Last Month the Japanese try to retrive this mod a little bit more. They played in the at 2pm CET. At the moment the gametracker,com Server Monitorring is off. Hope soon they turn it on. The ranking seems to work.
Registered Member #78 Joined: [ 18:27 ] [ 13 Mar 2004 ] Posts: 3075
Money out of people or just plain donkey ass? Allright, the story goes as follows:
My friend Mr. Niceguy has been running a BF2 server for some time now, and it was popular and great to play on. One day he was invited into betatesting of ABR (AlternativeBattlefieldRanking) where servers collect scores and gives awards from a server NOT owned by EA. Actually a great idea for clans wanting their own system in ranking. But BEHOLD!! The mighty EA has de-listed his, and all other ABR servers... Why? you say? lol, they're probably loosing a few $ and decided to clean out the abnormal servers (Kinda like Hitler)... Well, I hated BF2 day 1, got used to it and started liking it, but now? nah.. I wont spend ONE cent more on a game with the EA logo on it. It's ALL about money and control these days. God bless the good old days when people were (and still are) able to mod their servers just the way they wanted, without gettting kicked out of the SERVERLISTS! I only have ONE word for this and that is: PATHETIC!
And the craziest thing of ALL? He didnt TOUCH anything regarding the game itself!! So in other words: Not against the EA lisence agreement! [ Edited ]
Registered Member #78 Joined: [ 18:27 ] [ 13 Mar 2004 ]
Yeah. I hate this. We've all BOUGHT the game, hence given EA our money, so why is it a crime to change something in the windows hosts file? The licence agreement only points at things done TO THE GAME itself... And people that has NOT altered the game but still get's de-listed is something that PISSES me off.
And yeah I've had this avatar for some time now, and I think it says it all... NOT that I have anything against germans. Not at all. Just that EA reminds me of the shit AH and his guys pulled of in 1939-1945 [ Edited 16 Sep : 16:13 ][ Edited 16 Sep : 16:14 ]
Remember that the master servers are owned and run by EA, and so are seperate from your purchase of the client game.
I know the original reason for servers being de-listed was because of people running modified servers that unlocked the extra weapons.
I believe ABR works by modfying the python stats code, and thus its very possible that its being falsely flagged and de-listed for the wrong reason.
ABR is a great idea, and it would be more productive to contact EA by email or post on the official forums, and ask them to investigate the reason for being de-listed.
Registered Member #727 Joined: [ 10:25 ] [ 12 Nov 2004 ]
If I might make some guesses to what EA might answer when asked these questions:
1. Only ranked servers watched by EA can ensure that playing is fun and no smacktards rack up points in large amounts 2. Since this is providing a different ranking system and your ranks don't transfer between them, it's a disruption of the game experience 3. The EULA prohibits doing anything like this 4. EA can't accept such hacker tactics
None of these points (except, maybe, 3) is valid, of course, but these are among the things EA said about the servers that unlocked all weapons, so I guess they might say something like this again.
Maybe an alternative server list system would be a good idea, although extremely difficult to do (not only, but also because of the EULA).
Registered Member #78 Joined: [ 18:27 ] [ 13 Mar 2004 ]
Ok Rich thanks for clearing this up. I understand now that ABR needs modifying of the fragalyzer_log.py and stats.py. And according to AH, sorry, EA's EULA this is NOT allowed.. [ Edited 16 Sep : 18:08 ]
They are obviously monitoring changes to those files, but you could probably bypass this by copying the stats.py as a seperate file ( stick it in the gamemodes folder ) and then load it from the gpm_cq.py so that it runs alongside the existing stats. Maybe even rename the functions to ensure no coflicts.