Gaming Hosts
Gaming-related sites are plentiful on the internet. Literally thousands of sites tangentially related to this game exist and their content and style are as diverse as the people who write them. Out of these thousands, a handful of "monster" sites have arisen. These enormous site typically began as a large site been then rapidly expanded to an enormous empire containing many other sites. These servers act as hosts for some of the best sites around. The larger hosts typically have the more established sites with the smaller hosts containing more of the newer and lesser known sites.
The large gaming servers provide many advantages for the webmaster. Server space, a very valuable commodity, is usually provided free for the sites. Most also have a separate ftp server for file downloads and offer internal advertising at least on the server's main page. All of these help sites to receive more traffic and attention. These server may also implement helpful "scripts" that can allow of the sites to take advantage of features like a counter, a "search" page, or the use of forms.
These supersites also have some downsides for visitors and webmasters. Competition between the various hosts has resulted in some repetition of information. For example, it appears that each is intent on creating a new site for every new game and technology. This results in the creation of several sites that are almost identical in content. These supersites can also suffer from lag on occasion because of the shear number of hits the server receives. It appears the most have been working diligently to resolve this problem with constant upgrades and innovations.
Spotlight
PlanetQuake is a server maintained by Critical Mass Communications, an Internet Service Provider and web development firm in Costa Mesa, California. Under the guidance of Mark "Bastard" Surfas, PQ quickly developed into a major force in the Quake community. PQ has been fairly aggressive in collecting the ultimate collection of Quake-related sites. Many of the most innovative and successful sites in our community can be found on PQ. The news page of PQ, the Daily Planet, receives over 10,000 hits a day, thanks in part to the fantastic writing of Kevin "Fragmaster" Bowen (Content Director), Patrick "Void" Cupka (News Editor), Jason "Loonyboi" Bergman (Lead Staff Writer), and Jenne "Mynx" Bailey (Columnist). Increased efforts have been made to improve the main server, reduce lag, and increase server-side options available to webmasters. These efforts have increased since James "Dwomer" Groat (Operations Director) and Adam "Hank" Coyne (Programmer) joined PQ. The server itself was recently upgraded and the problems of lag have been almost eliminated by an arrangement with cdrom.com to mirror the files section of the server. PQ also hosts numerous Quake gaming servers, all under the careful eye of Greg "TerMy" Wiles (Server Manager)It is safe to say that PlanetQuake has become the definitive Quake host and the server by which others are judged.
Some of the sites on PQ include: QSpy, Threewave, Team Fortress, and The Forge (the official Worldcraft editing site). There are so many fantastic sites on this server that it is difficult to single out a small list without doing a great disservice to the other sites.
The Stomped.Com server is maintained by Reliant Net Services in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Stomped was initially created by Guy "Bigfoot" Gustavson as the source of Quake-related information and files. In this role, Stomped provided the Quake community with an excellent resource. Stomped then began to branch out and began collecting Quake sites. Like PQ, Stomped has managed to collect a very impressive array of talent. The news page of Stomped has always been high-quality, but the move of Redwood's Quake Page to this server makes it one of the most visited Quake news pages on the web. Some of the great sites on Stomped include Redwood's Quake Page, QuakeWorld Central, Rogue Entertainment, the QuakeWorld Ring, the Team Fortress Ring, and Lag City.
In addition to these two hosts, there are also many more. In the world of Quake hosting, there is also Frag.com, TeleFragged, WarZone, and GamesNET. There are several Quake 2 sites hosted by Quake2.Com. Fans of Hexen II can find many sites at HexenWorld and Hexen2.Com. Jedi Knight knowledge abounds at the many sites hosted at JediKinight.Net. Unreal has the dual threat of Unreal.Org and the Unreal Nation.
Last update: December 29, 1997
This page is maintained by Darren L. Tabor,
aka DaKoTa