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Whatever happened to Amidala & Chop Shop?

Kurgan

By Kurgan
in Jedi Academy

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Kurgan Newbie

Kurgan

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Hey there, I've heard various bits and rumors, something about Amidala quitting the JK2/JA community on account of being too busy, etc, and her servers (Chop Shop) all going down permanently.

 

I tried PMing her to confirm, but didn't get a reply. If she's still around, could somebody ask her to reply to this?

 

If anybody knows the real story (I assume it's nothing big or dark secret, just lack of time or whatever) I'm curious.

 

Even though I didn't spend a ton of time on those servers, I did appreciate them, in that they promoted the style of gameplay I love (ie: chaos, non-"honorz," variety, etc). They had wit and character, which inspired me. And I'm sure others can attest their popularity as she had lots of fans on these and other forums in the community for a long period.

 

My server(s), under the Meatgrinder banner were always about "pure" competative/fun style play and promoting team based game modes and I felt Chop Shop had similar parallel goals, so it was cool to have servers like that around.

 

And if they are gone for good, will others take up the mantle? Who will follow in their footsteps? It's lonely at the top... ;)

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Kurgan Newbie

Kurgan

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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!

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LightNinja Newbie

LightNinja

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this is sad :(, anyway Amidala have done much for the community and im sure she and her servers will be remembered by many, many people..I'll miss the 7 pages threads of Amidala and Slider talking about JA+ and her servers where it was fun the few times i was able to play in this bussy year..farewell Amidala

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Mike Windu Newbie

Mike Windu

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It's a shame, I really enjoyed her servers, I remember the first time I found one her disruption server, it only had bots, but my friend and I came on and fragged the hell out of them :D

 

I loved chop shop ever since, and even more when the forcemod 3 server came out.

 

I was very dissappointed when it died, never really knew what happened :(

 

Thanks Kurgan for finding out though.

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[HR]Knight Newbie

[HR]Knight

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And she will not, she is done doing all of that because it's just too much of a burden. It's hard enough adminning ONE server, much less FOUR VERY ACTIVE servers. This is all old news for most of the people in the CTF community and Real FFA-ist's.

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Kurgan Newbie

Kurgan

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Originally posted by Knight

And she will not, she is done doing all of that because it's just too much of a burden. It's hard enough adminning ONE server, much less FOUR VERY ACTIVE servers. This is all old news for most of the people in the CTF community and Real FFA-ist's.

 

Yes it happened 4 months ago (which is an eternity in game terms) but apparently it was only announced on her forums. Heck, I didn't even know she HAD her own forums until about the time I started this thread. What you really mean is that to her visitors this is old news. Plenty of folks here didn't notice (no slight meant to her or you of course, only that the community isn't so small that a pin doesn't drop that we don't all hear it).

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Kurgan Newbie

Kurgan

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She probably did not post it here simply to avoid a needless flamewar. While many did appreciate her contributions to the community, some did not.

 

 

I don't know about you but I haven't seen many (any?) Amidala bashers posting on these forums, unless I missed something. About the only people I recall her "sparring" with were Slider and one or two people supporting JA+ mod. But that wasn't against her, it was just against the idea that there were any problems with JA+ (as it was in the amabusive days, though I hear it's since cleaned up its act in that area). Of course debates over "honorz" often turn ugly, but I don't see that as a big reason to avoid posting here.

 

I did see people bashing Amidala on Amidala's own forum, in the very thread where she announced she was leaving. Whatever her motivations for not posting here (unless she did recently and it was lost in the 2 months disappearing act the forum pulled), that's how it panned out. Flamers aren't tolerated here anyway.

 

As I see it the overwhelming majority of people with opinions on it seem to be of the non-honorz variety here. So she'd have as much support here as anywhere else. But that's just my assesment. (It's not like if she posted on the JA+ forums for example)

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  • 2 weeks later...
Darth Kaan Newbie

Darth Kaan

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I don't know about you but I haven't seen many (any?) Amidala bashers posting on these forums, unless I missed something. About the only people I recall her "sparring" with were Slider and one or two people supporting JA+ mod......

 

Exactly and while I agree with you Kurgan, as another has said in this very thread, she announced it to the people on her own forum that used the servers most. Amidala was always first class and I can see her logic in doing it that way. Just my opinion, mind.

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