A Message from the President

Advertisements in the right place will surve a great purpose. Moderation is always good.

The seperation of irc servers doesn’t seem to be working very well. Besides 1/2 of us just are not going to change irc servers. I dont want to be connect to 2 servers. Shouldn’t bother you that much you. Either way you look at it. They know where you are “support” if they can get to it. They also know where to idle for community, where the rest of us are. If they need help, ill send them to the website. If they get frustrated, because they only know how to connect to gamesurge because their friend helped them like 80% of irc clients then ill send them to the forums. The gamesurge network is community for now unless you guys decide to come back.

Dont waste too much money in advertisements on one highschool. Your really looking for gamers, they will be online all night and sleep walking in school. They put the “One Of Ours” flyers of Ashley at Triton, but my brothers didn’t see it. I mean those are huge! I would attempt on spending time in gamesurge and spaming some chan’s. Or website advertisements. Talk to the people who make the schools website and work out something so that they will advertise your servers. Local NC highschools will work with you. They did it for the Nexus. Just advertise in the right place and where they are going to look is all I am suggesting.

The Rcon to my knowledge is known by, Raven, Gxti, Split, Tyler, David, and now yourself. It has never been hacked and .. you really dont have to have one. just use the consoles of the games. People who have rcon will have access to that anyway, other then the Council Leaders.

I dont mind some of the changes that you guys made in the past, like the front page change from the theme Raven and I created to the faster loading one. I think it is missing some things, but thats my opinion and i can live with it. But things like the IRC server, arguing about permissions on the forums(telling me i have no right to put them back bla bla bla) and taking down the COD2 server. Which was the second most popular server we have had. Even if our current students didn’t play on it (they are the ones who asked for it) I still think that it would be a great advertisement for the Gaming Club. I remember it was ranked 10 -18 or so .. the cs server only got to 300 or so, on the most popular played gaming server on the entire gaming network. I never dreamed of having 3 counter strike servers. Tyler went crazy when I told him we wanted to run CSS and CS1.6 on the same network. He just thought it was crazy being the same game and all. Now we have 4 counter strike servers. Jez…. (Not saying that it is bad)

All of this is just MY way of thinking of things.

i did not do spell check .. dont see the point

Adam Faulkner said:

Advertisements in the right place will surve a great purpose. Moderation is always good.

 

The seperation of irc servers doesn’t seem to be working very well. Besides 1/2 of us just are not going to change irc servers. I dont want to be connect to 2 servers. Shouldn’t bother you that much you. Either way you look at it. They know where you are “support” if they can get to it. They also know where to idle for community, where the rest of us are. If they need help, ill send them to the website. If they get frustrated, because they only know how to connect to gamesurge because their friend helped them like 80% of irc clients then ill send them to the forums. The gamesurge network is community for now unless you guys decide to come back.

 

Dont waste too much money in advertisements on one highschool. Your really looking for gamers, they will be online all night and sleep walking in school. They put the “One Of Ours” flyers of Ashley at Triton, but my brothers didn’t see it. I mean those are huge! I would attempt on spending time in gamesurge and spaming some chan’s. Or website advertisements. Talk to the people who make the schools website and work out something so that they will advertise your servers. Local NC highschools will work with you. They did it for the Nexus. Just advertise in the right place and where they are going to look is all I am suggesting.

 

The Rcon to my knowledge is known by, Raven, Gxti, Split, Tyler, David, and now yourself. It has never been hacked and .. you really dont have to have one. just use the consoles of the games. People who have rcon will have access to that anyway, other then the Council Leaders.

 

I dont mind some of the changes that you guys made in the past, like the front page change from the theme Raven and I created to the faster loading one. I think it is missing some things, but thats my opinion and i can live with it. But things like the IRC server, arguing about permissions on the forums(telling me i have no right to put them back bla bla bla) and taking down the COD2 server. Which was the second most popular server we have had. Even if our current students didn’t play on it (they are the ones who asked for it) I still think that it would be a great advertisement for the Gaming Club. I remember it was ranked 10 -18 or so .. the cs server only got to 300 or so, on the most popular played gaming server on the entire gaming network. I never dreamed of having 3 counter strike servers. Tyler went crazy when I told him we wanted to run CSS and CS1.6 on the same network. He just thought it was crazy being the same game and all. Now we have 4 counter strike servers. Jez…. (Not saying that it is bad)

 

All of this is just MY way of thinking of things.

 

i did not do spell check .. dont see the point

DANG! alright, alright, let me try to digest this.

From an advertisement standpoint I barely see any relevance for maintaining our spot on GameSurge. Wait! Hear me out. I logged into GameSurge regularly, but I love to do stuff by command so I always did /join #wcugaming. I know there is a way to query the channel list off of them, and for all 5 people that do that regularly, I can see the significance of having that the way it is. Now, I enjoy the idea of having two servers, it provides more of a localized environment for planning, executive activities, etc. on aphrodite and community on GameSurge. As you may notice, I have xchat set to log me into both at startup, so don’t worry I’ll be in both.

Also about IRC, here is a thought I have: if i can come across the knowledge of how to do this, then I may try to develop a repeater so that something said on one server is mirrored on the other server, even if I get a RepeaterBot to say who is talkin and what they are saying. If I come up with this it will be discussed at the next meeting, or if urgent enough at an emergency executive meeting.

High School advertisements: I hear what you are saying and I remember it well, I’m not even a year out of high school myself and I remember just how horridly boring the halls were and how I read nothing. However, I think we should at least put 3-4 fliers at high schools (and I will try to kick myself into doing this). Even if we just spam the CET rooms, I think fliers are still a good idea. Also word of mouth will do wonders, I will investigate how to seed such information in a high school social environment. And I will look into doing some sort of spot on the schools’ websites as you mention.

However, about spamming GameSurge channels. This is a personal issue of mine, if someone shows up in irc while I’m around and spams for jelly club meetings, they are likely to have certain computer malfunctions the next day… So I personally will not do the same across other channels, but you are more than welcome to do so at your pleasure.

And on the subject of server hosting: (allow me to start multiple paragraphs on this one)

One, at least some of the servers we dropped had absurdly minimal user counts, and as such are potentially just a burden on the network. UT2004 for one, I can say that as I monitored it, I never once (outside the LAN) saw more than 3 players on there. And that was while I was teaching Kuros how it runs and some other dude jumped in. Plus, that sonofagun was falling apart. CoD2, I know nothing about it, you would have to talk to that CL.

Need the servers be gone? Not in the least. The ones we list now are the ones we officially host on Tron and Aphrodite. Other servers are not only optional, they exist. Students are still more than welcome to ask us to host one themselves and we wouldn’t mind allowing the name of “WCU Gaming xxxxx Server”. We probably wouldn’t even mind if they did so without asking, but I’m not the one that makes said decisions. As soon as I stabilize the configuration and the batch file running it, expect to see me hosting a UT2004 server, unofficially.

And of course the issue I am burdened with: what effect do the server changes have on our advertisement?

That is a field of prediction as of yet. Yes, we shall make efforts to use popular servers as recruitment to WCU, however sometimes we even ask for input on our forums about such changes as we have made recently and recieve no input. I will see about establishing a prospective student discussion forum on the boards, and make it clear that if we get enough input I will personally do all I can to see to it that we establish said servers. There may be exceptions to that rule, such as a WoW server would be just plain dumb with the internet bandwidth issues we are currently experiencing.

That being said, if you know of people that are out there thinking about coming to WCU that would like to see something, you tell them to mention it on the forums, to e-mail me, to contact me however possible, and I will look into it.

I have tried to digest all that input and give back appropriate responses, if there are any questions or comments, keep posting.

true, in the same way fliers on the walls would… some students listen, others go into zombie mode. I will look into that as well, if and when I call up the various schools

In regard to high school fliers, I would have to say that many gamers would notice a well designed flier advertising gaming as opposed to a huge poster advertising a university. I know that I’ve barely notice any fliers around this campus or among any other campus but I always manage to notice anything about computer technology, especially in terms of gaming. Based on my personal experience I would say that a colorful advertisement for WCU and the gaming club combined would attract the attention of the crowd we are aiming at.

(how the hell do u spell fliers/flyers?) lol

As for ranking amongst servers, where did the data come from and what is the ratio between the population of people playing cod2 vs CS:S? I mean, you could be ranked 1st out of 200 or 300 out of 20,000. I do understand that COD2 is a popular online game and I think that, if it can stay populated, it should be hosted here for advertising purposes. (And of course being able to kill people with crazy old weapons is always fun).

Beyond that, I believe that the advertisement of the WCU Gaming Club in order to recruit students to this university should be done in all areas and it can’t be decided how effective this recruitment is until we actually start stronger advertising.

In response to your comment on arguing, I believe that arguing is a part of making a decision. Obviously flaming is an ineffective form of arguing. This doesn’t mean that I condone out right yelling at eachother or blasting another person repeatedly with harsh language. We are a free thinking and public organization. As such, I would say that discussing/arguing on these forums, without flaming, gives people an idea of how we work and it lets people know that we aren’t being fake. Lets face it, every organization has it’s heated discussions, and I believe it to be true that it is better to show everyone the face value of a story rather than pretend nothing happend. In regard to public heated discussion or ‘arguing’ on this forum, I think it is important for the public to see who we as an organization are and not who we pretend to be.

Just a few thoughts.

I realize that I wasn’t at the last meeting, but why did we close the COD2 server? I guess I am the only one on campus who has the game and enjoys playing it online now and again? And CZ… come on that is seriously the same game as 1.6, we definitely don’t need both of those.

falcon. stop there. Part of the reason of this gaming club is to take the resources of hosting out of the dorms. You will not be able to host your own gaming servers in the dorm. The firewall wont allow it, and you should not encourage it. Nickname do remember seeing you in the cod2 server, glad you spoke up I told them there were a few around.

Ok, let’s talk about marketing. Justin, I have worked in the Office of Public Relations for WCU and I know first hand what it takes and how much it costs to get the word out there to every school or newspaper just in this state alone. It is very very expensive. So unless you guys want to do a LAN just to fund mass mailings, which you don’t have the required dedication to do anyway, drop it. It is also highly presumptuous of you guys to think that putting fliers in the local high school is going to bring more students the this particular school. How many of you actually live within 1 hour of WCU? I can attest to the fact that yes a few students do come to WCU from local schools, but most come from many hundreds of miles away. Adam and I both lived 5.5 to 6 hours away. Adam has a point about high school students not looking at fliers. They don’t care, it doesn’t apply to them at that moment. However, gamers do get on MIRC and GIRC. People spam all the time, they do it to get a ringer, to get a scrim, to advertise for their new businesses and products, etc. I have seen it work first hand so don’t knock it because you don’t know how to do it, it is very simple.

In addition, there is a simple reason why Adam stopped hosting servers in his room, you can’t do it anymore. Since when do we use Aphrodite to host gaming servers? I thought that was just for the website… Having four Counter Strike servers is a waste…its all the same game with different mods. Even I know that and I don’t play the game.

Kuros, you are on the right track. Just keep your eyes open and don’t let others push you around. You seem to understand the gaming club mission, where as it is doubtful that others do.

FYI, the constitution that is linked from the homepage is outdated, as in two semesters old. I attached the updated constitution to a thread I believe called constitution in the exec forums. If you do not update it, then some people’s positions do not exist and thus they lose authority. I would suggest that someone read the constitution aloud at a meeting, because even though I know I have tried it in the past and gotten promises that people would read it, it is very apparent that only two to three people in this club have and I am included in that number.

I personally came from under an hour away, and know several guys at my old school thinking of coming here, and know several people here from said school. grrr.

gimme time to get this english knocked out and i’ll give you my views on high school ads and all the rest of this. Trust me, I have opinions you will be hearing

and by the way 2 things to think about first:

Constitution said:

It is also the duty of the Marketing Administrator to market any events to the university, its students, and to anyone else interested.

also, even though I can not find it once mentioned once in the constitution, I have heard it said by I believe Adam himself that one major purpose of the club is recruitment to the university. TOPIC TO BE DISCUSSED WITH EXECUTIVES AND POTENTIALLY AT NEXT MEETING: CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT

not yet… (looks)…

okay, the quote about the marketing admin is still relevant. no adjustments there. and to the recruitment, all I can find is that the Executive Secretary has a duty to “actively seek out prospective members and to preserve a positive perception of the Western Carolina University Gaming Club and its active members”, among other things. That could be interpreted as just recruiting from inside the university, not necessarily the local schools or anything… also there, would that not be a job more suited to the marketing admin? In no way am I power hungry, i’m digging my way out of mountains of homework at the moment and all, but still I want to make sure we are clear about the club’s missions and the M.A.’s duties

That’s one of our redirects.

ABritt said:

You seem to understand the gaming club mission, where as it is doubtful that others do.

Generalizations aren’t valid. Please be specific. When you say ‘others’ who exactly are you referring to? Are you saying that Kuros is the only one who knows what this club is about? If that is the case then I would say you are incorrect.

In response to your comments on advertising: We are currently a fairly small organization and our resources are limited. I see no reason why any form of advertising would be considered a waste. The current advertising by us is stagnant. My point is, you have to start somewhere and generally the bottom is that starting location.

Excuse me for believing that any advertising by this club is better than no advertising. Everything we do in advertising has the possibility of recruiting someone new to this organization and university. Each person recruited is well worth the attempt. We cannot expect to start out recruiting massive amounts of people. You are right that we are not sufficiently funded. Actually the organization that gets the most advertising funding from this university is our marching band (most of which is self earned) and that wasn’t something that happend overnight.

Lets consider advertising across the nation the top and no advertising the bottom. We, in no way, can effectively advertise across the nation for this university. However, we can start advertising locally now as well as in the servers and IRC. I don’t really see a problem with any of it and I have yet to see a good argument against any form of advertising currently being done and/or considered.

Lets try to keep this civil and stop putting down everyone in the organization with the use of broad generalizations. I highly doubt that anyone in this organization is trying to break it apart so please stop making this assumption.