I'm not sure whether this the right place for this, but it is related to Soldat servers and hosting, and it's something that can be discussed, I suppose.
Anyway:
Hello everyone,
It is with much sadness that I must announce that the [eC] Soldat Server hosting service will be permanently closing on
22nd of May, 2012.
I extend my most heartfelt thanks to all the customers both present and past who helped keep this service alive for the past 6 years. It is a decision that has not been taken lightly, but with continuing decline in player interest and significant rises in overheads, we can no longer remain in business.
All customer servers have been given free time until the 22nd to give sufficient time to transfer any files from your server and notify your respective communities.
Thank you.
We all know NSC is usually full of crap, right? But I think he's serious here, aside from the thank you stuff.Every server I regularly play on Soldat is hosted on eC (the AUS7RAL servers, !Elite TMS Climb and even my own), mainly because Australian servers are completely dead and the few Japanese players left are obsessed with rock bottom ping, and that these happen to be the only other servers that have players and a somewhat reasonable ping.
It's possible that the hosts of these servers will simply find another way, but there's little chance they will have ping suitable for the few remaining Australian players. The more likely case however is that these people paid for this server host because they can't host their own servers, or it would be too inconvenient to do so, for reasons such as but not limited to:
*It would be cheaper to use eC because the cost would be higher if they hosted on their own.
*They simply don't have the time to maintain the server.
*Their type of Internet connection makes it impossible to do so, or they can't be bothered with the process of setting it up.
So, could this be the death of Soldat for American players? I'm not sure, while I believe they have better ping in European servers than I do, they probably wouldn't be accustomed to it being higher. There's still the possibility of new servers being hosted, but I'm not sure about that either. As for the Australian issue we get crap ping in European countries, and even in the servers we can slip past the ping kick and still not get completely game breaking ping, we will get vote kicked most of the time.
Perhaps I am overreacting, but what if I'm under-reacting? What if this is truely a sign that Soldat is only going down.
Although I'm pretty much done playing Soldat, it was always nice knowing I could hop onto one of my favourite servers and start blowing stuff up in fast paced 2D action. As for the hosting service, I'm rather sad to see it go, it provides so much freedom that you don't often have to deal with the very poor staff support.
