popularity of Crash, Strike, Vacant, Crossfire and Backlot cannot be over-emphasized. Much of this has to do with the fact that the competitive community uses those maps almost to the exclusion of all others (ref: Ted Ottey article).

One interesting idea to gain popularity might be to run ONLY the popular maps exclusively on the weekend for a few months.

Or, what about a "new-map" week, where you only play the latest IW maps like Creek, Broadcast, Killhouse and Chinatown non-stop.

At some point, even the new maps will get stale. In the CoD4 community, staleness set in only three months after the game was released. Many admins ran out and started loading up new maps that were designed by community members. This meant that their servers would no longer be "ranked" as the maps were technically "mods" - which in turn meant that their server could no longer be seen on the in-game browser. 

This resulted in a precipitous drop in players.

As mentioned before, if you want to mod your server, get two servers. The first brings the public in...the second becomes the modded server which tailors to suit your community's tastes.

If you go to community maps, pick ones that allow players with even poor machines to play well. If someone comes on and the game is laggy...they wont be back. Select the size of the map for the number of players you have on the server. Some of the mods out there like X4, will automatically rotate small maps into the mix if you do not have a lot of players on. Then, if many players show up...the "large-map" rotation kicks in.

Generally, players expect to encounter another player in a firefight every 20 seconds or so. More than that...they get bored and leave.

9. Get noticed.

10. Be in tune with the guys playing on your server.

Be super, super vigilant of what people say about the server. Check out and read logs. Read posts on your website. Act on what you read.

Ask your players what they like/dislike.

For example, I asked BASHandSlash.com readers "What makes a good server?". One reader, Paroxysm answered:

...A lot of competitive players can't stand stock pubs especially hard core.

Personally I look for servers that are,

1. Staffed by properly trained admins.
2. Servers where the player base doesn't camp nonstop.
3. Servers without stupid rules like no sprinting, only move while crouched, no jumping, you can only fire while using iron sights.
4. NOT HARDCORE!
5. A friendly yet competitive atmosphere.

Mod servers tend to require far more effort to get going than stock. By running one, you greatly reduce the number of players that will even know your server exists. I blame the stats system for this, everyone has to feel special these days, and that the mods filter is set to no by default. This makes it hard to differentiate your server from the rest. Unlike in older games where you couldn't always tell exactly what each server would be like.

Reader John Doe, on the right "size" of server:

A 18-20 slot server. Otherwise is a chaos.

Reader JDogg on gametype selection:

A fun, team-based gametype.

Do you have ideas that can populate a server? If you do, share it with us on our BOARDS, here .

Finally, we have recorded a series of webcasts dealing with this topic and you can hear admins talking about how they populated their servers right from their mouth:

BASH 65: Drawing a Crowd, Vol I (Jazz from the 509th)

BASH 67: Drawing a Crowd, Vol II (Taco from the 420th)

BASH 78: TNT Blowout

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