DarkStar Communications

Our pun research failed, but our research team has set a minesweeper low clear time of 22 seconds. I’ll give a free 3 month 10 slot server (or equivalent value on a larger server) on the best possible pun for either “Ventrilo” or “Teamspeak.” Send your entries to blog@darkstarllc.com. We reserve the right to use your pun wherever we want, like on the see-thru design for our custom made Ventrilo aviator glasses. That’d be hot. And a little Top Gun-ish. I’d like to point out that if all the puns really really suck, we might not use any. And then I’ll have to come up with another competition. You have one week. Or until I say to stop.

I hope all of you enjoyed Labor day. I know I haven’t had that much fun celebrating labor in a long, long time.

We are beginning research into puns which can be created with the words “TeamSpeak” and “Ventrilo.” Our best men are on it, except Jake, who doesn’t play well with others.

I see a lot of tickets and emails come through asking for a sponsorship from DarkStar. I want as many of you as possible to get sponsorships, so I just thought I’d write up a few tips. These tips don’t guarantee sponsorships, but it might help you get a better idea of the middle ground sponsorships seek to reach.

1. Be honest in your application. I cannot stress this enough; lying on the application always means no sponsorship. If you claim you won CAL-I, we’ll be very impressed and go look to see your name at the top of the list. If it’s not there, “Lucy’s god some splainin’ to do.”
2. Having a website is worth tons of points. You need to show that you’re organized. Guilds come and go, and we want to know you’re not fly-by-night.
3. Win some tournaments first. Remember, if we want our ad shown at the World series, we’re going to sponsor the Yankees before we sponsor the Cubs. I love the Cubbies, but let’s face it, winning speaks louder than losing. A couple wins really bolsters the application.

We’re looking for people who will get our name out there. Be prepared to tell us what sets your guild apart from every other guild out there. Odds are, if you’re getting a sponsorship, you are also an ideal customer. We need a reason why both parties are better off sponsored than as a customer/provider relationship.

Mailing a case of imported beer is a great way to put us in a mood to accept your sponsorship. Inquiring for the sponsorship, and then including at the bottom, “Oh by the way, I was hoping I could send you a case of imported beer, what’s your address?” will win points, assuming you follow through.

Of course I need to note that following these tips doesn’t guarantee you a sponsorship, but should put you a step ahead of whoever didn’t read this.

I’ve been playing around with this voice chat in WOW, and I don’t really like it. The voice quality is relatively low; I’d equate it to the Counterstrike voice chat. It’s probably useful for public groups, but far below reasonable standards for guild and private use.

I’d use it for a 5 man public group, but I wouldn’t raid with it. Likewise, it’s ok for a public Counterstrike server, but I wouldn’t use it on the CAL level.

It does, however, provide evidence for the computer gamer saying, “male until proven female.” You’ll finally have some evidence that AWPgirl83 is really a dude. Or, strangely, her mic is always broken.

I get a lot of people asking me what the difference is between DarkStar and our competitors. At the risk of starting some mudslinging, I’ll dive into that here, with the nitty-gritty deep down differences.

We wear underwear with the Teamspeak logo on it. I thought that would look cool as a paragraph opener. Actually we don’t do this, and you shouldn’t believe any competitor that claims it. It’s a whole mess of copyright law, and anyone who actually does wear the underwear should probably be avoided.

Most importantly, DarkStar uses Mzima bandwidth. Mzima is route optimized for home users, making it the lowest latency bandwidth possible. It’s more expensive than normal bandwidth, but they took it out of my paycheck, so the company breaks even on the difference in cost. Most bandwidth, such as what our competitors use, is standard commercial bandwidth. It is designed to transfer data from a server at one datacenter to a server at another datacenter – and it does this very well. But that isn’t what a voice server does. Your server transfers data from you, to the server, to another end-user. Mzima works directly with ISPs to limit hops – we use bandwidth designed with stuff like Ventrilo and Teamspeak in mind.

Secondly, DarkStar gives all possible administrator rights to the owner of the server. Not everyone does this. Through advanced proprietary software, we are able to offer all administrative rights. This isn’t possible without Brett, our programmer that lives in a cage. Its August, my month to feed him, and I’m too busy blogging.

DarkStar has size. With size we can buy larger bandwidth commits, allowing us to buy bandwidth cheaper than our competitors. We pass this savings on to you. Through that savings, we are able to offer premium codecs at our regular price, which is rare in the voice server industry. At any given time, 300,000 users are connected to our servers. If you laid those users end to end, it’d be twice the distance that Ohio State will travel to the University of Michigan in a battle royal this November. If you rounded up all those users, and measured their body heat, it might be enough to possibly power a server or more, possibly, if the power was enough. You know, math and stuff.

We provide true 24/7/365 support. No really, I worked last Fourth of July. Send us a ticket on Christmas. Send our competitor a ticket on Christmas. See who responds. We answer support tickets when even Santa doesn’t. That’s a guarantee.

If you want to research this, feel free. You’ll probably also find that our locations, variety of payment options including ClanPay, and our custom control panel all set us far above the competition.

Oh, and instant setup. But everyone does that, and it’s really the same anywhere. I can’t really think of a way to improve on *instant*. But, you’ll still find a whole lot of competitors who use that as their main selling point. Watch for it.