Apologies in advance if this has been addressed before but is this possible without deleting and then adding new IP, effectively adding a new server? I'd like to move my Left 4 Dead 2 server (along with it's current rank) off my PC box to an external GSP, whereby obviously the IP will change.

There is not currently any feature to help in this situation, unfortunately.

burn wrote:
There is not currently any feature to help in this situation, unfortunately.Thanks for the quick response burn, much appreciated and is about what I figured.

GT seriously needs to add this feature otherwise what's the point of tracking a server and why should we?

In today's world almost all game servers are virtualized and do move from time to time for maintenance/upgrade etc. GT needs to come to 21st century and stop living in the past.

The majority of servers on GameTracker do not need to update an IP address and for a professional server provider to change your IP is a relatively rare occurrence. That is GameTracker's primary target group, not the other end of the picture (those who host servers from home) where their IP changes daily and the server is constantly going online and offline.

The primary purpose of GameTracker tracking is for banners and online statistics, such as online player lists and current map. Other features, like ranking and player history vary in importance from user to user.

Additionally, it is very difficult to find a process to verify that the server from one page is the true replacement of another. For example, if I shut down my popular 64 man server, what would stop me from changing it to my 10 man server that I am keeping? Players who view the page would be misled from such a large number of players in history or other historical info.

The feature is not shut down, it's more of a concern for how it could be implemented. Sorry for the inconvenience.

burn wrote:
The majority of servers on GameTracker do not need to update an IP address and for a professional server provider to change your IP is a relatively rare occurrence.

Well multiplay is moving our server to better hardware and changing the IP is more common than you think now that virtualization benefits are realized more and more by professional companies and not the mom/pop companies. Multiplay has global presence and they certainly know what they are doing.

burn wrote:

The primary purpose of GameTracker tracking is for banners and online statistics, such as online player lists and current map. Other features, like ranking and player history vary in importance from user to user.

Additionally, it is very difficult to find a process to verify that the server from one page is the true replacement of another. For example, if I shut down my popular 64 man server, what would stop me from changing it to my 10 man server that I am keeping? Players who view the page would be misled from such a large number of players in history or other historical info.

The feature is not shut down, it's more of a concern for how it could be implemented. Sorry for the inconvenience.

It's not the players that come here for stats, it's the server owners. For player stats, there are dedicated sites like these:

http://bf3stats.com/
http://2142-stats.com/
http://bfbcs.com/

The stats are useful for server owners as the ranking tells us how good or bad we're doing and who's playing regularly on our servers. It's the only reason I come here and other than that, these stats don't mean anything to me. As a player, I have never found a use to actually come to this site.

mandizzy wrote:
It's not the players that come here for stats, it's the server owners. For player stats, there are dedicated sites like these:

http://bf3stats.com/
http://2142-stats.com/
http://bfbcs.com/

The stats are useful for server owners as the ranking tells us how good or bad we're doing and who's playing regularly on our servers. It's the only reason I come here and other than that, these stats don't mean anything to me. As a player, I have never found a use to actually come to this site.

Users come to GameTracker for different reasons. The primary attraction of GameTracker for server owners is getting the server out there and the tracking. GT is a popular website because it is free, it does not require you to provide your RCON password, and it does not require you to give out server FTP or upload logs yourself - things that often vary between other stats websites. GameTracker is also one of the few that actually provides reliable, decent looking banners for servers.

Players can come for a variety of reasons, including using the server lists instead of ingame server lists or using the server lists to find certain servers, finding clans, or contacting server owners. While you, as a server owner, have not found a use to come to GameTracker as a player, countless other players do. Some servers on GT have hundreds of blog posts, where the far majority of chatting is between the players. I had a popular server a year ago and there were at least a few hundred GT profiles linked to their player on the server and a number of facebook likes / shares - so sharing favorite servers is also a common reason for players to come.

Let me know if you have any other questions or suggestions for the site, especially if you have a secure way for a process to change the server IP that 1) verifies ownership and 2) verifies that the new server is the true replacement. Simply changing the new name to "GameTracker Transfer" and updating the server information (analog to claiming) would verify the ownership, but does not verify the validity of the transfer. For privacy and time concerns, we cannot ask for invoices or contact server providers to assist in this process.

Well I've got a secure way to confirm server replacement at least for BF3 servers - don't know about others. It doesn't involve any privacy concerns either. Here's how:

My server can be viewed by anyone on battlelog: http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/servers/show/2f77d95a-cc78-4892-a44b-521ed63e1e34/

As you'll notice it has IP/port listed there. The URL and hence the server is tracked in battlelog by server GUID not the IP. The IP will change on it this coming Tuesday and it'll continue to have the same server GUID. Does that sufficiently allay your concerns whether it's a true replacement or not?

Thanks for consideration

Did you get a chance to consider/discuss my solution? It's unlikely that you'd be able to do it quickly enough but would be nice to know if this can be done in future updates.

When planning future site updates, factors like this will be taken into consideration. Ideally, a solution that can easily cascade to other games would be the best solution as it would be more tedious to implement 20 different methods to cover all the games. However, if push comes to shove and this is at the top of the request list and the only good solution is integrating it into battlelog, it will definitely be considered.