When the server was in the top 1000, what were you guys doing to get to that?
Nothing in particular, we never really 'tried' to get in the top 1000 or anything, we just played the server purely out of fun, with the idea that when the server died, that was that, and we'd done our job to provide a fun server for while people here wanted to play on one but that was all our job was. We added things that people suggested when they suggested them, occasionally had events and map shuffles and were fortunate enough to have a really nice group of people form on the server where, I think, people felt very welcomed and happy to be there. And so, because of this, we just kind of automatically grew and attracted players and somehow became one of the biggest TTT servers about. Then, as is expected, people gradually got bored, and instead of having that be solved by new people automatically joining and replacing them, that didn't happen - those who joined just didn't decide to stay for whatever reason, the server wasn't filled with the same people anymore, certain dynamics broke down, I left for school so changes and events were much slower, staff all became busy/disinterested at the same time so for those who did want to stay on the server it was filled with RDMers and the server died.
Right now I'm working on a big overhaul - I've added a ton of new traitor and detective items, gone through a massive list of maps, explored them all and rated them, decided on what I think are the most suitable maps for a TTT server, a few of us played on the server yesterday to test all the new stuff, today I've gone through them all and reflected on each addon's performance in the tests yesterday and decided what to keep and what not to keep (for now at least), and now I'm trying to fix an issue I suddenly have with a few of the addons that I'm not 100% sure how to fix, but I think I know how to fix and am trying to fix right now. Then, once it's all ready, I'm planning on making a little trailer (primarily for fun tbh) advertising the new stuff, messaging people to invite them to play and just see how it goes. If people want to play then we'll do our best to make their experience fun, if they don't, they don't, I guess, which is fine by me and I don't see a point in trying to revive a server that people have moved on from because to get a TTT server to work in the first place you need a reasonable amount of people right at the start of the server to play (like the GANG at the beginning of this server with notty and oog and hip and elliot and tri and aika and fruit and others whose names haven't come to me in this instant), and then you gradually automatically build up more players as people see your server in the global list, see it has players, and decide to join, and decide to stay. Noone joins empty servers so if the people we know right now don't want to play, I don't see how we can make it work, nor do I see why we'd want to anyway, unless people are wanting TTT to bring EscapeRestart new players.
There's always the chance that a random group of friends will decide to play on our empty server, and that will spark the life of it - funnily enough this is exactly how our server worked; it died before Christmas 2 years ago, and then I remember noticing a random group of friends regularly playing on the server on the week of Christmas, and I watched the data and slowly more people started to join them, and I joined them, and more people joined and tada we had a playerbase (wow what a Christmas gift/miracle!!!!!) and it all went up from there, but that's just a chance that could randomly happen if we keep the server online and updated, which can easily be done.
Where else can you guys advertise the server?
As far as I know, there's only a Gmod server reddit where we could advertise (
https://www.reddit.com/r/GMServers/), but since TTT is on a global server list (much like classic minecraft used to be) I don't imagine anyone really uses it to find a server, nor do I imagine advertising would really work, but there's no harm in trying it once I've sorted the overhaul out I suppose.
