The competition...

[pcgamer]

Only recently have we seen a slide in the quality of their products and services.

Not the case at all. First of all, if you knew anything about Virtual Machines vs Bare Metal, then you would have never have used so many BF4 slots on the VM. NFO does warn your about the performance decrease with high slots on VMs. Toss in the crappy network code of BF4 and you come away with a crappy server. But that isn't NFO's fault.

I've been with NFO for year's and their support and service is second to none.

As a server administrator, you need to understand the application, (game), and support it with the appropriate hardware. Understanding your hardware will make you a better administrator.

This thread is a good lesson for new server owners to better understand the difference when choosing dedicated VMs or dedicated Bare Metal boxes.

[lilly]

PcGamer that is all wrong. If you are new on starting a server and would like some help, NFO should always try to help the person instead of trying to milk them. NFO knew it was bad but yet still want to sell him the VDS cause if you rent a vds you will still have to pay extra for bf4 slots plus the vds.

[FAST]

There is a demand for bf4 or bf3 on VDS. So that's what they did because some clients dont want to pay or can't afford a full machine.

They warn you multiple places about bf4 bf3 and red orchestra causing issues past certain amount of slots.

The VDS are not expensive at all. I dont see the point of trying to milk them with a VDS.

I agree with your post pcgamer.

[soja]

NFO(or more specifically John) told me he does not sell you what you don't need or can't use(paraphrasing). He is more interested in selling what you need(increasing the likeliness you continue your service and succeed). I would hope the support staff shares this belief, as it has helped us out in the long run. We currently rent 2 dedis(v1/v3) 2 vds(both 2 cores), and webhosting

[axRhino]

My general comment about the quality of service and support is only partially based upon the bf4 / vds situation. Its a combination of things. Poor knowledge and understanding on the part of those who respond to tech support tickets, overall lag issues related to other games than BF4 on our VDS, DDoS attacks and lastly the way NFO handled the BF4 situation. Some of these are beyond NFO's control....DDoS attacks and the crappy release quality of BF4 thanks to EA/ Dice.

In the prior years we have been with NFO we have not seen these issues but in combination they leave us feeling like things are slipping a little as NFO tries to grow.

Its just an opinion based upon our experiences of late.

[soja]

In the prior years we have been with NFO we have not seen these issues but in combination they leave us feeling like things are slipping a little as NFO tries to grow.

I feel you there. I respect the support staff for trying, and they are still learning, but I find my support experiences rushed and with little attention to detail as the support staff has grown.

[Edge100x]

lilly, we do not make more money from VDSes over traditional standalone game servers. The two have similar costs for us and there is not an incentive for us to push customers to VDSes.

BF4 had most of the same types of issues as BF3, and for roughly the same amount of time, but they are more visible in our forum because it is a bigger game for us, with more customers.

These DDoS attacks recently against all gaming companies are really getting out of hand. They're soaking up way too much of our time and preventing us from concentrating on other improvements that we'd like to make. I spent most of my time in December working on DDoS attacks.