We have seen it several times before; hosts for servers vanishes into thin air and the servers they hosted are left without updates whatsoever for months, or even years. The nightmare scenario is when the only suitable server for the Nations Quake Rank finals runs on software from 2003 and people want to take part of the action on QWTV - but can't.

People have been discussing back and forth on this topic. Some time ago you might remember that an attempt to come up with something new was made with the easyspeedy servers. Instead of getting the servers for free, they were now rented and administrated remotely. This went fine until the routing became bad and it was not worth the cost to rent them anymore.

The new solution pretty much builds on the same idea, the difference is how the funds for the servers are acquired. A group of server administrators, represented by Renzo, have now declared that they are going to start tolling players who play on their servers. This basically means that you will pay a certain amount for every frag you make on a particular server. It is also said that how much the fee per frag is depends on what latency you have to the server, a swedish 12ms player on Quake.se will pay more for every frag he makes than a russian that has 52ms on the same server.

To get a better understanding of this possibly ground breaking step in Quakeworld history i took Renzo aside to answer a few questions of mine.

QW.nu: Hello Renzo, can you please enlighten me on how you came up with this idea?
Renzo: It was a long and painful process when we discussed the different options that allowed us to host our very own servers. In the end one thing was clear though: the players had to fund the servers. When we had realised that my main issue with this idea was that some players enjoy the game far more than others, thus they should pay a bigger share of the server expenses. Who are those players, you might ask. And this is the brilliant part about the whole thing: the ones who enjoy the game are those who make a shitload of frags, and who play on a low ping. It was so obvious!

QW.nu: So, what would this mean? That i'm better off winning my games 1-0 now than 10-0?
Renzo: Well yes, that is basically true. The common formula on all servers would be fee = (frags/ping) * 10. Consider this example:

You play a game on DM4 where a score of 20-0 in your favor isn't that uncommon and it's played on a finnish server where you probably have around 40ms. You would then pay 20/40 * 10 = 5SEK. If you would have played the game on a swedish server instead where you have 12ms, then you would pay ~17SEK instead. It's more expensive, but the game on the swedish server is probably three times more enjoyable as your shaft wouldn't be useless now, so it makes sense, doesn't it?

QW.nu: I guess so, although you will never see me play DM4 in Finland! Anyway, how would the payment be done?
Renzo: All servers will be updated with this software and before you are allowed to play on them after the 15th of June you have to register on our website that is coming up in a month. There you will input your personal details and what IP you are playing from, and the rest is done automatically. At the end of each month you will receive a bill in the mail that you'll have to pay in order to have access to the servers. You can always check the status of your account online to check how much you have played for recently so you won't get chocked when checking the mail one day.

QW.nu: I think i get it. What do you have to say to those that are still not convinced by this idea?
Renzo: You have to realise that i don't WANT to do this. If all our servers could be as stable as the most popular ones for free, then i would be happy. This isn't the case however and to get away from this we need money. I think this is the right time to do this with the recent blowouts in NQR and all. Just look at the tVS vs cMF game. Imagine the income from that game: 461/14 * 10 = ~330SEK from the tVS team only! And Hlt would've been paid to play the game - everyone is happy!

I definitely think this is the way forward as when teams rape rookies in the lower divs they now actually have to pay financially for it. This will save Quakeworld in every way possible.

QW.nu: I guess we will see, thanks for being able to answer with such short notice.
Renzo: You're welcome, time for sauna.

So what do you think? Is this the savior for Quakeworld or just another wasted energy from overly ambitious people? Have your say in the comments!