Top Rust Servers

[rustservers]

TRS Lives!

We're back, and things are going to start rolling again with the site:

- New design (in the works) - Filtering (for legacy/experimental) - Better support (we are working on some tools to help with this) - Sponsored Listings (they are finally coming back!)

Welcome our newest member to the TRS Team: Job.  He'll be handling more of the support stuff and design/ui and will let @jwerd focus more on backend code and other endeavors he is invovled in.

This is brief because we have a lot of work to do and a lot ahead of us.  Just know that things will improve a lot in the coming months.

Hopefully you'll be sticking with us!

[rustservers]

Rank Reset - Welcome to July

New month.  Rank reset.  

The month of June saw 40k+ votes.  Incredible.  Thank you so much for your support.

Over the next couple weeks Facepunch will be rolling out the experimental branch to GSP's so you will have the choice to run the legacy rust (in it's current form) or the new experimental and updated version of rust.  

Will it break Oxide/Rust++/Magma, etc?

More than likely - yes.  Because no one has the GSP files that we are aware of.  There will be a lot of catching up that needs to be done from these mod providers and plugin developers.  We'll be happy to assist in whatever way we can.

Temporary method for Voting

In the meantime, you will be able to manually credit each person who votes for you on our site because we provide a list of each voter and how many times they voted and when they last voted.  This should only be temporary, as the modding frameworks start to get situated with the new server code and backend stuff for Rust.

Other stuff

If you haven't checked out http://playrust.com in a while, you should absolutely do that.  Much progress has been made.

We'll be rolling out some changes to the sites as the experimental version progresses.

Take care and keep surviving!

@jwerd

[rustservers]

Rank Reset - Welcome to June!

So we are at a new month and that means a rank reset.

Congrats again to RustyAim for once again placing first.  Way to go guys.  4200+ votes is SUPER impressive.

Let's see who can hold the crown this time. 

Thanks again to everyone who's been showing support to the site and keeping us #1.  

We're almost ready to roll out the new favorites feature, but to tide everyone over here's a few screenshots:

This is the screen you'll see when you access your My Servers link at the top.  All your favorites will be nicely set up there, and you'll get the latest status message from that server - regarding what they've been doing, events they are having, etc.

This is how we alert you that some of the servers you favorited have something new to share with you.  

This is where server owners can update their current status at to alert those who favorite of new happenings with the server, upcoming wipes, etc.  

In conclusion: We want players to be more informed of the servers they play and we want to enable the ability for servers to be able to communicate that.

As of now, favoriting will not have any effect on the rank itself but it will be a way to communicate to your player base, so get them to favorite your server so you can do just that.  

Launch ETA: sometime this week we are hoping (with all bugs ironed out, etc).

[rustservers]

Downtime / How to check on Status

Update: We are back up.  Auctions are being extended until Friday to give our current sponsors the exposure they deserve and paid for, and to let our bidders get in there and continue bidding.  Again, really sorry about this but this one was completely out of our control.

Update:  We're really sorry for this uncontrolled downtime.  We will be extending sponsorship for another day, and auctions will be open until Friday.  The latest from Intreppid was: 

Intreppid, Inc ‏@Intreppid  13m

Our engineers are still working on bringing up the redundant line. We will update again shortly.

So hopefully soon.  We expected a little downtime when this first happened, not hours.  For that, we apologize.  As we understand, it's something to do with the ISP they use and wildfires in California causing the outage.  

Intreppid related customers have been affected by some downtime today. 

The short of it: Absolutely out of our control.  If it was related to an attack or something, we'd already be working on fixing it.  We can't even access our servers at this time.

When these things happen:  Please check @jwerd on twitter when downtime related to the site happens.  We'll try our best to keep you informed.

Auctions will be extended by at least an hour tomorrow, to give our current sponsors a little more time and exposure.

We are sorry for the downtime but rest assured we'll be back up soon!

Happy Rustin'

[rustservers]

Welcome to May - Ranks Resets

Hey guys,

It's a new month.  Let's make this month bigger than any previous month.

Ranks have been reset: let's see who takes the crown this time.  Congrats to http://toprustservers.com/rustyaim for holding position #1 with over 3000 votes!

Uptime has been reset: Also due to the downtime this month, we've went ahead and reset everyone's uptime to 100% again.   Sometimes our ping scripts thought your server was offline because our scripts weren't able to access the outside world.  

Bugs:

- Forgot password feature (fixed today) - Stats system (we fixed this today)

Development:

We are working on some neat things for you guys, especially the server owners.  We'll announce them as we get closer to launch, but suffice to say you will be pretty happy.

That's all for now.  Have a good month!

[rustservers]

The Attack

Everything is fully functional at this time.

--

So I've had a few minutes to think about the attack and it's impact on the site.

I can't expect the attacks to stop.  Maybe eventually from this individual, but certainly not as a whole.  I think we are going to be the target of a lot of attacks as long as we are #1. 

When some disgruntled player gets upset at a server on our list and they decide to attack us, we need to be able to thwart those attacks.  With Intreppid's help, I don't see why that isn't possible.

But... it's going to take time and a lot of rewriting of the site to get there.  We absolutely can not let this happen again.  

So, as a web developer of almost 10 years, I'm putting my skills to the task and rewriting every facet of the site, and building out secure channels so pieces of the site can be taken down but not the entirety. 

This will take some time, though.  And it will require a lot of patience on the part of you guys.  I'm sorry that certain features aren't working as expected right now, the main thing is the site is up and traffic is able to flow freely to it without getting random error messages and problems.

Please stick with us.  No site is invulnerable to this unless they are taking the same steps to prevent it like I am.

[rustservers]

Great News!

We are moving moved.  

Update: Today caught us by surprise.  But suffice to say we are up again.  Please open a ticket if you notice anything messed up.

Update: We just finished migrating everything over to the new server and getting all the scripts, etc running again.  We've tested a lot of the site functionality so far and it all checks out.  If you do notice any bugs, please open a ticket and let us know.  You are now able to add your server without requesting us to do it manually.  Thanks everybody.  Have a good one

Where: Intreppid, the worlds best DDos protected hosting provider.

When: Sometime tonight

Downtime: Minimal.  We'll put the databases into read-only mode and try to avoid any downtime at all.  It should be pretty straight forward and painless as soon as the server is ready for migration.  You won't be able to vote or change your server details during the transition.  Shouldn't be too long.

What this means:  Much better protection against the attacks we've had this week and last weekend.  Much better hardware and better latency throughout the world.  Much bigger server, so we can easily grow with demands of the site.

What this also means:  The partnership we are entering allows us to keep our sponsored listings the way they are.  Nothing changes.  You still get to set the price.  

What happened:  In the future once we are securely at the new location we'll talk about what happened and why.  For now, we are focusing on this move and new opportunity.

Thanks so much for your support and understanding.  We'll bounce back, and this time it'll be even better.

Jake & TRS Staff

[rustservers]

Under Attack

I really don't want to draw too much attention to this but we have been under attack almost the entire day.

Servers not updating?  We've disabled our pinging service momentarily as we work on a resolution to a possible exploit there.

Voting works though?  Yes.  Voting and other operations of the site works just fine.

Why can't I add a server?  The pinging service is down.  We're working on a resolution for that but won't have anything until later today/this weekend probably.  Sorry, but we have to protect the site first.

That's all for now.

[rustservers]

What's been going on with TRS?

Update: We've contacted authorities and handed over logs and they have a pretty good hunch on who's behind the attacks.  In the words of FPS Russia: "they are going to have a very, very bad day."  We are back up -- for now.  More protection coming very soon.

Update: Our host is being less than helpful.  At this point, we are on our own as far as mitigating these ongoing attacks.  Why we are being attacked is beyond us, but we are working to resolve it as fast as humanly possible.  Again, we are really sorry for the inconvenience.  Believe me when I say it, this is a huge inconvenience for us too :(

Update: Not the greatest way to spend a saturday but we've been dealing with attacks off and on which have slowed the site or taken it down.  Things seem to be running better now and please accept our apologies. 

We don't really have anything exciting to share with you guys as of late.  Development has been on pause because we really don't want to overcomplicate the site with useless things.  When we get a great idea and the execution is there, we'll do it.  But otherwise, we aren't looking to make some massive site that no one wants to visit. 

We promised our facebook fans a giveaway if we got to 1k likes on the page.  Well, we are there.  We just hit it.  And we are planning something either today or this weekend.  Due to it being a holiday we may just postpone it until next week sometime, so everyone can get in on it.  Thanks everybody for the support.  We truly appreciate it.

Overall traffic has been steady.  We busted thru the top 100k sites on Alexa, so we are still on a steady uptrend as far as our analytics go.  We've certainly not given up, and even though support requests take a day or two sometimes, we are here and we are listening.

If you think there is something we should be building, let us know.  We're here to serve as the benchmark for finding rust servers and thus far we have consistently set that time and time again.

Thanks so much for your support in sticking with us.

Take care and survive!

TRS Team

[rustservers]

Rank Resets + April Fools

So we decided to do an april fools on you guys.  It was a little late in the day but we still pulled it off.

Then we realized...crap, it's a new month... which means a rank reset.  This gives everyone a fair playing field and chance to get to the top of the ranks.  Who knows who will hold it this time.

We set a record last month: over 40,000 votes cast.  That's amazing.  And our top server had over 2000 votes by themselves.  Simply impressive.

So the april fools isn't the rank reset.  That's been done just now (we do it manually so we can monitor things) but the april fools joke was putting a dead server in rank 1, with zero votes, and 100k points.  Some of you really fell for it.  

But we still love you. GL to the winners!

[rustservers]

Development is hard.

This big backlash with Garry / Facepunch has got me thinking: Development is hard.  It's not something achievable by many, and it's something that requires a special attention to detail that probably doesn't exist anywhere else.

When you first start out it's really easy to say yes to everything because you don't have a basis for "no".  However, this is the most crucial time to say no to almost everything.  

The way I see it:

Rust was Facepunch's MVP (minimal viable product) when it was announced back in early July of last year.  It was their test the waters product.  And the feedback was so great, they pushed up schedule on getting it to steam so they could really see if it takes off (plus less billing hassle)  Then it exploded.  Beyond anything Facepuch had ever imagined.  It caught Garry/team by such surprise that the drums of angry players was multiplied by the tune of thousands vs hundreds.  

If Garry were to give everyone what they want in the game, it wouldn't be Rust.  It wouldn't be the simple game we all know and love.

The changes he is making right now afford us the ability to see Rust in the same way we saw it in the beginning.  Fine tuning and rewriting certain "core parts" is necessary and something that will pay off if we give them the time to hash it out.   They are working on core mechanics of the game, not building a bunch of new things that we may or may not love (with the exception of possible voxel/procedural map generation). 

Everything in trello (as far as I see it) is up in the air for them.  They are experimenting different avenues to take Rust without ruining what makes the game.  This is hard.  It's especially hard when you have 100,000 voices saying go different directions, iterate faster, build us something cool.  

This is their game.  What they decide to do will make or break this community but it's still their game.

I've poured days of development into toprustservers.com by now.  I believe in Facepunch building the greatest game of whatever year they release.  There's no doubt about that.  

I'm standing with Garry on this, guys.

[rustservers]

Some updates

We come bearing gifts.  

- New Banner (available via the "Banners" tab)

- Stats by the hour for each server (available via the new Stats tab on the server page)

- Strawpoll integration - Ability to include strawpolls directly into your server listing.  Because we all know running a server is a democracy and sometimes we need that feedback from our player base to get things going in the right direction.  All you gotta do is put the strawpoll url in your server description (EG: http://strawpoll.me/1346731/) -- DON'T FORGOT THE LAST SLASH!

Looks like this:

[rustservers]

Changes to Filter

We have been working to make filter better for everyone.  Unfortunately, some of the original design ideas have come to haunt us a bit so we are fixing those now.  

From now on to rank under the PVP and PVE drop down, you MUST have a tag for PVP or PVE on your server.  We will no longer read your server's name as the matching we did before (when no one had tags and filter was new).

We also pushed out an update to filter that prevents certain combos to be used, as they are the same types.  You'll notice it if you use the filter system.  That's all for now.

[rustservers]

Contextual Menus coming to rust! (New GUI)

Garry just uploaded some screenshots to the trello project showcasing the ability to have contextual menus in Rust.  Whether we can create them via plugin is still up in the air, though.

If we can get supported via oxide/magma this means we can do away with some of those pesky /chat commands for certain things!

[rustservers]

Filter: Durability

We want to figure out how to do durability right.  Should we just make it a checkbox, should it be a  drop down.  That’s really the question.

As of now: We’ve added two options to the filter:  durability, no durability.  

But we’ve noticed some people have put in other tags, like these:

Let’s try to find a common ground for the filtering of servers and their durability settings.

[rustservers]

Search Filter for Wipe + Location Update

Wipe Filter

We quietly launched a feature yesterday that let's you let users know when you last wiped your server.  So far, 80 of you caught on with no real publication.  Impressive.

You can set your own wipe on the edit server listing screen.

The filter looks like this: 

And can be found in the Filter dropdown available at the top right.  I imagine even more servers will be updating soon, and hopefully keeping that up to date, as it's very valuable to visitors who are looking for say a fresh server to play on OR a more seasoned server they don't really have to worry about.   You can also set a future date for a wipe, if you have a planned wipe about to happen.  This will start a countdown on the listing and let everyone know when it's going to happen.  

More locations:

We added support for about 5-6 more countries in the country filter. 

[rustservers]

Introducing: Sundown - A new dynamic banner for Rust

You've spoken.  We've heard.  Here's a new banner :)  You can find it in your Banners section of your server listing.

So what do you think?  We have some other ideas for banners, as well.  We'll be showing those soon.