skaren, just a quick D2 FYI.
D2 these days is kind of on-again off-again.
While there are persisent servers, by far the majority of players wait for the major campaigns to run. These usually last 3-4 weeks and run every few months or so (sometimes more frequently). Klingon Civil War, which Bonk mentioned, is currently running and would by all accounts be considered a major campaign. Before that we had Slave Girls of Orion 5, and before that we had Attack of the Kitties 2.
If you are looking for a solid persistent server to play on between major campaigns, I strongly suggest checking out The Forge, which is operated by Dnet.
The reasons for the gap between major servers are threefold:
1) Major campaigns usually draw a maximum effort from those who can give it. Marriages have failed, jobs been lost, and cataclysmic events occured because of time committed by various players. People need a break from these things.
2) Major campaigns differ a lot from stock server settings. Server admins often come up with new and brilliant ideas for a campaign to keep things interesting. This is what drives the major campaigns. The flip side is that creating the map, shiplist, server settings and rules that support these ideas is a tremendous amount of work. So sometimes it doesn't happen as often as we would all like (but we sure do appreciate it when it does).
3) Last but not least, D2 is almost 5 years old, and our playerbase is not what it used to be (but the fact that we are still here at all, I think, is pretty cool).
I mention this so you don't log onto D2, see hardly anyone on, and burn off thinking D2 is dead. If anything, we are just getting our second wind.
Topic: Dynaverse review and ?'s (Read 1596 times)