This kind of gets lost in the TF2 thread....so I copied the major declarations here.






Texas ...TeamPlayers... is ending it's game server accounts with The Planet.

We will also go far, far out of our way to make sure it is well known how long we haev been left in the dark, and how convenient it is to charge us for service you know damn well we could cancel if we had the truth.

Deceptive trade practices, if you ask me. If you aren't intending to support games, the minute you reached that decision, we should have been notified. Not when it was convenient, or in some god damn forum.

$1000's.....wasted on a company that no longer thinks we are a priority.

Good bye, planet.

So does this mean theplanet will be shutting down all cortex servers?

I would hardly think so, that would be a major loss of money, more they just wont support it any longer.

Nothing is going to happen to current customers servers, and within the next 15-30 days we will have official word on whether more gaming servers are going to be sold, and if Cortex is going to be offered anymore.

Nothing has been offically announced yet.


We had no idea it was coming either. So for it to be stated that you have been decieved... is simply incorrect.

We will have to wait and see what is _officially_ decided before we can say if this is happening or not. I'm not going to butter you guys up, and pretend like it looks like there may be a chance, because more than likely it will be EOL. In my PERSONAL opinion, it seems cortex is just not a big seller, and it really is a major headache for support.

again, nothing has been officially announced! So before everyone grabs the pitch forks and torches, lets wait to see what happens.

Been trying to tell them this for the past 2 months but no one would listen. Glad to hear a TP person say it.

And thats fine that they didnt make money off it or whatever, but the people who bought it dont care about that, they want what they paid for, and when it wasnt happening, you would expect word on why? The complaints are not coming from disgruntled kids about the lack of support for their $50 video game, your talking about people paying hundreds and thousands of dollars a month to be left hanging in the dark was the REAL issue.

I smelled a rat when Logan and Kevin both fled in such short time. With that, I had the ability on my box's to use RDT so started planning on taking care of myself and not waiting on support from Cortex that never came, I just felt sorry for those with ranked boxs or who didnt have the ability to do it.

Gordy I agree with you. I was not suprised to see Logan and Kevin leave. But since the buyout and then the merger, many faces have left and many new ones have been added. That is the nature of business, it happens with many companies in all types of businesses.

I saw it all coming when Headsurfer left EV1 and when Lance left TP, all about the same timeframe. Both of them were major reasons why at the time these 2 companies were 2 of the largest and most respected data centers around. My guess is they knew this was all coming and either left or were forced out. At the time I was very happy here at TP, but I had a feeling something like this was about to happen and started looking around for other places. I have been in the workforce for over 30 years and have seen similar situations.

When Cortex, or for that matter any product or service, does not meet the expectations of the bean counters, it is time to cut the losses and move on. For example, if you are hosting a hypothetical game "X" and it is very popular and you provide it at a reasonable cost and provide excellent support for it, you might attract many customers and your business may grow wildly. If it grows faster than you planned for, you will have some growing pains, ie not enough resources or staff. Hopefully you will get these taken care of ASAP before your business suffers too much. Then hopefully you can continue to grow and prosper. Then if you are very successful, someone notices this growth and revenue. They want to make some fast money, so they buy you out. The new owner then wants to maximize his profits, se he begins to cut corners on things behind the scenes. Present employess see things that thay do not agree with, since many things have changed from what it used to be. So employees start leaving. Also this happens with some customers. The new owner then hires new employees. However it takes the new employees a while to learn the ropes, meanwhile ciustomer service and satisfaction starts taking a hit. Meanwhile game "Y" comes out and many of the people playing "X" switch to it, but the new owners do not offer it. Now the customer base has been reduced, thus effecting the bottom line. Instead of making a decent profit, they are either in the hole or the profit is only a touch in the bucket compared to what it used to be. The suits have many meetings trying to place the blame on someone and trying to figure out what to do to replace the lost revenue. More cuts are made behind the scenes and more customers start wondering what is going on. After some time and mounting losses, the suits have no choice but to drop game "X" and move in another business direction in an attempt to regain their profits.

As I have said in other posts here, I hope that TP can rebound and regain their status as an excellent data center. To some they still are and have always been. To some they have hit bottom and are climbing back up. And to some they are still on a downward spiral. There are people that have valid arguements for which group they are in and will argue their postion loudly. Personally I am in the second group. Cortex is a small fraction of TP's business, but the Cortex customers are some of the most vocal. Will TP lose customers if Cortex is EOL'ed? Definitely. Will this hurt or improve TP's profit? They must be planning on it helping in the long run, otherwise they would not even consider EOL'ing it. Look at the emphasis on their products on their main page. And compare it to a few months ago. Back then Cortex and gaming was prominent, now it is 1 line. It looks to me like they are trying to focus on the business market. They have recently added emphasis on hosting SBS solutions, and email hosting and are increasing the marketing of these. For me, it obvious to see what is going on with their future plans. TP MUST go to where they feel they can make the most profit, even tho that will effect those who rely on Cortex and gaming.

Gorrdy, I cannot speak for Logan, but to my understanding Kevin left for personal reasons, and not anything to due with Cortex.

I know why Kevin left, and where he is now, its sad to see why he left TP, and went somewhere else and just left Cortex die, however, I am hopeful *where* he is now he can re-build Cortex into something similar and better.

Well people were asking me where he went, and quite frankly I might get in trouble, he went to SL.

Did anyone get a valid reason for the 15-30 day waiting period for an "official" response?

I know it, maybe they are going to officially announce the release of Cortex 2 and that we all get 1 months credit for our inconveniences. Ya thats it.

I honestly doubt that.. -_-

Even if they did that I wouldn't believe it.

"official" things take time. The majority of the staff posting here are not the ones who get to make the call on cortex.

So hold on, let me get this right.

1) After the "15-30" days period has passed, people won't be able to purchase cortex servers?
2) People who already have a cortex server, will remain having one, including ranked?

Nobody has said ANY of that, what they have said is, they will be issuing customers "official" responses on whats going on, within 15-30 days.

WTH is SL???

It's the abbreviated name of another company.

SL = Succulent Libations

SL = Succulent Lobster

SL = SoftLayer

www.softlayer.com

Umm......yea they knew that, just werent going to post competitors names or sites here, same way you probably shouldnt.

Okay thanks for answering my question. Anyway, I think The Planet as a whole and not just cortex, had better days. Im sure The Planet is doing pretty well business wise, but I think they had more income in the past. Lately I've seen the sales webpage flooded with price cuts/lots of free upgrades and things like that. Part of that is because people started noticing that there are some decent and cheaper alternatives to The Planet out there. The Planet caters mostly to enterprises and such with the services that I've seen them offer. Although, a huge chunk of the customers is everyday users like us who do have budgets that we have to work with. I used to have to pay $350 a month for a dual woodcrest server and I think it was 2,500 GB of Bandwith. Now, at Hypernia I pay the same $350, but I get an 8 Core (2x Clovertown) server with 3,000GB of Bandwith (Thing is I dont think they actually check it). Another thing like some people have mentioned is that the support team has really taken a hit, and not just in Cortex related stuff. I had an incident awhile ago that basically completely corrupted RDP on one of my servers. It took them 4 days for them to even post something that said "Okay I just forwarded your ticket to Technical Support". My ticket was sitting in a sorting queue for 4 days. I think that was just a bit rediculous and I took that seriously and ended up just canceling that server and squeezed all of the stuff that was on it onto another one of my outsourced servers.

In the end, I hope The Planet realizes that they aren't the only company out there, and that they need to start looking at what is happening now, and not what was happening 6 months ago. One day I'm sure they will end up redoing their outlook on Customer Support.

Anyway, I think I'm done with The Planet. If they come back with something revolutionary, I will be looking out for it.

Until then, Goodbye.

Liltechdude

Now I know the reason for the "push-off" answers that I have been getting in the Orbit ticket system from the Cortex Team. I have been asking about having them add new games to Cortex for 3 weeks now with the standard

"I apologize for the delay. We are still looking into getting this completed.

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

Thank you for your patience."

This is a bunch of crap if you ask me. Why won't they just tell me the truth. Ummm, we will not be installing any new games onto cortex for a few weeks while we dicide if we are going to crapcan the thing or not. I would rather be spending my money somewhere else if this is how I am going to be treated. There are plenty of other GSP's out there right now who are offering pre-order servers with the game that I want installed. If I did not have a ranked box, it would be easy to install the games that I wanted to and would not have to rely on someone else to do it for me. Besides, this IS what I paid for, Cortex AND support for it. I seriously doubt that I will be around in the next 15-30 days. Besides, the answer that we get then, after they get another months payment out of us, will probably be the same, please wait ANOTHER 15 days as we have not decided yet.
Damn good thing I came here to the forums to see if anyone had been talking about the game that I was interested in having them install. This also explains why Z. Oldson won't return my e-mails.

Well as of today my servers are shut down and we 100% officially out of this DC and company.

We no longer have to put up with: half-truths at every corner, a company after my wallet rather than my praise, and a support team that is all together un-balanced between those that have a clue and those that are clueless.

Just as liltechdude14 pointed out consumers need to realize that there are many other options out there nowadays offering a lot more for less.

Honestly it feels like TP has fallen majorly behind the competition. I can remember when they never had to offer all these deals all the time. Where their marketing was purely based on good customer reviews and referrals. Now they have to offer incentive like the "Triple Play" which ends up creating more money for TP.

Sskporter1: I hope you can make a strong decision as whether or not staying with TP is a good idea for your demands. Put your money where your mouth is and everything else will fallow.

I am sorry if I offended anyone, but the truth hurts the most when it comes from the customer.

Well, here it is, the anser everyone has been looking for. I went on the chat line this morning with a tech and this is what he had to say, short and sweet. No, new games.

As posted above no official decision has been made on this yet, the tech is simply stating his opinions.

That being said I think it is pretty obvious at this point what the path for cortex even before it is announced officially.

I would assume that he was just giving his opinion on that it was going to be at END OF LIFE. Until the planet has official word, I would say that to be inaccurate.

Its been "Official" for quite some time now, just because they havent "officially" said it, actions or lack of in this instance, speak MUCH louder than words or official statements.

Kevin and Josh "aka: Logan" are at SL.
They do NOT work on game software of any kind...they do API.
There are no plans on doing Cortex or anyother game software of any kind.


So, if The Planet drops Cortex, it is gone forever "unless someone offers tons of money for it"

Per PD2 if you want a game installed you have to submit a support ticket...sounds like the long way round to me......


This is not good, and if Cortex does drop off, will they let us know with time to cancel or just let us pay for a dead program?

We have also put in for the disconnect of our server here:( We had a great time here (minus the last couple of months without kevin) but no support=no more $$ from us... Alot of us former cortex users have found a new GREAT home and are VERY active on the forums there.. take care everyone and thanks to PD2 for helping us out when no one else would!!!!

Jestermiami,

You are welcome and we will miss you - sorry that things had to go this way with your decision, but I'm personally very understanding.

All,

Let me post something that was in response to TP's other post in the Cortex group as I feel that everyone needs to read this and some may not if they do not go to the other thread:

First, lets not mix my words here. What I told everyone was that submitting a ticket to place your request in the queue was better handled by submitting a ticket and not posting here. Cortex DEV and support do not come here to look for customer request of new games to be added - makes sense due to the fact that this is a forum and not a ticket response system.

Second, as for the adding of games, until the final communication comes from our management and communications team, what I was told, is support is still in tact and remaining the same regardless of any premature announcements and discussions that have gone out to date. I wish the communications would have never went out - no, not to hide things from any one or to be deceptive (another nice little twist on things that many have tried to inject here). I wish it would have never went out as there was NO completion of thought around what to do, what to support, how to do it, who will do it, what will do, etc, etc. The easiest thing for any company to do is say "Hey, we just will EOL a product or service." The hardest thing to do is to come up with the right operational procedure of how to continue to maintain a customer base that does stay and get grandfathered in under a product. Call it an exclusive access if you will or whatever you want. Yeah, I understand that it does not feel exclusive because responses are slow to no responses and the support team has a mix bag of responses to customers - NEVER a good thing. But again, that reitterates the fact that we STILL have no official plan to release to the public and the information that came out about the EOL should have NEVER been released in such a premature state. So until then, we have plenty of speculation and personal perspective (neither of which has any rooting or grounding in what the real answers WILL be) and thus people are making decisions based off of that.

Third and as DougK94 so nicely put it, many people are ruling out the options of just staying right where you are and just changing the control panel you use. Yes its possible that other control panels are not as good or for that matter other services do not give you the ranking that you got here. Totally understandable. But not EVERYONE is going to fall into that category. Many people made the choice to ditch ranked servers due to the inability to have root access to everything and went unranked here and are just as happy. Others have left and went to other companies and that is fine too. Everyone will have to make their own decisions based upon what makes the servers and services provided by The Planet most valuable. If you can't find one thing valuable about the choices you have in front of you, then you will make your decisions accordingly to take care of your user base and business.

With all of that being said, I NEVER like nor want to see anyone go away nor go away mad. I have tried to be as helpful as I can during these times and issues and even in this premature EOL announcement. And for that matter I'll continue to be as helpful as possible. So, for anyone that needs a ticket looked at or an issue escalated, please feel free to shoot me a PM and I'll have a look to see what I can do.

Kindest and Best Regards to all!
PD2

Thanks Paul, but I think the control panel I use is better than Cortex ...and I am not saying that Cortex is not a good one

People's options for Cortex as I see it vary as to if they are reselling game servers or if they are using it for personal or clan use.

For personal or clan usage:

• Stay exactly like you are and wait to see what TP decides to do with Cortex.
• Keep your Cortex box(es) for ranked BF2 and BF2142
• Reload some or all of your box(es) and install a different control panel on it.
• Find a new server provider that provides another control panel.
• Rent individual game servers from another provider instead of having a dedicated server

For GSP usage:

• Stay exactly like you are and wait to see what TP decides to do with Cortex.
• Keep your Cortex box(es) for ranked BF2 and BF2142
• Reload some or all of your box(es) and install a different control panel on it.
• Find a new server provider that provides another control panel.
• Become a ranked provider yourself and use a different control panel on a box(es) here at TP or from another provider.
• Close up your GSP since Cortex may be no more

I am sure there are other options available too. If Cortex is EOL'ed, it is not the end of the world, there are many options available

I think your last statement does sum up what I meant - I was just prempting the impending "but Cortex was so great and ruled the world" responses that I've seen from time to time. Not the case so much any more, but ultimately, I agree - there are other alternatives for control panels.

Regards,
PD2

What other control panels work for it? I still have a server here, could I use TCadmin?

You definatly could. I would recommend getting your OS reloaded first though.

But without Cortex you can't do Ranked Servers.

Moral of the story:

Need Ranked: Stick with Cortex
Don't need Ranked: Maybe use something else, or stick with Cortex and use RDP access to do everything else.

This just in from my support ticket::



SO the lie of COD4 being number 6 on this list that does not exist...what crap !!

How dare you lie to the public and then lie to customers.
TP is getting to be nothing more then a sham !!

So the loss of 2 people cause you to stop a line of product and leave current customers hangging by an un-known thread.

When were you going to tell all of us....Ever?

We will be dropping all our servers with TP.

Glad you went total Corp. it shows that the dollar is more important the the customer...or the lack thereof.

Talk about pissed off....errrrrrr
I can not even type.
adios

Stop trolling. Have you honestly been reading what has been posted here?



Sheesh, I get it that people are dissatisfied with Cortex. No need to beat a dead horse.

Yo Dougy, I think the majority of people like Cortex here because they don't have the knowledge of setting up game servers. Beginners use Cortex, advanced users use better control panels (i.e. TCAdmin). I have used TCAdmin for a few months and it is amazing how many features you have at your disposal and how much freedom you have.

Doc, I agree.... But you can get TCAdmin from someone that is already preinstalled with games too. See http://www.tcadmin.com/dedicated.php for the authorized providers. The ones with a "*" also have the Data Center edition that will allow for reselling of game servers on it too.

I decided to drop our ranked 2142 servers and had the OS reloaded. The only reason we stayed was to keep our IP's intact. Sure, it may take 18 hours to upload the game to the server using FTp, but hell, We now have 2 instances of OD4 running along with all of our other UO servers and an unranked Knife server on 2142. If anyone decides to go this way and needs help setting up your games, let me know and I will help you. I still have cortex installed just because of 2142 and the UO engines.
You can contact me on our ventrilo at il1.leetvent.com:3938 or visit our website and drop me a pm at www.ckiclan.com.

CKI Cpl Porter
Founder Clankillers. INC.

This is really inexcusable. Many people are spending the equivalent to a monthly car payment on their servers. I recommended a Cortex server to a friend not 2 months ago and now I feel like a total ass, sending him into a sinking ship. We will have to make our own decisions now on whether we stay or not, but I am leaning to dumping it. It's certainly is not a very good business model cutting off customers that are paying 200+ a month for a product and have been doing so for years now.

If TP is not making money on Cortex, it is only due to their own failings. They created a perfectly marketable product that could have really taken off. Instead after trying for a short period of time to market it unsuccessfully (apparently) the simply buried it as deep as they possibly could, making it virtually impossible for someone to find. If you want to blame someone for the downfall of Cortex, you can place the sole blame on TP marketing department. If I was in charge, every single one of them would be fired on the spot. Without marketing you could create the greatest invention of a century and it would fail miserably.

The ironic part is they ran most of the reputable GSP's off when they started this Insomnia stuff.

Now they lost all those customer's and the green panel users....

I believe the real lesson to be learned here is "don't bite the hand that feeds you".

Cortex was originally the pet project of the ex CEO of TP. He was the one who really pushed for it. There was an active development staff, support and updates were always speedy and timely. When he left, the developers still kept the ball rolling, but then they started trickling away and were rarely replaced. The developers soon became just Zach. 1 person cannot support Cortex effectively. His time is spent answering questions like "How do I...." rather then spent trying to improve it. Management was never too keen on Cortex, and then when customers started leaving, that just the icing on the cake.

As I have stated before, there are a few other good alternatives to Cortex. All of them, including Cortex, have their strong ponts and also weaknesses. If you could try some of them, I am sure you can find something that you will like. None of them are exactly like Cortex, they are all different from each other.

The reason Cortex was popular for a little while

1) Game server files supplied
2) easy for beginners to use

Bad things

1) Not much freedom
2) Cortex's safe guards a lot of time made administrating the server more difficult.

Result = good for beginners, bad for experienced people.

Which is why it is often really good for clans. Not everyone knows how to run a server and Cortex took out a lot of the guess work. This of course in a way is not good because it created in-experience server admins but because of Cortex I have learned a lot of things, and now have moved onto another more advanced panel.

I honestly think we should all just forget about this whole Cortex issue. It was never ThePlanet's primary goal in marketing, so I think we should lay off with all the sadness and ultimately just move on. Personally I like ThePlanet, great datacenter, good support, but for Cortex, its only going to become a memory which will be lost eventually.

With TCAdmin, if you get it get it from one of the people listed at http://www.tcadmin.com/dedicated.php many games will already be pre-installed and configured similar to Cortex. The one with an *, are able to sell an edition that you can use to resell game servers too.