Update: I forgot she had some forums.. anyway this is what I found. It turns out this all happened during a period when I was really too busy to spend much time in the game, so I missed it.
Amidala wrote (Mon Mar 07, 2005 8:28 pm)
Post subject: The time has finally come...:
...to say farewell.
It is with great regret and sadness that I announce the closing of all four of my servers. Running them the way I want to run them is just too time-consuming, and I can no longer escape the negative impact it is having on my real life.
Please rest assured that it is nothing that anyone in the games, friend or foe, has said or done that has brought me to this difficult decision. My decision is based completely on factors outside the games.
The last full day of operation will be Sunday, March 20. I hope you will use the remaining time to get in some last Good Games and record some demos for those times when you want to remember all the fun you had. Some people have said they would leave the game when my servers closed. PLEASE DON'T. The other players are still there and you will need each other to keep the Good Games going. THERE ARE OTHER SERVERS OUT THERE, USE THEM, MAKE SOME OF THEM YOUR NEW HOME.
If you can't find one you like, get together and make one. My host,
http://www.escapedturkey.com) rents 26-player servers for less than a dollar a day. As long as there are players with the "kill them all and let God sort them out" attitude playing, the Chop Shop spirit will never die.
Some of you will no doubt be curious about me and the factors that brought me to this decision. Recent events have only reinforced my long-held principle that sharing personal information with strangers over the Internet, even the smallest thing, isn't wise. All such personal inquiries by email or PM will be politely ignored, so don't bother asking, but thanks for your concern.
I started my first server (7 players) from home running on a 800MHz Pentium III and cable modem 2 years ago. It was just one new, unknown, small, empty server, lost in a sea of hundreds of other JK2 servers, and the game was already a year old. Without even a small clan to keep it busy, my bots fought their lonely bot battles. I remember how excited I was when the first players joined, and how disappointed I was when they said "this server sucks, let's go somewhere else" (hehe, some things never change, except now they say "this server sucks, let's go pug on Refresh" :mad: ).
Finally, someone came and stayed, and we dueled. Know what he said when I won? "Saber damage is way too high, turn it down!" lol, some things never change! In time more people came, most left, but then some returned, and returned again. Sniick, who still plays on my ForceMod III server, was one of the first return players. I used to watch the console (all I could do because I was running a Dedicated server. See, even then I didn't play on my own server!), and when someone joined the server I would type "Welcome (playername), thank you for choosing my server!" lol, what a n00b I was (am)!
I remember the first time my server filled up (7 players). I was so excited, but I didn't want people to not get in, so I kept increasing the number of slots. As more players joined, they exceeded the bandwidth of my poor cable modem. Pings shot up, everyone yelled "laaaag!" and disconnected, leaving the server to be patrolled once again by my lonely bots. Wow, people still complain about lag on Chop Shop, I guess some things really never do change!
One of the few servers I played on before I started my own server was the oE server, Cardassia Prime. Redstar was one of the first "elite" players I ever saw. I still remember how great I felt when some oE members (maybe it was even Redstar) actually came to my server. I remember one of them saying "Seeing this makes me long for Cardassia". I took it as a complement at the time :o
Eventually I attracted enough regular players that I outgrew my 800MHz and cable modem server, so I rented my first "real" high-capacity server, from VSK ( :barf: ). The high number of players, the increased speed, the increased saber damage producing hundreds of frags, and the dismemberment causing body parts to fly everywhere made the server overheat from time to time. Every time I had to ask Ray at VSK to restart my crashed server he called me the worst, most incompetent admin ever (well, maybe my noobishly setting sv_fps 60, 3x the default, did have a little to do with the instability). He even threatened to take away my ftp access if my server kept crashing. When he told me I was forbidden to use bots, that was the last straw. JediServers.com was just starting up, so I moved there, and rented my second server (Disruption!), which soon developed its own loyal group of regulars.
In the late summer of 2003, my JK2 INCREASED SABER DAMAGE server was the busiest JK2 server in the world for at least part of the day almost every day, and my DISRUPTION! server was always busy. Then JA came out with the flawed server browser. My servers were either totally full, or nearly empty, but a loyal group of JK2 Chop Shop regulars including RED-5 and Icestorm kept some action going, even when my servers weren't in the ingame browser for days at a time. After the patch was finally released my two JA servers were instantly busy. The rest is history. And it all started with my little 7-player home server. Ahh, the memories *wipes away a tear*
I will keep this web site going as long as it serves a useful purpose, to keep "...we few, we happy happy few, we band of brothers (and sisters)" in touch. I don't know how long
http://www.chopshopservers.com) will make sense without any Chop Shop servers, but we'll see. When it no longer has any life left it too will close. And then I will return to where I came from, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....
That clears it up. For all your help with the community and your contributions, thank you, and farewell...
MTFBWY!