What is bad for the community is the refusal to be competed.
Really, new servers, even if how well they are done and contain the latest contents available (in opposition to a lot of old and populated servers), they have no chance to reach an acceptable player base... unless they advertise.
Not advertising on this forum or on nwvault ... lost players dont frequent those... but:
- On other server (but that will get you banned very quickly)
- On gamespy (but... even if it is the place... you will receive a lot of hate messages)
So i perfectly understand that some people here dont like that we boost our player count.
That said, Sinfar has been growing in arrow since it been running (6 months ago). We now have 30+ players at peek times.
For those have haven't realised it yet, to get a server populated, you have to work A LOT (like more than you build) on inviting people. Then if you have a good module and there's reasons for them to stay, they will as a lot of visitor are staying on Sinfar.
All way to advertise, as long as they dont interfere with the game play of other server (like a greifer would do), should be considered fine. It is even perfectly sane to do so... It will keep the development of multiplayer servers active... There's so many old servers that get no updates these days and one of the reason is that their owner feel that they done what they initially wanted... do better than the server they previously played.
this:
We like to moan about griefers. Well, at least (most) griefers (sometimes) give us something to do. These weaselly servers are just bad for the whole NWN community.
Is like comparing something that increase the level of the game vs something that decrease it.
Nowaday, theres very few servers that reach a decent player base to be fun and challenge the most populated ones, which is a problem. The cause is obvious... less players and a almost the same number of servers. Persistent world owner that keep their server that is totally oudated, up, are much worst to me... If i was not certain that Sinfar was not of a decent level, i would not say that and i would not fake the player count. A server that is (bad|bugged|outdated|abandonned) and that represent itself as any other PW with 0 player just give even less chance to new servers.
Solution: let people advertise the way they want so that players that would enjoy playing a new server can find their way and not end up on one of those ~200 (bad|bugged|outdated|abandonned) servers.
Anyway,
shameless promotion:
http://z15.invisionfree.com/sinfar