Thanks to Our Players

It's been a few months since the FBY clan broke up and I think everyone has had time to heal and move on with their lives.

Asylum was formed from this process. It has grown into a distinct, and quite different community than the FBY clan. There's a very different feel to the servers. It's more mature, less obnoxious, less noisy. There is no drama. When people attempt to start drama, they find themselves permanently silenced. And this has proven to greatly enhance the focus of the people involved in running Asylum. I can improve back-end features to reduce lag and make weapons more fun, and not worry about ridiculous drama. 

We have remained a popular ET server, with often 20 people on at a time. 

The "other" post-FBY community has not been as successful.

For me, its a bit of a vindication, that my approach of focusing on the technical aspects of the server, finding highly competent admins and basically staying out of their way, and giving the players FREEDOM, was the right approach.

I want to give a big thanks to everyone who has stuck with our servers over this year. I realize you have 600 other choices on the masterlist, and you click my server and return day after day.

It's the players that make it work - seeing a full server is the reward for the effort to keep it running. It's a symbiotic relationship between the players and the people who make it work. Each and every one of you is part of a greater community that inspires me to keep Asylum running.

Thanks!
obit

Just spent 6 hours setting up my beast system. My old gaming system has been dead for over a year.  Maybe I will come by and play.  ET installed fine on windows 10.

Specs: i7 5820 6 core / 16GB DDR4 w/NVIDIA GeForce 980

It is sweet but put a large hole in my wallet.  Just in time for Fallout 4

You have done a great job on this server Obit. You amaze me that you continued to keep a server going after what you have been thru with all the drama. Your like Alex Jones. You never give up.
To quote Gump. That's all I well say about that.
 Fried man I suspect your still playing on the server. But under a different name. That's all good no matter what reason you do so. For I myself go AKA a lot these days.
It is in my playing style that you can tell. I'm Twisted you can't tell where or when I'll be there to Twist you up. Yeee Haaaa
I keep you on your toes.
I'm not doing it to be a a$$. Just trying to make the game more challenge.
For this game reflects what is real. Nothing is as it seems.
I am as Paul Revere reviling the truth.
I love all of you. Thank you all for all the great times that you have given to me. I hope I have given to you a lot of fun and challenged in game.

I want to come back and play ... but have multiple technical issues on my end that are hard to resolve.  1.) Blocked in China.  2.) My VPN cuts down too much speed to get me through, will try out a new VPN when I get #3 resolved.  3.) New internet connection installed at my place is fiber optic, supposed to be faster, but the box/modem/switch or whatever you call it isn't passing internet through my router.  Not sure the issue.

Any ideas anybody among you networking geniuses?  I had a normal DSL modem from my ISP here that routed internet through my Asus RT-N66U router.  Then I moved, and it took the ISP more than a MONTH (!!!) to finally come to my place to set up my new internet.  And then the current settings with their new fiber optic box somehow don't mesh with my router that I've been using for 2 years now.  I've been able to get internet via hardwiring straight to the box, just not via WiFi.  Anyway, when I get #3 resolved, I'll go back to #2 and try out a couple different VPN's to see if I can get me something better (though the one I have came highly recommended in China).

PS - China, if you're reading this post, this was all a joke.  Haha.  I don't really have a VPN.  Or rather, "VPN" is an acronym that means that China is Very Pretty & Neat-o.  That's all!

PSS - Yes, I did turn everything off and restarted.  I read a suggested to do a factory reset of my router, but that doesn't make sense...it worked with the previous DSL modem, just not working with this new fiber optic box.

~Hash

Lol Hash, China used to have a bunch of ET servers in the masterlist, with 400 ping connections, I remember them.

I'm sure it is Very Nice and Pretty behind the Great Firewall.

If your VPN don't work you could try Tor or a proxy IP. You can run Tails in persistent mode and install ET on the persistent directory, but the Great Firewall probably doesn't let you use Tor (pretty sure they know every trick in the book).

obituary wrote:Lol Hash, China used to have a bunch of ET servers in the masterlist, with 400 ping connections, I remember them.

I'm sure it is Very Nice and Pretty behind the Great Firewall.

If your VPN don't work you could try Tor or a proxy IP. You can run Tails in persistent mode and install ET on the persistent directory, but the Great Firewall probably doesn't let you use Tor (pretty sure they know every trick in the book).

Obit,

The VPN I use (12VPN) has been really good here.  It works on all of my devices, provides unlimited connections and usage, and constantly has reliable servers ... and at a decent speed considering what's out there.  It's not free of course.  There are other VPN's that I've tested out that haven't seemed to be as good overall that do show the ET servers (ie, Vypr).  

That said, I've contacted the VPN company and they say they block most servers that might be questionable, like game servers, and have put in exceptions for all of the main games (ie, EA).  So, they'll put in an exception for ET to get through but they're asking for ... well, let me just quote their email response to me:

"Can you tell me which master server you use? (According to these instructions, the original master server was shutdown, so you're probably using a different master server now. We can add that master server to our firewall if we know which server you use: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=166033677 )."

When I have the VPN connected and go to the "Play Online" option in the ET game, not a single server shows up.  So it's something at the "master" level that they're blocking, not sure what.

I'm not sure how to respond to them. 

Hash

I'm not sure what it is I'm looking for exactly, if anybody has input please put it in. 

But starting the game, this pops up ...

etmaster.idsoftware.com
192.246.40.60:27951

Yes?  Yes!?  Yes!

Also, Obit, just so you know.  The master game server isn't blocked in here and *most* ET game-hosted servers are also *not* blocked here.  But yours is.  So I'm not sure what you did to piss off an entire country, but congratulations, you did.

Hash

How do you know we pissed them off? Maybe they pissed US off and we banned the whole damn country!

Im not sure why they would block us. We have five game servers (all clones of the same server) and ten redirects pointing at the beginner #1 server. Its unusual that all of them would be off the list.

We had a problem a few weeks ago with the masterlist but i fixed it by restarting everything and unclaiming then reclaiming the server on gametracker. That shouldnt affect anything in any one country. I have no problem with china and no political opinion about them. Maybe they dont like the names of the omnibots.

If you arent seeing any servers in the list at all that is a different problem and i get that too on my win7 computer but not xp. You might have a bad server menu (the ~~~~.pk3 files most clans send to the connecting players). Deleting them can help. I dont use these anymore since they dont work well with silent mod (they are easier with jaymod).

Also the ET masterlist you have is the right one, it was deactivated for a few months a few years ago but they reactivated it. Paul from Trackbase put up a replacement masterlist and all the popular servers were listed there during this time. Im not sure what they were thinking at ID software (kill ET to push players to buying games?) But it didnt do much in the long run and the list is same as ever.

Also, can you connect by /connect 74.91.123.182:27961?

Also this "missing all servers in the list" problem is being reported in the splashdamage forum.

The problem is now fixed.  Here's what I learned.

1. For about a year, this country has been blocking all of the Funboy & Beginning servers.  I'm not sure why, and I don't really think it's you specific.  Every one of the Asylum servers were blocked, as in the master server list showed up with all the servers but none of Asylums (I could see Yardy's).

2. The VPN I use (12VPN) works well and comes with a good reputation, but for their own reasons they block all servers.  I think they have some sort of rules about illegal server activity not being permitted, torrents, that sort of thing.  So their firewall blocks the entire master server and each individual server on the master server list.  They have gone back in at my request and personally allowed them all ... so I can connect.  Other VPN's I tested weren't so strict with blocking everything, but they're also not as good of VPN's in a place with the toughest internet restrictions of anywhere in the world, except maybe N Korea.

3. When the master server list was added to their firewall exception (something they had to do from their end) I could see only 2 game servers, so then I gave them all of your mirrored IP addresses to add and now *all* of the Asylum servers are visible.  On the plus side, I don't see any other server so there's less mess to choose from

Now I just need to figure out the time conflict when all of you play and join the game!

Hash

It might be because I have an omnibot named Mao, and they like to pretend he was a great guy instead of their version of Stalin.

Maybe someone saw his name on the playerlist along with Dahmer and Himmler and the other mass murderers.

Hey Obit, hello from Lance.  I wanted to chime in and thank you for keeping the servers up and running, really enjoying the new format.  I don't get to play as much as I'd like, but do when I can.

Hey Friedrich, sounds like a beast you built, hope to see you on the server sometime so I can try to frag you, lol.

Thanks Obit for your diligence in trying again after FBY. i know the people that come here are grateful! I personally have had many a laugh with friends here. Had plenty of good beatings too! Good for the soul! Just a great community in general. That starts with leadership. Thanks for your kind words towards the players too:)! See you out there with all the crazies in the Asylum! And may the mayhem live on!