It would be the best place to test any versions that are coming out prior to releasing to the general public. As for general gaming, I am not sure that would be good since we have servers "dieing" for players out there.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

I really feel the EIS should have an "Official EIS Beta Server". I remember back in the day when we were Beta testing the first TWGS, sometimes the hardware would be the root of performance issues. If JP has a PC he can dedicate for the "Official EIS Beta Server" that would be the ultimate! He would be able to control and evaluate the hardware performance as the beta testers try their best to stress the system.

As for the general gaming public, as the prior post stated, there are plenty of servers out there dying for players.

Just a hint for those who want to attract players to thier servers... please remember that hosting a TW game is a service to the TW community. Keep your games mainstream, and not too extreem. You'll know when you've provided the players with what they want.. you'll be running out of bandwith. And don't try to do it all... utilize the experience of the players to help set-up the games and to help you moderate. Have a clear set of "house-rules" and stand by them. Keep it simple, keep it fun! You too could be the host of the next "hottest" TWGS server on the net!

easy answer
Yes

I vote Yes. Would be nice if EIS got involved and actually did something: promotions, official tourneys, sold script packs, helper development, etc etc. But alas, this is radical thinking.

I still want my offical TW2002 Coffee Mug. Darn it!

If you date it with the software, best they might do is a painted tin cup

Simple answer to this is,.. no simple answer.
If there's going to be an official server it needs to be run by JP so he can see just how well things work, or don't work. It would be an excellent site to beta test new upgrades. It would also let JP see first hand what players might want changed and those suggestions can go straight to the developer, rather than to a sysop that can't seem to bend that ear his way.
But as Cruncher said above, there are a lot of sites out there with few if any players already. We don't need another basic game server just to call it an official server. If this "official" server is just going to be there to host "official" games, it's a waste of time.
I also like these suggestions for games, and game rules. Any sysop needs to listen to his/her players to determine what games, and what changes need made to make the games enjoyable by most.
I plan to put my money where my mouth is when I get my site back up. I had a good player base before I hosted BOTE, and had to shut down my games for the tournament. That turned out to be a kiss of death to my site. But now I've got a seperate box for any future tournament, so I wont have to make that decission again. My aim will be to offer what the players want (all 4 of em ) as well as make carefull decisions on what edits need to be made in my hosted games, as well as document what changes have been made in my forums.

Its a good idea for testing the new beta, much the way the swath twgs was setup.

As an official game server? Why create another place for conflict and controversy?

Hell, JP has already disappeared from the forum again, like he has time to run a server too.

Cerne

Oh, he'd have time when he looked over and seen his cpu maxed out and smoke rolling out of the vents on the server.
Yes I feel a beta test server would be a good idea. Now, if your talking about Eleq hosting it, a public server would be good but shouldn't be an official EIS server. However as stated above, if JP ran it, it should only be a beta test server.

I have to say that I do not see much benefit in having an official server for regular games. To have one to host tournament games might be beneficial though, that way someone like RP does not have to shut down his server in order to host something like a BOTE.

I am curious though, if it is run by EIS, who at EIS would be administering it?

That was my question. If not JP, Eleq, or SG, then who else would have the knowledge to run a twgs server effectively?

I am certain if EIS wanted to run a server, they will find someone with the knowledge to run it.

So EIS gets a server, it's not JP admining it... years later a split between that admin and JP happens. Then what? The admin starts a new forum somewhere else and takes his server to go play while EIS rebuilds? Doing the same things over and over and expecting a different result is a classical definition for insanity.