Welcome to Gunalanights Vanilla TTT 07/02/14 - 06/10/15

As some of you may already know, I’ve decided to close Gunalanights Vanilla TTT.
It wasn't an easy decision, as cliché as that sounds it really is true. I'll explain my reasons for this but I’ll just start from the beginning first.


tl;dr
• Rather shut it down now than have it die out
• Don't feel like owning a server anymore


Gunalanights Vanilla TTT was started on the 7th Feburary 2014 by myself, Matt (Egg) and Jish. Having played on many TTT servers before starting Gunalanights and being admins ourselves, we became annoyed with certain server owners breaking basic TTT rules. This made TTT a lot less enjoyable so we decided to start our own server.


We were immediately DDOS attacked so severely that our server hosts were forced to shut down and move locations. This caused the server to be down for a week. Great start right? This led to Gunalanights officially being up since the 14th Feburary 2014.


For a newly created server, things went surprisingly well - We were constantly filling up our server slots and after two months we had a proper community and were ranked in the Top 5 TTT servers in the UK (subtle brag). This actually carried on for quite a while and even though people came and went, new people joined which made us able to keep going and have no reason to stop.


So why after 20 months have I decided to stop Gunalanights?
Firstly, I think it's just about the right time. We're neither in a bad position nor are we in a really good position for there to be no reason to stop. I don't have to close it now but I would rather end it in a time like this than to be forced to end it due to Gunalanights completely dying out. I fully believe that the server has gone as far as it can go.. 20 months is a lot longer than I or probably anyone expected the server to last and most TTT servers don't even last as long as that.


All our staff have been key to the success of Gunalanights, obviously they weren't all good but the ones who were really did help a lot. I couldn't be on all the time to deal with issues on the server but whenever someone was on, they would be able to deal with things in a very efficient manner. So thank you to anyone who was a staff member here and helped the server out. I genuinely wouldn't have been able to keep the server up and running on my own so I'm really thankful for your support and contribution to the server.


Besides staff, there are of course the people who weren't staff but were still regular players on Gunalanights. I've met a lot of people across the time the server was up and a lot of them were great in their own way - This really made the server diverse to say the least. I'm glad I didn't have issues with that many people over the time so unlike a few server owners who closed their server due to problems or drama (http://www.traitorscave.com/password *Link now doesn't work*)
I'm happy that's not the case here at all. Sometimes people forget that without people playing on your server, your server is useless. It's not always about who you like but instead more about just doing your best to get along with people. So I'm hugely grateful that people played on Gunalanights, even if it wasn't for long it still helped us as a server to grow.


The second reason I've decided to close Gunalanights is that I personally am not enjoying TTT as much as I used to. It's mainly due to the fact I find myself in a way forcing myself to come on because I know things will be reported and have to be dealt with. It's difficult to do anything else without thinking that I should be on the server instead especially with the countless messages I usually get asking me to come on to ban someone. I understand that being a server owner does mean sometimes you have to put the server first but it's reached the point where I honestly just don't want to continue as a server owner. I did enjoy it but after 2 years of playing TTT (and way over 2000 hours of it) I've had a lot of fun but now I just want to be able to not have to worry about a server.


Hopefully you will understand the reasons for my decision. Again, it wasn't easy however I think the fact I started considering stopping the server was a small sign that I should. I completely understand if you think I'm being selfish here but every server has to end eventually and I really believe now is the right time. I apologise in the sense that there probably isn't a huge list of decent servers to play on now and there aren't many people who can do a good job as admin. I mean, I went on Tearoom about 2 weeks ago and in my first round the owner ignited everyone for 100 seconds so that was fun.


Quite often people complained about our staff but 90% most of the people who were staff on Gunalanights really weren't bad. There were more likely just a few who weren't as quick to act as you'd have liked them to (spamming admin chat with the same report doesn’t speed anything up). Compared to the typical TTT server out there, the vast majority of our slays and bans were well justified. There was always this random belief that people with ranks never got punished on Gunalanights, some people would feel the need to point out that Guests get punished more often than people with ranks. Isn't that expected though? Wouldn't it be worrying if it was the other way round? I just never liked how despite banning over 3000 people, there were still people who would say issues don't get dealt with on the server. (Some of these people actually were given mod ranks and did next to nothing.)


There will be people who will come up with their own theories as to why I'm closing the server but I've said the real reasons. There were actually some rumours a few months back that we were having server issues which was very stupid. After a while you notice that it's never the people who play regularly who say the server is having issues. I actually had a complaint a few months back saying that I let people do stuff and say things that "come off as a bad negative sign". Two negatives make a positive so I saw no reason to change anything.


On a final serious note, thanks a lot for everything. There have been a lot of memorable moments and people too. I know this is a lot of text to read but I feel like a proper final message had to be made. I'm still going to be around on Steam, I rarely delete people so call me, beep me if you wanna reach me.
It's been an enjoyable ride, don't be too upset.


"There is no C4 on this server."
Gunalanights Vanilla TTT: 07/02/14 - 06/10/15