Its worded very well. One reason I registered here was to ask if you could make a better wording for this petition? I can edit it, right now it doesn't look too professional.Pegasus wrote:It's kind of a long shot considering their recent news posts inactivity, but I went ahead and shot an email to PlanetUnreal about this as well. Here's what all I posted:
I know it's a bit long at 4 paragraphs, but I thought it was important to get all the major points across as best I could, so yeah. PlanetUnreal may not be what it used to in terms of popularity (then again, what UT-centric place is these days?), but it's still a well known hub of UT news/info for many (esp. non-regulars), so it doesn't hurt to try. Let's see if they run it...Subj: Cross-community petition to Epic to keep UT2004 alive online.
Hello, PlanetUnreal, and happy New Year! I go by the nick Pegasus and I'm part of a european UT2004 server and a member of the UT online community in general. I know this site's news posters may seem to have been inactive or otherwise preoccupied lately, but we could definitely use all the help we can get on an increasingly troubling issue so I'm appealing to you as well. Please consider hearing our plea and helping us spread this message to concerned fans everywhere as far and wide as possible by posting it in your main page's News section. Thank you for your time and generosity in advance! Allow me to describe our concern below:
UNREAL TOURNAMENT 2004 IS IN TROUBLE:
Although it may be getting a bit long in the tooth these days - the game was released nearly 8 years ago after all - for many UT2004 represents Epic's finest installment in the Unreal series, a fact perhaps best demonstrated during the year following UT3's release and the subsequent mass migration back to UT2004's servers after seeing what all the most recent edition had made its priorities.
With its fast and finely tuned gameplay mechanics, multitude of gametypes, variety of aesthetics and visual themes and, perhaps best of all, an open and enduring creative online community which to this day has delivered dozens of great total conversions and hundreds of quality mods and other custom content, it's easy to understand UT2004's lasting appeal to both pros and amateur seasoned PC gamers alike.
UT2004 has silently existed online for all these years requiring nothing of Epic but a sole Master Server machine somewhere to maintain the list of registered online servers available and the various whitelisted mutators those servers are allowed to run. Over the last year, however, this lifeline resource has become significantly unstable, returning incomplete server lists occasionally several whole minutes after being queried by people seeking servers to play on and, oftentimes, unavailable altogether. This removes any and all possibility for new server discovery through the game's own means (happening upon a new, worthwhile server during surfing isn't very likely nowadays either) and limits players' choices to whatever servers they happen to've added to their favourites' lists only. Considering the steady decline of new players after so many years, many worry that this problem could become the coup de grace for UT2004 that pushes Epic to scrap its online functions entirely if it were to persist for much longer.
People have been appealing to Epic for months on their official msg board (at http://forums.epicgames.com/threads/815 ... rver-query) trying to get a speck of attention to this issue, but aside from a single empty promise to "check into it" a month ago, nothing has changed. Because of this, a petition has been started to help illustrate to the cold-shouldered developer just how many players still exist that care to see UT2004 live on and are concerned with these latest developments. We would like to ask every UT2004 fan to visit the petition's page at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/KEEP-UT2004-ALIVE/ and aid us with their participation. Please help keep this great game alive! Thank you all for your attention and have a Happy New Year!
Other UT2004 servers/communities already in support of this effort:
CEONSS: http://www.ceonss.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=131
Omnip)o(tents: http://forum.omnipotents.com/showthread.php?t=13908
Death Warrant: http://www.clandw.org/forums/7/3984
Hi! Thanks for registering & welcome.Pancake wrote:Hi. I made this petition. Thanks for spreading the word.
[...]
Its worded very well. One reason I registered here was to ask if you could make a better wording for this petition? I can edit it, right now it doesn't look too professional.
Another thing I've noticed is that there's might be too many issues mentioned? Do you guys think they're important or should be left out?
Thanks.
LOL not yet. We may consider it as successful as soon as we have a fixed master server again.Pancake wrote:Yes, it looks like Flak is finally looking into it, even replied my e-mails. Petition successful?
Flak is Epic's UT2004 community manager. She's the one that's supposed to be listening to what we need.borgqueenx wrote:who's flak? someone who works at epic games?
The petition's objectives are threefold.Pancake wrote:Yes, it looks like Flak is finally looking into it, even replied my e-mails. Petition successful?
laboRHEinz wrote:I was just wondering why this issue appeared at all! What's the culprit? I'd never suspect Epic doing this by intention. Maybe because they were moving the most likely very old original master / stats servers to another host? Maybe they virtualised and put them an a slow or overloaded host?