=TCC= Servers
First off let me start this out by saying thanks to "eggman" for bringing this to my attention, second I want to apologize to the members of the Tactical Gamer clan for accidentally confusing them with the Tactical Combat Clan.
The reason I am resubmitting this post here is because yesterday in my original thread I accidentally confused Tactical Combat Clan with the folks from Tactical Gamer and since members may have already read my original post, I thought it would be best to resubmit the correct version in the same place so that it clears up any misunderstandings.
What had happen was that yesterday evening I had been reading up on the latest news concerning the PR mod when I ran across this thread http://realitymod.com/forum/showthre...&page=11&pp=10 by a user named "scottp05156" from the Tactical Combat Clan http://www.tcombat.com/ After I was done reading the thread I decided to check out his servers> When I searched the for the servers in the game browser, I noticed that both of the PR servers his clan is hosting are showing up as ranked in the game browser.
While I was waiting for the game to load, I remembered that when I was reading his application that it listed Art of War Central http://www.artofwarcentral.com/ as his provider. The reason this caught my attention is because last week I had just finished dealing with them on an issue such as this concerning the NBK clan http://www.badcrush.com/nbk.html that had been displaying the ranked icon on a DCON mod server.
Now I had been aware for sometime that the “NBK” server had been displaying the ranked icon in the game browser, it had recently come to my attention that they were also streaming player stats to the EA ranking system http://bf2s.com from a mod server and even know this seemed highly improbable, I decided to go and check it out for myself. Unfortunately what I found was not good, I had joined the server with an old player account that had not been used in about a year. When I joined the server the account had a score of 5472 when the round was over I had accumulated 29 points. After waiting about 5 minutes I went back to check my stats, which now reflected a score of 5501 which by the way is a difference of 29 points.
After collecting the evidence to support what was going on here, I decided to contact AOWC by phone to discuss this issue with them. I first spoke with a gentleman by the name of Steve Phallen who claims to be the owner of the company. I proceeded to explain what was going on and what evidence I had gathered to support it. When I had finished explaining this Mr. Phallen asked me if I could hold for a few minutes and I agreed. After being on hold for about a minute or two, I noticed that the NBK server had been rebooted so while was waiting for Mr. Phallen to return I decided to join the server again to play another round and long story short, the server had mysteriously stopped reporting player stats to EA…….hummm I thought?
When Mr. Phallen returned he proceeded to ask me if I could email the evidence that I collected to him and a few others at his company, which I proceeded to do as we concluded out phone conversation. A short time later I received an email from Mr. Phallen thanking me for bringing this to their attention and stating that the server was being shut down, which by the way it was. A short time later I received another email from a gentleman by the name of Dallas stating that he was putting the server back on line until they had received an official response from EA. He also went on to say that the client does not have access to the files and that nothing had been modified to allow this to happen however in his next breath and I quote he said “Mods are allowed to be installed on ranked servers for along time I thought it wasn’t allowed either. I asked EA/DICE and they confirmed mods are allowed to be installed, as long as it is the GSP installing them.” Now while Mr. Phallen decided the next day to stick to his original position and shut the server down as agreed, the problem I have with what this Dallas person is saying, is that if the provider is the one that installed the mod then they must be responsible for allowing this to happen since as he stated the client does not have access to the files.
The other issue with this aside from the NBK server that was and I repeat was streaming stats to EA is that while EA/DICE may not have a problem with a provider installing mods on a server I am pretty sure that does not go as far as permitting them to be started in ranked mode while the server is hosting a mod and while I have a chance to checked and see if the TCC server is streaming stats to EA, I am a somewhat curious as to why the only US based servers that I have run across doing this are being provided by AOWC? I am in no way claiming that they are the only provider allowing this to happen however I am curious if any of you folks know of another provider that is allowing this to happen. If someone on the forums here happens to work for another provider, then I am especially interested in hearing your thoughts on the subject.
My reasons for taking such an interest in this is that if servers are being illegally permitted to host mods in this fashion then it is unfair to the rest of us that are forced to follow the rules and that is why the TCC servers do so much better than the other PR servers. However if indeed EA/DICE have agreed to allow providers to host mod servers in this fashion for their clients, then we all should be able to go to our providers and request that they allow us to do the same so that some mod servers do not have an unfair advantage by being allowed to display the ranked icon in the game browser.
I am going to be contacting Mr. Phallen on Monday morning to discuss these servers and to see if he is willing to voluntarily take the same action as he did with the NBK DCON server? If he is not I will be contacting EACS to update the current case file that I have open with them to see if they are willing to take any action against the provider or the client for doing this. Since this is an ongoing case I am not sure what their final official position will be, however if they are allowing it I am going to request that they make sure that all the official ranked partners offer it as an option to clients that whish to do the same.
While I would like to post all the screen shots and emails that I have exchanged with both EACS and AOWC concerning this issue, I decided that it would not be in the best interest to share the specific content of them here on the forums, I have however posted a few items below to help get my point across as wells a link to the Tactical Combat clan website http://www.tcombat.com/ I will keep you posted with any updates that I receive from Mr. Phallen and EACS concerning this matter.
As I mentioned previously, I am not accusing these folks of streaming stats from a mod server to EA however I will be checking on that from time to time until this is resolved. I do however want to get an official position on whether this is legal or not and if it is, then I want all of us to have the option to do the same regardless of the provider, however if it is not legal then I want AOWC to either address the problem or I want EACS to black list it from the game browser.
Before you start with the hate messages and get on my case for making an issue out of this, please keep in mind I have nothing against the Tactical Combat clan or their members, other than the fact they are being permitted just like NBK was with DCON to have a unfair advantage over the rest of us that are trying to host servers for the mods and are not being permitted the same option if it is sanctioned by EACS.
Thanks- Mitch
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