Hello everyone!
We are very excited to announce that we are leaving Closed Beta, effective immediately. However, probably not in the way that you might expect. When the second iteration of the community started, a plan was formed with specific stages that the Half-Life 2 Roleplay server would go through one by one: Pre-Development, Closed Alpha, Closed Beta, Open Beta and finally, Full Release. That used to be the plan, but circumstances have changed, and thus, the plan has changed.
What is happening?
After careful consideration and discussion, we have decided to skip to ‘Full Release’ whilst maintaining the current whitelist system. We are effectively officially releasing as a whitelisted server. There are several advantages and disadvantages to this, all of which we have analysed and have concluded that, for what Lancer aims to be, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
The main reason we are doing this is roleplay quality. Over the past 3 months, we have observed above average roleplay quality on the server, and those who filled in the April 2023 survey agree with us. Everyone follows the rules and we have yet to be put in a position where we have to ban or kick anybody or otherwise enforce a server rule upon any players. There have been no minges, cheaters, or other troublemakers that usually appear in Half-Life 2 Roleplay Servers, and there has been almost zero drama these past few months. These circumstances allow us to relax when it comes to rule enforcement and worrying about everything being in place, and instead focus on the real reason we are here: To create roleplay.
One of the main concerns that were raised internally during some discussions was that we would be losing out on potential players. However, we have recently been hitting player-counts very similar to what Lancer 1 was averaging as an unwhitelisted public server. This single fact renders this concern null. Another concern was that we would become too elitist and closed off, effectively creating a circlejerk. This, thankfully, has not been the case so far. We have been very welcoming to new players and even players who are completely new to the Half-Life 2 Roleplay scene, and have been open about teaching them how to play and adapt to this unfamiliar and strict environment. Furthermore, we are working on our very own Half-Life 2 Roleplay guide which we plan to use in the future to help out new players who are struggling to get used to the server and its high roleplay standards.
What does this mean?
For anyone currently whitelisted, nothing really changes. The whitelist application form has, however, been re-looked at and extended a bit to ensure its cohesion and that it meets the requirements that we envision when bringing new players to the server.
Furthermore, anybody who has been whitelisted (mainly pre-whitelisted, without applying) but has not joined the server before the date of this post will be dewhitelisted and will need to properly apply like everyone else if he or she wishes to play on the server. This is because we want to try and have a somewhat accurate representation of how many active players are in our community, so we can make more accurate decisions and plan events easier, among other reasons.
We hope that we are not leaving anybody disappointed with this move, and look forward to fully committing to the server and making it the best version of itself that it can be. If you have any questions, concerns, or criticism, please do not hesitate to reach out to relevant Staff, either in the Discord Server, or through Direct Messages.
Thank you for being a part of Lancer, and we hope to see you on the server!