This is something I regularly say when I'm on TGNS, but it applies to the entire community, and our BF2 situation today reminds me of how grateful we should all be for our Supporting Members.

I'll leave the reader to educate himself on the details in the BF2 forum, but the bottom line is that many community members are having gameplay problems that seem to be caused by the network very near the server. In an effort to troubleshoot this more than we all already have, Apophis is presently standing up a brand new BF2 server in a completely different datacenter... different network, different geographic region, different OS.

When people ask where TG money goes when it's not required for the servers we expect to pay for every month, and they get the "it's poored back into the community and saved for future growth" answer, this is precisely the kind of thing that's referring to.

There's an old saying: Money can't buy happiness, but it sure does help fund the other stuff while you focus on happiness. (I'm sure I butchered that, but you get the point.) Money doesn't buy our happiness here, but it sure lets us worry less about being able to do what we're doing here and focus on how we're going to do it.

I realize it's just one server, and I realize we'll not have this "extra" server permanently. I realize this might not even solve the problem. I realize it's just a debug mechanism. But the fact of the matter is that it costs money to run this place, and today is a perfect example of costs we don't anticipate and ARE prepared for, and it's because our Supporting Members make it possible.

Anyway, I just think it's pretty badass that we can roll the way we roll around here, despite those costs, with each of us (SMs) incurring such low individual costs. And I just thought I'd thank you all, BF2 players or not (it'll be another title that needs the cash next time).