21.11.2009, 20:06
To start, you need to ask yourself why you're trying to run a server, there's already thousands in the masterlists and you will need to offer something unique or substantially better than anyone else before you'll get any real number of players. Next, this thread is full of people who've never run a popular server, they're just saying what they THINK may get you a lot of players, not what might actually work. You don't need the hosted tab to get players to your server, but it will get you more players and has its downsides, how do you think people used to get players when there was no hosted tab? There are only 2 things i'd recommend, a nice gamemode (bugfree, unique features, stuff that players actually like) and a reasonable host, don't expect to be able to create a nice gamemode in anything under a few weeks or host 500 players on your dad's cable modem.