The last update of any kind to Corex was a month ago already, not sure about the rest of you, but that speaks pretty loud and clear to me.

Well If i had to say it Cortex is done. I just inquiered about getting a sever with the Planet and this isthe responces that i recieved from Broke.

Customer: do you all add games to this list when thsy come out
Brooke Kyle: Yes, though I don't know of any that are planned to be added soon.
Customer: oh so crysis isnt goning to be added?
Brooke Kyle: I don't think so.
Customer: i think it comes out in a few weeks
Brooke Kyle: Also, for optimized performance you may want to consider at least a Conroe 3060.
Customer: do you have an ext that i can contact you at?
Brooke Kyle: Battlefield 2142 is pretty demanding.
Brooke Kyle: My direct line is 281-668-1394


so i called and she confermed that cod4 and ut3 are not going to be added.
So I will be cancelling my sever. Just thought you all should know.

These guys are new forum singups. I am not totaly buying into it.

The "evidence" supports it though. LReese leaves. KLaude leaves. No new patches or updates since June 27th, 2007.

But then there is PD2. I hardly believe that PD2 would be in there boldly lieing to us unless he was kept in the dark about.

I am hoping PD2 can let us know if its true or not.

EDIT: I am not buying it. I have a support ticket saying otherwise.

Kennith W. - Wednesday October 24th, 2007; 12:19 AM CDT
We are currently working on having TF2 and other new releases added into Cortex. At this time, we do not have an ETA, but rest assured, we are working getting this done.

If you have any other questions, please let us know.

Thank you.

Now, I am not happy camper, but I am for sure not going to let someone on a forum that I don't know anything about persuade me to just ditch The Planet. That isn't fair to Zach or PD2 or anyone. If I ditch The Planet, it will be for a real reason like what we are discussing in this thread, games being super late. Now PD2 says they are working on it and if they are and the games are coming, I would rather stay here then go elsewhere. But I do want it to improve a bit.

I have no idea what TP's plans are for Cortex, but other than PD2's posts in this thread and a couple others, the silence from the rest of the staff concerns me. I know in the past, new games, updates and patches were generally added within days if not hours of them being released. I hope that TP can get Cortex back on track.

However if they do not, there is always the option of installing another control panel on a server here at TP.

We can't do that on ranked boxes though.

Guys,

Alright, first of all, I just got the word on this Thursday. Secondly, I was TOLD you guys would be getting an official communication for The Planet as our customer. I have raised and escalated this to several people in the company, including the VP of Marketing and the Director of Product Management and have seen no further communications other than the official word is not due out until after they meet Monday.

At this time, yes, it looks like Cortex and all gaming support will be EOL'ed, but those that have current implementations will be "grandfathered" into support only - no updates, new games, or the like will occur. Now, the reason I say "it looks like" is because they are supposed to have their final meeting and final decision on this on Monday or Tuesday of this coming week. Pending that meeting they were going to have the final official word.

I'm kind of upset that someone in the company told you guys something that was not final and official yet and hence probably upset you enough to freak some of you out and worry you that no one else has stepped forward to tell you a single thing. Well, the reason I've given no official update was because nothing has been official. Does that mean it has a chance to go the other way? From all early indication, no, BUT we still do not know the extent and directives of when and how all of this will be done and what will and won't be available, etc, if they move forward. So for someone to give you an "official" word of what is happening is WAY TOO premature at this point. I hate it when communications is not clear and people go flying off the handle spouting out anything they think they have heard instead of waiting till a more official communication comes along.

The point is that it was way to early for any one to tell any of you anything and for that, on behalf of The Planet, I am truly sorry. You deserve the full communication and direction from those that can give it you (our Senior Management and VP's) and to get the communication from anyone else is below the level of standard that we at The Planet try to achieve. I realize that what you know is out there now and probably taints your view regardless of what communications come out next. But I hope that you at least give us, The Planet, the necessary time to properly position the expectations of what they will decide after Monday/Tuesday of this coming week to clearly understand what will happen with Cortex and the Gaming side here.

Again, our sincere apologies for the early and premature communications. We promise to have a lot clearer communications to you in short order. And we do and have appreciated you and your business here.

Sincere apologies and kindest regards,
PD2

My hats off to PD2 Paul for trying to keep the communication lines open. He seems to be the only one at TP trying for Cortex. But it could be a lost cause if upper management has already gotten their minds made up. With the loss of the prior Cortex people, and the costs to replace them and further development, the ROI must not be enough for management to continue.

TP had a good thing going at one time with Cortex, too bad they are letting it slip away

Again PD2 a big Thank You for all of your help, even tho it appears in essence management forced you to try to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

You buying it yet Unisol? Man, I'm a long time Cortex I365 customer too, but the writings been on the wall, turning a blind eye to it doesnt make it not so, the best thing you can do is start looking for what works best for you because waiting on Cortex is more than likely going to leave you behind the times.

Since this is the end of the road, I would like to say a personal thanks to everyone who has worked on Cortex since its beginning. A big shout out to Logan and Kevin for developing a pioneering software that included the game server files, a feat that no one had done at the time. Also a big thanks to Zach for taking on the reigns and helping the Insomnia crew out at the end.

R.I.P. Insomnia. It was a good run.

Yep.

There's nothing like being shoveled BS for the past couple of weeks.

Well, at least we don't need to wait around anymore. Looks like it's time to find a new provider that supports ranked BF servers.

PD2, thanks for coming clean.

Hell I knew more or less it was over when Kevin headed out. Zack came in and made some comments about he could handle it ect. But already the forum changed faces, then the site. They knew what was going to happen. And facing the site and forums up for the change was apart of it.

So I have tickets that say this and that will be added and they knew it wouldnt be. Im not sure where you guys live. But thats a lie where I come from. Not only did they not come out and just tell us this was happening, so we can pay a few more months in the dark. They lied to us on tickets saying this and that would happen. And then just close the tickets.

The big wigs in the leather chairs always push us around. lol

I would like a free months rent and a apology for being lied to...

I also payed for a extra gig of ram on my box. I want that money back to seeing you dont support my box at all.

Thats my 2 cents. lol

Tuxrox1,

I can totally understand your frustration as well as empathize with feeling like you were lied to. As much as you might think its BS, I was never given a straight answer one way or the other until I started "pushing and shoving" to get some attention on customers that were being neglected in communications. But even with these early communications coming out The Planet still has not released all details. I have no idea if they will phase it out over time and give you all a short list of what will be installed and supported in a short list between now and then or what? There could be all sorts of possibilities - install "X" games and allow The Planet to support those plus the ones already installed for "X" amount more months, etc. I just do not know yet - that is some of the information I'm hoping will come out of the Monday/Tuesday meetings and communications that they plan to hold. So let's not freak out too bad - at a minimum we know that the Cortex GCP is going to get EOL'ed, but that does not necessarily mean it will go away tomorrow and all servers that have it installed will be wiped out. We have several customers with commitments that were made and that we made to them, so I'd suspect that we must fulfill them per what was signed between The Planet and the customer.

Again, I'm very sorry and can totally understand your anger toward this situation. But for now, let's just wait for the final communications - its way too premature and early to make decisions and head directions that we know nothing about from a finalized state.

Kind regards,
PD2

BS no BS who really cares...what a joke, I feel for yah PD you do a great job trying to keep things in motion and buy the suits some time to evaluate all of this while we continue to put a little extra bread in your coffers each month, I hope you get that promotion and a raise.
TP knew this was coming down the pipe quite some time ago and should have done something about it sooner. Officially or unofficially your customers deserve better communication than the canned BS, evasive responses we have received over the past few months.
Some groups with a large roster of players, and popular game servers need time to make decisions based on what the hell you people are doing. It's funny how now we are lead to believe we need you more than you need us.

So what was the official word on this today?

Is it done or what?

Hits backspace key over and over... "Speachless" After over three years on Cortex Servers and finally getting control of my own they start to turn belly-up on me... US! Just as TF2 releases... Think about the gaming market place we try to fill as server operators... Man the anguish The Planet is causing us. I personaly am missing out on many promisses I have made, along with the TF2 Community that we are supossed to have up and running by NOW! The Planet is killing us.

DOC! I want you to know man, I have been coding a few of my sites and forums on the Blueskin...
So this whole venture has not been wasted, its been fun...
Here is a taste of the FF comunnity- Family Frag Zone Stats
My Personal Favorite



After thinking and listening to the wife... She's a clan mate and gamer at heart too
Well I suppose we could shutdown the Cortex and run the server from the desktop...... Hmmm perhaps we wont run away so soon. We do have a couple months in the kitty.

I havent scouwerd around but can we update the game engines with a copy of TF2? I tried bootstrapping TF to an HL2DM instance with a modifide command line to run -game tf. Crashed no start. Perhaps we can we get a tutorial on how to install game engines manually for those of us that have RMD? I know Cortex is touchy and crashes easy if you mess with it to much aaahh DOC...

Well I will still sit here in the background and see what happens to us...

Lizard I sent you a PM.

I suspect things are going to get very quiet around here. And no reply so far just about makes sense considering the way we have been treated thus far.

I have found another provider and will be moving on very shortly. Good luck to those of you who are still searching or staying here.

All,

At this time I have been advised to let you know that you will each (each of our customers individually or as a whole, depending on how they send out the final communications) will be getting the final, official response on this situation with Gaming and Cortex within the next 15-30 days. At this time, The Planet has no further information other than The Planet will continue to support and help you, our Cortex customers, as they have, until you receive communications from The Planet that specify otherwise.

Please look for these official communications over the next 15-30 days.

Kind regards,
PD2

That is a HUGE window.

With my payment date coming up in the first week of November I am not going to wait to give you guys more money, AND then wait to hear that Cortex is being shutdown. Not taking that risk.

What sort of support will we actually recieve in the next 15-30 days? If I ask for an engine to be added, would it? Like my current 3 open tickets, 4309296 4309304 4334712 .

So the corporate lawyers told them they have to continue at least support of the product we purchased until they notify us in legal manner that its over. Nice.

Well, we are moving on. I am not going to pimp our new provider out of respect to the owner of this forum.

It's been fun, I365 and the crowd around here has been great. Maybe I will bump into you guys elsewhere.

Peace.

One of my biggest reasons for leaving too Creed!!! Dead spot on! We've been stuck with a ranked box for far too long and I got tired of having my hands being tied!

Ticket Number Summary Ticket Owner
Open Date Last update by
Date Status
4310808PLNT Game Request: COD4 OPEN
Opened 11 OCT 2007 10:25 PM ©
Last Update 22 OCT 2007 02:27 PM ©

4300872PLNT Game Request: ETQW (Ranked) OPEN
Opened 07 OCT 2007 05:07 PM ©
Last Update 22 OCT 2007 02:37 PM ©

4230876PLNT Game Request: MOH:Airborne OPEN
Opened 31 AUG 2007 05:03 PM ©
Last Update 20 OCT 2007 02:43 PM (P)


I second that!

R.I.P.

It's been fun while it lasted, hope to see some of you guys around!

Grim
www.sealteam6clan.com
xfire: st6grim

I said thanks to Insomnia everymonth, by paying my $500 bill.

Engines being added? I would say 0 to no chance, by support my opinion would be simple shit like if your Cortex stops working they would restart it etc. Basically just until they can officially tell us its dead and say XX days and its unsupported as well.

Roflmao Just in time to get another month's payment in.

Later I am out it's been a slice I hope you guys have better success serving your clients in the future, possibly get Zach to take over customer relations now that hes out of work...lol

grrrr more cortex fun!! lol hey if any of you have found a GOOOD GSP that has bf2142 ranked and bf2 ranked please shoot me a PM so i can start looking.. Nice that they have done this right around the holidays!!!! Merry Christmas everyone LOL...

As of the Nov 9 I am no longer a Planet customer. I took our business elsewhere and have gotten what I think is a fair deal without the cortex update headache.

nuf said

who please?

Plenty of places, but why would you have interest?

You are the recently elected TD/PD2 fanboy...

good point

but i have gamer that i now need to move and for my others will stay here but gaming side im done here

Tomorrow is the start of that window of official communications.

I wonder what is in store...

Creed, et. all,

I just checked in with Product Management and they are telling me that the official communications is still on track as originally stated and that all customers should be getting something within the time frame specified.

But, if you have already cancelled your servers and left The Planet before this communications gets sent out, I do not believe you will get anything. Hence, as soon as I know something and have anything official, I'll be more than happy to post up what got sent out so that all those that are curious can have a peak at what exactly got decided.

Thank you for your continued patience!
PD2

I'm still an active I365 customer and patiently waiting for my "official" communication.

Same here, I have a feeling I will be disappointed

You are correct, we did cancel our servers and left TP. So I won't be getting any official communication but it would be nice to hear it relayed by you. That is of course if that is even allowed.

I think u others should pimp ur suppliers, if TP isn't gonna do gaming hosting anymore what do they care, their gonna lose business anyways.

That makes no sense. I'm sure they care a lot. Just because they've make the (business) decision to cease/end-of-life a product doesn't mean they are throwing away anything. For that matter, just because a product isn't updated doesn't mean you can't continue to run it. If you are content with only hosting ranked servers on your Cortex box then there isn't a reason to throw your hands in the air and scream the sky is falling. If you are in absolute need of a system with newer games on it and don't need Cortex then just format the system and load up the new games. There are plenty of other control panels out there that can support what you need.

Its not the ranked servers I'm worried about, its me not knowing how to actually install a server and run it w/o a control panel to help me. Cortex is easy, great idea. Keep it up to date with games, even better. Not support tf2 or cod4 when released, morons. Thats it.

As has been stated a few times before, there are other control panels that can be installed on a server here at TP, Some of us can install on your server a remote to our master that has many games already installed on it. You do not have to cancel you box here unless you want to.

Creed,

I would not have said that I would post it up if it wasn't allowed. If its been officially communicated out to all customers then there is nothing that says we can't share it with all. So don't worry, I'll post up about it once something is released.

PD2

But why would I go out a pay for "another" control panel when I already pay for cortex?



I've been with TP for the last 4 years...and I do hate to leave, but they left me no choice.

Thanks it would be appreciated. Just because I left doesn't mean I do not care in some way or another in regards to this awful situation. If I had hated TP I would have not had servers here for 2 years and happily involved myself on this forum.

ALtec: What Doug means is to get a server from the main grouping of TP's server and install a third party control panel on that. We haven't done excatly that, but we have gone the route of a third party panel.

Well guys, here it is:

http://forums.theplanet.com/index.php?showtopic=89218

The final, official company announcement has been made.....

PD2