Over the past 18 months, we have been shifting our focus toward the growing dedicated and managed hosting lines of business. We have taken a numbers of steps in this transition, including the sale of our dial-up business. To further consolidate our focus, we are announcing our decision to end support of the Insomnia365 Cortex gaming product line.

Effective immediately, we have removed the Cortex gaming options from our product catalog, and we will not add any new games or game updates. We will continue to provide critical fixes to the gaming panel, and all Cortex support will be handled exclusively via the Orbit ticketing system until May 1, 2008. At that time, all Cortex support will end.

To accommodate this change, we are offering a $10.00 per month discount on every Cortex-equipped server for as long as the server is hosted with The Planet. If you have an Insomnia365 server with the Cortex gaming panel, this discount will be applied to your next invoice.

With our world-class network and data centers, The Planet provides a rock-solid infrastructure for all of your gaming needs, so we hope that you will take advantage of this discount. These community forums are a great resource to find alternative control panels to manage your games, so if you are interested in recommendations, please don’t hesitate to ask.

If you have any questions, please contact customer support.

$10/month discount is nice.

Thanks for an official word on this finally!

And just to be clear here, we DO NOT have to remove cortex once support is discontinued correct?

Also, I take this to mean that after May 1'st, 2008 if we have a problem with say a cortex service not working correctly, we must take it upon ourselves to fix correct? With that in mind, and if the answer to that question is yes, then are there any plans to release the code to Cortex as open source so that we can modify if needed?

That is correct. You can continue to run your gaming servers with Cortex after May 1.



We haven't set any concrete plans for the Cortex code after May 1, so we are in the process of evaluating the options. As soon as any decisions are made, I'll be sure to let you know.

Rgr...thanks.

Thanks for the heads up Kevin.

No problem.

I'm sorry that it has taken a little longer than we'd have liked to get an official word out to everyone. We certainly didn't want to rush the decision, and it was a tough one to make.

Totally understandable. Most of the regulars kind of anticipated it anyway.

Ya everyone knew it, just didnt seem TP wanted to admit it and unfortunately probably lost some customers they wouldnt have had they moved faster with this.

Also not to seem ungrateful, but have a question, the cheapest quality GCP I saw was TCAdmin which unless someone can point it to me cheaper was $15 a server, so I have 2 servers here = $30, TP Cortex EOL Discount, $20 which = me in the hole -$10

Hey Gorrdy!

If you ever looked at the Insomnia line of servers and then looked at the equivalent counterpart in the Dedicated servers, you would have seen that the price differential was only $10, which happens to the monthly cost and price component for Cortex. It's not based on a replacement value of another GCP - it's based on the fact that Cortex was only $10/month and we are refunding that to all of our customers.

You'd have to pay the $15 a server if you bought a Dedicated server that had no GCP.

Hit up DougK9 - I think he was saying something about having an inexpensive way or easy way to get hooked up with a TCAdmin configuration. Not sure the price (maybe free??), but I know he was more than willing to help.

Hope that helps you understand where the $10/month comes from.

Best regards,
PD2

Thanks Paul, I will say kudos to you again man, you stood in here for the past while and have taken alot of heat but hung tight.

I will look into your suggestion.

TCAdmin is $15.95 per month at www.tcadmin.com It does not include any game files but has a few sample configs for a few games. They have an active forum that the developers and other users can help out. To install and configure it, can be a bit difficult for someone who is used to the point and click of Cortex. But after you have it configured properly, it is point and click and it is a lot more configurable than Cortex.

Myself and a few others can sell dedicated servers with TCAdmin pre-installed and set up with many games. And some of us are able to install TCAmin on your existing servers using our game files and configurations.. With these there are 2 different licenses, one for personal or clan use, and another that allows for reselling game servers. As for pricing of this, it can vary from each TCA reseller, and many do not have the proper license to do so or do not want to on servers other than their own.

Personally, I do not feel comfortable making an advertising post for TCAdmin or my sevices here on TP's forum. But I did have a lengthy series of PM's with PD2 Paul and he encouraged me to make a post similar to this. I am mainly trying to say that you have a good alternative to Cortex with TCAdmin. TCAdmin is running approx. 30,000 game servers. There are other alternatives to, a google search can reveal them. Some are good and some are no good, but TCAdmin fits my needs well along with 30,000 others

I know that things were horribly confusing and frustrating through this long wait time guys and as Kevin said, we are very sorry that you had to endure that. I'm just glad that the final decision was made so that all of you guys could make the right decisions.

And if any of us here, including myself, can help you out in any way with anything on these servers, we will attempt to do our best.

Thanks for the kind words and kudos.
PD2

Thanks for posting this Doug! As I said before, you are just adding to the helping out of our fellow gamers and Cortex community at this point. Many of them have been waiting for various games and patches, so please feel free to suggest alternatives in the GCP's.

Now, if you go selling them servers at another company I'll have to write you in my stern, "don't do that" typing. LOL!

All,

Doug's a great guy looking to help anyone out, including us, The Planet. Hopefully the TCAdmin will meet a lot of the community's and clan's needs here.

Peace in da gaming fleece!
PD2

Thank you Kevin for bringing us the word. We know you are only the messenger but it brings some solace to know this issue has finally been put to rest.

I definatly never would have thought Cortex would die as we all believed in the product because it simply worked, and worked well no matter how much bitching you may have heard here or there.

PD2, thanks for liasoning for us. You did your job admirably. Kudos to you Paul!

---------

I am glad we made our decision when we did and as a result we have fully functioning ranked server with a control panel still. To that end I have some questions:

1) Will there still be Ranked servers here at TP?
2) What will happen to the this section of the forum?
3) Many members have posted up hacks, or additions to their Cortex installs. I see the prospect of certain people continuing development on some basis or another. Will the source code ever be released, or are we dreaming?

---------

I can say that TCAdmin is a good solution for those that must move on from Cortex. It is not easy as Doug mentioned to setup per say, as there is alot more to do than point and click. The TCAdmin forums are a great place to hang out and you will find others like myself, Doug, and Doc there on a regular basis.

Once running though it offers almost endless customization of how you run servers. One drawback is that so far I have been unable to integrate Ranked servers.

If you are serious about it you can try it by communicating with with their sales department and get a trial version.

I exchanged a few messages with Doc also. He's also a forum regular with a TCAdmin license looking to help out if anyone has questions about that control panel. There's certainly no shortage of smart folks around here to help with setting up, configuring, and monitoring gaming servers.

In the decision-making process we had to come to grips with the unfortunate fact that this great group of gamers would be a bit put-off by the decision so we want to make this transition as smooth and easy as possible. Ultimately, it's a matter of consolidating our focus on our core competencies in the hosting arena. We've been making some great changes in support, we have added quite a few new folks to the team, and our developers have been hard at work on our new customer control panel (which will consolidate ServerCommand and Orbit).



1) I'm not positive, but I'll check for you.

2) This section of the forum is a wealth of knowledge, so it'll always be around. Whether or not it's in a "Cortex" or "Control Panel" section might change, but I'm not sure where it would best fit if it were changed, so I'd be interested in everyone's thoughts. I know we have the "Game Hosting" section in the "System Administration" sub-forum, and we could consolidate it there, but that's only if you all think that would be the most logical place for the threads. The only reason we'd want to change the title or consolidate the Cortex panel forum would be to cut out confusion for new customers since we don't reference Cortex on our corporate site anymore... This move certainly doesn't have to happen immediately, though.

3) We're weighing the options on the future of the Cortex code after May 1, so I don't have any real information on those plans. As you mentioned, the Cortex code simply worked, and we certainly don't want to scrap such a great gaming platform. I know it's a bit unnerving to be put on hold, but I can promise that as soon as I know anything, I'll pass along the information to all of you.

Thanks Kevin Hazzard.

Doug and myself are licensed resellers of TCAdmin can install the control panel on your TP server and will allow you to install games at the click of a button. You keep your TP box and IP address and still enjoy the luxury of not having to manually upload the files plus the million features TCAdmin offers that Cortex does not. I offer 50 games and 3 voice servers that can be installed automatically (Complete List of Game and Voice Servers). You are free to install as many game/voice servers as you like, just like Cortex.

Windows servers only.

I wanted to point out that I, and doc for that matter have no association with TCAdmin other than being customers of theirs and also being licensed to resell for them. I know I helped beta test TCAdmin before it was released and continue to do so. Along with many others, including doc, I convinced him to try it out and now he is competing with me LOL. But that is fine with me. But you will also see that with many competing GSP's on the TCA forums, there are a lot of good people willing to help out and assist there, just like here. It is just like on here, you can decide rather quickly by some of their posts who you would want to be a customer of and who you would run as far from as possible

I can't pass this post up.

Totally understandable?

It would have been totally understandable IF TP would have supported Cortex up until yesterday. It wasn't. Support stopped sometime in June with the Quake 4 update. Arma, Quake Wars, TF2, COD4 and even a REQUIRED patch for BF2142 were never implemented.

It would have been totally understandable if the customers weren't treated like mushrooms, as in fed shit and kept in the dark. "Put in support tickets" "Zach is working on it" What the heck ever.

I suggest the next time something situation like this comes up, be honest, be straight forward. TP has every right to move their business in any direction it wants, but don't BS your customers. It seemed like you were trying to milk them for that "one last month of rent," which is highly unlikely given the size of the customer base and the small amount of affected customers, but that is what it seemed like.

The real losers here are the folks that stuck around waiting for the answer for this while their 2142 servers sit useless or are waiting for a game like COD4 to be added to their ranked box. Now they can move to another host, you guys should have told them sooner.

I'm a winner!..at least thats what my mom told me.

You are correct Unisol, while I have always enjoyed being a customer of the planet, they botched this BIG TIME. Especially the continued posting of the company line "Cortex is still FULLY supported" when we all knew it wasnt and to be honest hasnt been since early August, I'm looking at my cortex panel right now and since then, Sept had a couple late but small simple patches and that was all she wrote.

The handling of this probably cost more customers than the loss of Cortex itself.


Anyways I'm done beating this dead horse and am still here for the time being at least with not knowing the future of gaming and if all the new ones will have this stupid ass "ranked" crap and thus force everyone back to GSP's or providers who are dedicated ranked server approved.

While I understand your thoughts here Unisol, the decision on our end wasn't that cut-and-dry. The decision about Cortex was made within the last few weeks, and we have been working to ease the transition and accommodate our current Cortex customers as we move forward. Leading up to the decision, we sought additional developers for the platform and tried to get the software back on track for the games you mentioned above. Ultimately, the lack of personnel, shift in business focus, and growing demand for expansion/development brought the decision to a boiling point. While we wish we could have foreseen this decision earlier to avert the issues you mentioned, we cannot retroactively change the process.

I'm sincerely sorry that you felt misled or tricked or milked for one last month of rent because that was never the intention. Our goal has always been to provide the best customer experience in every aspect of our business, and the final decision to discontinue support of Cortex on May 1 is evidence that we have not been satisfied with the level of service we were able to provide on the Cortex platform.

I do not feel tricked, I think more of your company than that.

The Planet should have continued to support Cortex right up until you made your statement about not supporting it yesterday.

There was allot of wishy washy information put out around here for the last few months. In the Team Fortress 2 thread, it was implied that if we put tickets in, Zach was busy busting his ass and would get to them. That false information, intentional or not, made your customers think that things were progressing, all while, I can only assume, nothing was being done. That information was what we had to go by when making up our minds on what we were doing.

One burning question though.. is there really a person named Zach working at The Planet?

By the way, cool video about data transfer.

Your name is Mr. xxx ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

CTRL + F
type in my name..does work pretty good....lol

Its actually.

Mr. Smith...like in the matrix

The 10 dollar cut is crap. Not supported since who knows when and never will be, so here is 10 bucks. LOL

I have a dual Xeon 2.8 that I paid a 300 dollar 1 time fee for a memory upgrade. I thought for a server I could live with. You offer These servers for 147 now. Give me that cut and I may stay a little while longer. 10 bucks is a joke after what you put us through!

You could always call sales and see if they can make a special arrangement for you regarding that.

The 2.8's are getting old now.

I got rid of mine several months ago and upgraded to the new Dual Core Xeons.

Questions for any Kevin, Aaron or PD2:

1) Will current ranked BF2 servers be delisted on May 1? I have a clan server that is 2 yrs old and the IP is very well established in the BF2 community and hate to lose it.

2) Any word on open sourcing Cortex?

Or you can just stop with paying for servers here altogether.

I am surprised at how much some of you are willing to go through.

Personally, we could not stand the business practices of recent times.




Kevin, this isn't an attack on your person but lets cut with the BS shall we. Those of us speaking out in this thread aren't doing it because we are having fun.

The decision to not support Cortex came long before you "officially" announced it a few days back. We customers were at the recieving end of your little game of 'provide them as little info as possible but just enough to keep them hoping and staying on for another month.'

After Kevin and Reese left, the support and development required to keep Cortex afloat left and not enough people were hired thereafter to fill those positions. There is a word for that, negligence. I don't believe you were even yet with the company when this all happened, though what happens to any product when support dwindles and development stops? Yes, you guessed it, the product dies shortly dies off.


I am not looking for compensation or some big apology on TP's part, since I know neither will happen. What I do want is that something is learned from this giant "science" experiment. That TP looks at this as a model for future products, and realizes what has to be done and what should not be done.

As PD2 explained, the $10 discount was not an arbitrarily chosen amount. The discount reflects the "cost" of the Cortex panel over the same box at the time. The Dual Xeon promotional price is offered on the hardware because it is a little older and we have a strong inventory of them, and as thedude mentioned, you can contact sales about the price discrepancy to work something out if you are interested. Memory upgrades from our standard configurations are still offered with the option of 1-time fees or monthly recurring fees.



I certainly don't want to come off an insincere, defensive, or argumentative. I know that this decision paired with your experience resonates much more with you than anything I can say, and I don't intend that to be a cop-out from responding. When we officially decided to EOL the Cortex platform, it was not a one-sided conversation... Our gaming community is passionate about hosting and is, by definition, intimately tied to the platform on which you run your games, so the other side of the conversation was weighing the costs of revitalizing the Cortex line of business. Ultimately, we decided it necessary to consolidate our focus on our core hosting competencies, and the most unfortunate side-effect was the alienation of this customer contingent. Given your experiences, we'd have liked to communicate much more clearly through this decision-making process, and I'm sure your suggestions in handling the situation will be readily taken into account if we should ever undergo a similar process in the future.

I'm working to get answers for the resounding questions about the future of the Cortex code and how the EOL process will affect ranked servers, and I'll update everyone as I hear anything.

Thank you for your courteous reply.

In Other News:

I was just re-reading your thread and wanted to pick something out:

"We will continue to provide critical fixes to the gaming panel,"

That statement needs some more detail. Also who would be doing the work to come up with critical fixes if there were any?

Probably a maniac from the lego division

I Just Bought TCAdmin today. Way Better then Cortex. Much More Feautures. and you Can Use All the Game files from Cortex. lol...


I would Recommend Everyone Just Get TCAdmin...

I have been saying this for quite a while There are many here on these forums who switched to it some time ago, and some like G_Fresh, very recently.

Yes. And I Should Have Listened Sooner...

Yea but can you run your ranked servers on that panel?

Yes Sir. You Can...

Provided your server IP's are on the authorized IP list that EA maintains.

Well thats awsome! how do I get this installed then so it is ranked?

Who do you contact to make this happen, And whats the cost?

Thanks for your help!

So what you are saying is that your carefully and rationally thought out the actual cost/value of the cortex interface as a value added service for your servers and now are offering to drop the price to rent said servers $10 a month, based on that calculation.

Did you perhaps, possibly at ALL, take into account that we sat with a basically useless server for almost 1 whole month since you did not supply ANY means of updating 2142 instances as required by Electronic Arts, who licensed you to provide us with these RANKED servers?

That means we spent, wasted, LOST about $300 on this server during the time we could not update our instances. Now The Planet, in the spirit of making amends, generously offers us a $10 a month discount to offset the money our dues paying members spent on the platform that was now useless since you did not follow through on your obligations to provide us with timely updates for our RANKED servers? My feeling is that we didn't just pay for the HARDWARE, we paid for the support, and the ability for users to connect to the hardware, through licensed/ranked software you were obligated to update in a TIMELY fashion. You decision not to honor that obligation made our hardware as useless as a 386 system and should therefore entitle us to a refund.

Personally I feel we deserve a complete and full REFUND of our past months rental. Unfortunately the account isn't in my name, but feel free to PM me and I will provide you with the name and contact info of our Treasurer who's name was on the account.

With my current knowledge, you won't make that happen.

Why?

If your running a ranked cortex box right now, then you have no admin rights to the server, and therefore cannot install TCadming(correct me here if I'm wrong, I'm making an assumption with this one).


If your box is not a ranked box, EA won't authorize your IP's as you have to go through the steps of being an authorized server provider..which when BF2 was released, meant you had to run 10 public servers for free.

I think he is speaking of another provider and not about I365.

Ohh..ok.

That would change a few things then.

Thats what Im talking about! So what now? Because TP didnt update 2142, I guess all the EA ranked IPs will be stripped here cause they didnt comply with EA's rules on ranked servers?

I feel some type of refund is called for also. Not a lousy 10 dollar crap deal per month. Thats a offer thats just as bad as the lack of knowledge about our servers for past 2 months or so. And lack of help/support.

Support is not having the server pluged in. Its updating and help fix problems. This place turned into a little Enron....... If the big wigs would do this to paying customers, just remeber you workers bees. You aint schitt to them either. When they sale out, your all fired. They wont care about your health plan ect ect.. Just like they could care less about what they put us through.

But, what comes around, goes around. It just may take some time.

[jerk]
A few months ago people were complaining that cortex development wasn't going anywhere and they were unhappy. A few people did something (left, got unraked boxes, etc) and others just sat around. Minor complaining occurred.

A month after that people got nervous and started to complain. Rumors started flying around about how Cortex was doomed and that ranked systems still weren't updated and no new games were being added. A few more people did something (left, got unranked boxes, etc), yet others stayed and hoped things would improve. Even more people started to complain.

A semi-official statement was then leaked. OMG. Oh noes! Not official, but everyone could see the writing on the wall. By now, I'm pretty sure everyone knew what was going to happen. Lots of people started doing what they felt was best, while others didn't. More complaining occurred. Lots more.

Now, the present day, people are acting like they knew nothing about Cortex being dumped. "I want a refund for the past month(s) because I was sitting waiting for an official statement saying that Cortex wasn't going to be updated anymore." Now c'mon, let's be serious people. Is anyone actually surprised about the announcement? Did anyone learn anything new, or did it just confirm what was already known? Management didn't want to continue Cortex, plain and simple. PD2 did an exemplary job at laying out the facts and what he knew and people did what they felt was best. I do feel bad that people had to suffer through these things, but asking for a refund? That's unacceptable.
[/jerk]

Edit: some of the above came out a little stronger than originally intended, so take it with a grain of salt.

It seems to me that all the information going around about EA de-ranking the BF2142 and BF2 servers is a little over-hyped and borders on sensationalism, right? Is there any concrete information that is is actually going to happen, or is this pure speculation? Facts, not opinions.

Did we have any facts on all of your other qoute? Hell no. And ppl with 2142 ranked installs didnt get the patch. That says some kind of refund is in order, IMO. If you moved on fine, stfu and go to your server. Its our problem now right? Because of the little Enron.

The point of my soapboxing was to say that asking for refunds after the fact isn't going to work (rather than illicit the response of "stfu and go to your server"). The time for refunds would have been months ago when the first mention of Cortex being stagnant started to roll around on the forums, which appears to be around September 13th or so (which is a fact), not now, nearly a month after the BF2142 update came out (which occurred on November 13). If other games weren't being updated, then isn't it safe to assume that BF2142 would be in the same boat and not be handled differently?

And no, I haven't moved on (nor will I for a long time). And no, it doesn't have to be your problem, especially since you're in control of your future. And no, it isn't a "little Enron" either since no accounting fraud is occurring here.

It doesnt matter if it works. I can air my agreement with the other post about a refund if I want to.
And see, well your saying since September we was getting no updates and now is the official word. Seems some type of fraud went on to get a few more payments from us period.

Oh and if I want to have a nickname for TP or you I can. Its a free country.

"The decision about Cortex" was NOT made in the last few weeks. It was made the moment TP stopped supplying updates for games already supported, which was 9/27 based on the last News update for AA. My clan was considering moving away from Ranked servers and continuing with TP for our hosting needs. The way TP handled this situation has lead us to decide otherwise.

We've done the only things we can in this untenable situation. We've made arrangements to host our servers with another company and reported TP/i365 to EA for violation of the TOS.

Thanks to Kevin and PD2 for at least TRYING to give us information about what was going on. Kudos to Doc and Doug for offering assistance to those who choose to continue as customers of TP, we've always found your hints and tips invaluable in maintaining our servers.