From my observations at the last Respawn and every other LAN I've been to, dedicated servers are only useful and used in two (possibly three) situations (and I am generalising here)
-Competitions.
Obviously, you need to have them so you can restrict CVars etc, and make sure it's run according to the rules
-Announced games.
Funcomps, if you will.
If you say "Hey, we're all playing on this game. Feel free to join us!". Then you don't have to worry about someone's PC being the server for 32 people. You have a server for that. There'll be someone with rcon to change the level if you get bored etc. Where as people who are there with a few mates and want to play a game would be more inclined to set up their own server (then they can pick the map, etc etc). If some form of remote admin system was set up for users, it may be better, but that'd still be open to abuse (change map every 10 seconds, kick every player, etc. )
-Loner joining the server to see if someone else will join
In which case they may as well run their own server so they can pick a map they like to screw around on while they wait.
Other servers to look at:
BaboViolent
UT (99, 2004, 3)
Day of Deafeat: Source (if you've already got TF2/HL2DM etc via hldsupdatetool, then it's only a small download from there )
BattleNet server (PVPGN - Supports all BattleNet games. You can run a Diablo II ladder in it, which I did at the last LAN I ran. Warcraft II also works then, as it only supports TCP/IP on BattleNet, and Vista x64 doesn't have IPX)
CoD2 (2 > 4)
Perhaps Garry's Mod if you can be bothered getting all the mods that most people use and loading them in to the server.
That'll do for the moment
IMPORTANT!!!! (Game server Requests), Dedicated Servers
R4N IMPORTANT!!!! (Game server Requests) Mar 10 2008, 09:20 PM
