DarkStar Communications

While I’m not going to directly link to the Youtube videos (a link from a page with as popular as this one only helps their search rank), rest assured a simple Google search for Ventrilo harassment will return a whole slew of links to people connecting to random Vent Servers and annoying the users on the server. Honestly, after three videos I stopped watching; I didn’t laugh at these and all three times I stopped after the first 30 seconds. If you’ve heard one you’ve heard them all.

Thanks to proxies and dynamic DNS from their ISPs, they often keep coming back, even if muted, kicked, or banned. They’re as resilient pests as cockroaches. (These Ventrilo cockroaches quickly ruin a raid, whilst Raid can quickly ruin cockroaches. Ironic!)

Ventrilo Harassment isn’t just a fad, it’s here to stay. It happens regardless of who your Ventrilo provider is, and there is nothing practical we can do as a Vent and Teamspeak server company to prevent these. If you are frequented by people dropping in to play obnoxious or offensive sound files, there are a few things you can do to stop or limit their harassment.

1) The most secure thing you can do is to lock down your server with a password. The password doesn’t even need to be complicated, most harassers just move on to another server. Something as simple as your guild name can help prevent 99% of all harassing users.

2) Ventrilo 3.0 allows for more elaborate permission in Ventrilo. Silencing all unregistered users is a good way to make sure they can’t harass you with sound. Don’t forget to make sure they can’t use keyboard TTS and wave macros and make sure they can’t play music. While slightly less powerful than suggestion #1, this allows people to connect to your server where they can then communicate with you via text chat or editing their comment.

3) Request an IP or port change. DarkStar is always happy to move client servers to a different IP or port - just submit a support ticket letting us know you’d like your server moved.

4) Do what your mother told you; ignore them. If all of your guild members ignore them 100%, they might leave. Hah. Sure. Well, if you’ve explored all other options, this one might work.

I know comedy, and Ventrilo harassment is definitely not comedy. Good luck out there, the internet is a wild place.

To end on a better note, this looks like a lot of fun.

Christmas season is here! So don’t forget when you ask for your new games this Christmas also to ask for a game server from Darkstar. You’ll get instant setup, low pings, and lots of frags when you sign up today.

I’m feeling the Christmas spirit. I’ll give away a free year of a 25 slot Ventrilo server (an $83.45 value!) to the best 100-150 word essay about why you like DarkStar. Just reply to this article with your essay (be sure to use your email address, it won’t be visible after you submit it but it will let me contact you.) All submissions must be turned in by Christmas morning. Then I’ll take a few days to decide and we’ll make sure your vent server is up for the full calendar year 2008. DarkStar reserves the right to use your submission for advertising (or we might hang it up in the break room or show it to our moms or something. Gotta make mom proud.) I should mention that if you already have a server I’ll credit the $83.45 towards future service.) What have you got to lose? Submit it now before you forget! There are no strings attached, the deal is exactly how it sounds. If you’re on the main page, you won’t get a comment form, you’ll need to be on this page to see it.

I’ll leave all the replies invisible until Christmas day so you don’t need to worry about someone else seeing yours and copying.

In the mean time, you can go to these links for game servers, Vent servers, and TeamSpeak Servers.

UPDATE: A special thanks to everyone who submitted. We’ll judge our favorite in the next 24 hours. A few went over the word limit, and while we’re flattered, we think the most fair solution to this is to judge only the first 150 words.

Ventrilo 3.0 has been released, adding a ton of new features. DarkStar Communications is proud to announce we will be upgrading all of our servers via rolling restarts November 14, 2007 at 09:00-11:00 AM EST.

We believe you’ll find these upgrades to be extremely useful in terms of new features as well as make Ventrilo much easier to use. Please note you will need to upgrade your client from version 2.3 to Ventrilo 3.0. The links to the free Ventrilo 3.0 downloads can be found here.

As of very late tonight/early tomorrow, we’ll be upgrading all of our Ventrilo servers from version 2.3 to version 3.0. Please alert all of your users of this change. We’ll have extra staff on hand tonight to help handle any support questions you may have. It might be a good idea to download the Ventrilo 3.0 client as soon as it is available, which is available from Ventrilo’s official website, ventrilo.com.

So why the update? Ventrilo is adding a few security measures and lengthening the feature list. Based on the pre-release notice on their forums, a few of the changes include

• User Access Rights (UAR)
• Guest account and restrictions
• Per channel codecs
• User authorization channels
• Ranks
• User complaint reporting
• Private chat sessions

But that’s not all the features. Apparently the change log is 13 pages so far, so get excited. We know we’re thrilled.

As you have probably noticed, we’ve launched a new site. With this, we have streamlined our product line, mostly by reinventing our gameservers line. From top to bottom, we’ve renewed the way we do game servers, allowing for greater flexibility and increased quality of service.

We have a new AJAX order form and soon we’ll be launching forums for our clients to communicate both with us and each other. We have a realtime network graph showing how many gamers are connected to the DarkStar voice network (which may look strange for a day or two as we tweak the code.)

I’m personally excited about this blog being integrated more prominently into the new site. I really think this blog lets users have an inside glimpse into the world’s leading TeamSpeak and Ventrilo host.

Well, that was the surprise I had been talking about. But if the whispers around the office are true, we’ve got another thing coming. Namely a new Ventrilo and TeamSpeak location - how’s Tokyo sound? Sounds good to me. Don’t count this as a promise, but it’s looking like we’ll expand there next.

You want more new stuff? Well you’ll just need to let us know and we’ll look into it. Want a game that we don’t have listed on our site? Let us know, we might be able to work something out. Wanna earn money? We’ve started an affiliate program, so check that out.