Hey all,
“New Year New Me” couldn’t ring closer to home for the server right now. As of a few days ago, we’ve managed to resolve the downtime issues we’ve been fighting for the past two months or so. We’re reaching triple digit player counts daily, which I find impressive given the lengthy downtime and the unfortunate fact that some of our players are still unable to connect.
We’ll soon provide a guaranteed way for staff and our premium members to join the server.
Uptime was not the only thing we lost in the attack. I’ll use this opportunity to thank the lead administrators who resigned for their effort and years of work. I will however equally use this opportunity to express my gratitude to the staff members that stuck around and continue to help us keep the ship sailing despite the strong winds we’ve experienced over the last few months.
Ben & Me have been hard at work at trying to figure out the best course to take from here. There’s plenty we’ve planned and we’ll do our best to keep you in the loop both here, on our website and on Discord. I’ll keep the specifics for now while we work out all the kinks, but keep your eyes peeled for more announcements coming shortly.
Promotions
We’ve decided not to introduce new staff members into the lead team for now. Everything’s still very fresh and we want to take our time to avoid making rash, uninformed decisions.
That being said, a lot of departments are in dire need of a leader. We’ve chosen the following Team Leaders:
Ben - perhaps the most obvious one. Ben will be taking the position of Head of Staff to oversee our teams. The previous position of Community Manager will be split between him and me as a joint leadership to make sure we’ve all of our bases covered.
DadoJ is our new Head of Testers. We’ll be going through the tester applications that have already been sent in soon. You can expect a new batch next month.
colorlessrainbow will return to his previous position as Head of Support to make sure our support ticket site is running smooth and requests are handled in a timely and efficient manner.
Toretto will be taking charge of the Company ecosystem.
Fiendfyre (Marauder) will be helping out as the new Head of Properties
Congratulations, everyone!
We're in the process of choosing a new Team Leader for the Modding Team and the Faction Management Council. We'll update you about that once a decision has been made.
Reinstatements
We’re excited to welcome the following staff members back into our team:
Game Admin 2
ashh (.Baker.) - Dustie - Keracaus
Game Admin
Dennis_Ayala - Orbit - Torez
Azuko - LaMarcus_Boone - Airwalk - Este - Adorn. - Wildcat
Tester
OhTwo - Yevtushenko - Vladdy - Helius
samuel - Airforce! - Paps - Apathy
Cantbehudson - fvck (Plannit) - Source
Outreach Team
We understand that PR is something we've been lacking for longer than we should. That's to change though as we're creating a new team within our staff, focused solely on outreach. This includes everything from news posts on the website, social media, YouTube, marketing and so on and so on. We're currently in the process of finding a suitable leader for this project, ideally within our staff team. Once this goes through, you should expect more engagement both inside and outside the community.
Development updates
You can read about the upcoming game development update led by Kane here: https://forum.ls-rp.com/viewtopic.php?f=1786&t=731800 - it includes a ton of new features and updates to the quality of life of our gamemode.
Donation Incentives
Being under attack of this scale comes at a cost. Literally. While we've had money saved for rainy days, LS-RP was barely breaking even for a few months prior to the attack as it is. In order to resolve it, we had to shop around for a better host to provide us the custom setup and protection that we need, which ended up being more costly than we thought it'd be. Even with the upfront costs aside, our monthly expenses have increased by several hundred dollars, which is not sustainable in the long-term, as a part of the bills has to currently be paid out of my own pocket. I'm looking at different methods of incorporation to optimize our taxes, but for the next few months this is what we've to deal with.
This is why we'd like to pay attention to you and hear you out about what features you'd like to see added to the Premium packages? We already have a few in mind that we'll be implementing this month, but if you have any ideas that aren't really pay2win, I'd like to hear them. I'm aware that plenty of people would like to donate with PaySafe or Phone, but those services aren't available to us right now, and even then, they take 50-80% commission depending on which provider you use, so we don't deem that viable right now.
I've also been approached by several people about the possibility of making a one-time donation outside of the standard packages. We've gotten these offers many, many times over the years and I've always refused because it wasn't necessary at the time. I do feel that the times call for it now, so if you'd like to help us out while we fully recover and find a stable balance, feel free to make a one-time donation at paypal.me/lsrpio.
Please use the URL only by clicking on it in this post to avoid phishing. Feel free to include a message with your donation, ie what you'd like to see the money go to or what you'd like to see on the server - but please keep in mind this is purely informational and there's absolutely no guarantees involved. Also if you choose to make a donation, remember the server is not 100% stable right now and could go down for a short period of time again in the near future, we just need help fighting it.
That's all I've got today. Thank you for your attention and your loyalty. Happy new year!
Mmartin