Just heard in a announcement that the Storm of war server has shut down, also philstyle’s youtube channel has vanished,
Th… WHAT!?
2 Likes
Yeah, saw that last night myself. I have actually shared his videos over here at MudSpike because they were brilliant. I don’t yet quite fully understand what has happened. I do know that the “Storm of War” server was one of the most popular servers for DCS WW2 multiplayer flying.
3 Likes
iirc Storm of War was originally IL2 CLOD online dynamic campaign. at the time when DCS WWII started to got some traction these guys behind it were questioned why they are not focusing on the new WWII platform rather then old platform like CLOD.
the answer was that CLOD is just better suited and that DCS is still not there (in regards to mission capability, AI, scripting and what not). but eventually they have decided that they will give DCS a try and see where it will leads (iirc there was deadline for that).
seems like their expectations were not fulfilled and they pulled out. despite the DCS server was popular, their aim was not only the player base numbers.
at least thats how I understands the actual DCS WWII ‘crisis’ 
3 Likes
If that’s the case, I get it. DCS Warbirds are, like all of the full-fidelity aircraft, incredible simulations of the airplanes themselves. The flight model, cockpit, systems, everything to do with the aircraft itself is amazing well done.
It’s the rest of the WWII experience (and the dynamic ‘war’ battlefield in general) that’s missing. It’s getting better, but it’s still sorely behind IL2/CLOD. If warbirds were my focus, that’s where I would be. With CLOD getting VR hopefully soon, it’s a pretty exciting time for warbird flyers. Still sad to see SoW gone, and it’s a loss for DCS, but hopefully someone will take up the mantle, and hopefully IL2/CLOD will continue to improve on their side.
1 Like
Still… I don’t get it.
I get that people grow tired of the DCS WWII venue, but why implode like this? Looked like they were having fun on the SoW server.
What are they doing instead?
2 Likes
It was a fun server. The “radar” functionality was clever, compelling and sometimes a bit unnerving. But for me the performance was dreadful when more than a handful of planes were fighting within my view.
2 Likes
I don’t want to point fingers but from what I heard it was one of those decision taken in hot blood and
not quite reasoned. (and I know a thing or two about hot blooded, poor decisions 
)
5 Likes
So say we all brother
4 Likes
Well, we can only speculate about the real reasons behind this move. My guess is that the admins were tired of dancing around existing issues with DCS which weren’t addressed in months (sometimes years). Fixes for DCS WWII are few and far between due to a (probable) lack of available resources/manpower on ED’s part, and I can understand being tired of waiting after them.
Storm of War started on Cliffs of Dover, and I believe the server owners wanted to go back to these roots (they even posted a poll on their discord to see whether or not people were interested in seeing Storm of War go back to CloD). The CloD engine is quite powerful when it comes to mission creation (even if the Mission Editor tool itself is really not easy to work with for complex scenarios), especially when it comes to unit counts and map size. With Team Fusion working on new clouds, sky, VR… Il-2 Cliffs of Dover Blitz / Tobruk is becoming much more competitive in terms of scope. Philstyle and Dietrich loved to plan recurring big ops with big numbers.
7 Likes
DCS as a platform is still limited from both SP and MP gameplay perspective and as mentioned many aspects of DCS are just not in capacity of the devs to deliver reasonably fast.
3 Likes
Yeah, like I said, I can understand that. But that doesn’t explain the sudden decision to just put the park brake on, kill the server and delete the videos… Seems rushed to me. Not judging, just observing.
3 Likes
I was a regular on the server and the whole community was dumbstruck when they just pulled the plug without warning. They had built something truly amazing with stats for individual players and squadrons on their website a large variety of historically accurate missions spanning from pre-invasion early June to late July.
It’s not how you treat a community in my opinion. Not wanting to do it anymore I get, but simply shutting down and leave everyone hanging is very disappointing. Storm of War was one of the most popular, if not the most popular DCS Server. It was packed every evening EU time.
Luckily the community quickly picked up the crumbs and another large community (4YA) took in the refugees and started rebuilding the missions from trackfiles immediately with the goal switch to their own set of missions eventually and also rebuild some form of a stats page.
Last Saturday they ran a stress test for the new server that maxed out at 132 players and featured two GCI controllers for each side. @NineLine was streaming the event on YouTube as well.
It was one of the most amazing events that I have taken part in. It was a lot of fun, even though players like me who have high end systems struggled with performance in large furballs (lowest was around 30fps in VR, there were players that had to deal with single digit FPS…).
Regular player limit is 80 players and when I played on a full server last night I was getting around 45fps in a furball over Caen. It’s not as well optimized as SoW was by a long shot (I was getting +70fps in large furballs on SoW, often locked at 90fps) but it’s getting there.
Basically the whole DCS WWII PvP community has moved over to 4YA at this point.
7 Likes
Which makes SoW move even more pointless.
3 Likes
maybe they were just pissed off
2 Likes
That is a possibility
Or just fed up.
Pulling up tent and leaving like that sure seems like feelings were involved.
2 Likes
I get it. These things tend to be run by, what, one to, say, five people? Some comment on a forum or Discord gets the lather of one of you (perhaps all of you) up. You chat about it on WhatsApp. While tapping away passionately you enjoy your adult beverage of choice. And with that liquid lubrication you all decide “Screw It! Let’s go out with a bang!” The best “bang” seems to be one that is instant, complete and quiet.
I didn’t know “EinsteinEP” at all. But the mere manner of his departure has me thinking about him still, years later. Despite what they taught us in school, there is real power in picking up your toys and marching away from the sandbox quietly and forever.
5 Likes
That’s quite likely. I remember being very angry when SoW admins announced that they wouldn’t include the Mosquito in their server unless a list of bugs on the FW190 Anton were fixed. They were already in a process of trying drastic measures to put pressure on ED (or more accurately, force them) to get existing issues fixed. When that failed, the only options left were either to live with the current situation in place or leave it.
I can’t blame them for shutting down their youtube channel and leaving things in a hurry. They likely didn’t want to deal with the wrath of the community, which invariably would be directed at them. Just look at the responses on the Hoggit thread… lots of heated arguments took place, and I’m sure no one wants to deal with that. https://www.reddit.com/r/hoggit/comments/sen4j5/storm_of_war_is_no_more/
5 Likes
Other than giving yourself distance to the issue, I don’t think it changes much. I did the same thing at SimHQ. I was there from the very beginning. One day I had enough. Felt good to leave it behind and never look back, but I doubt they missed me
But these things happen in life. Some things get to be too much.
Again, not judging anybody. They probably have their reasons and it’s obviously not important to them that these reasons are known to the public.
We are all different. We don’t fit in everywhere or with everyone. I think the best we can do is to find people who you value and to whom you are valuable.
4 Likes
I must’ve missed that. That points at an underlying issue.
2 Likes