Two days ago Invalid Mob rented a server from gameservers.com, which provides gaming servers around the world with unbeatable prices and unique features. Sounds great but feels dodgy, doesn't it? We've all seen super-cheap gaming server providers who cannot live up to their words and provide lag-free stable ping servers. How does gameservers.com compete in this area? Read more to find out!



Our clan has always been interested in providing public gaming servers for Halo, but they've had an extremely high price tag compared to private servers. gameservers.com caught my eyes by providing very cheap public servers, which actually cost less than a private server of a smaller size from X3Mservers - which also has very cheap servers for Halo.

Where is it?

gameservers.com was marketing their server prices in American dollars which kinda made me step back a bit. American server for a Finnish clan? Their motto, "FRAG, NOT LAG!" didn't seem that interesting anymore. Cautiously I went to their site and found out that they provide servers around the world: various locations in USA, UK, Germany, Netherlands etc. "Wow, nice feature, but it must take a long time to setup a server and what about maintaining & support?" were my first thoughts (I always doubt stuff, it's my basic nature).

Ping'em all!

I looked through the server list and it seemed that the German Halo servers were the nearest to Finland. We've had NL servers before from X3Mservers.net & gameservers.net, and they've always had better pings than any German server I've come across. I didn't expect much when I started to ping the servers and what do you know, various ping cycles gave stable results and lower average ping than on any X3Mservers.net / gameservers.net server! I was stumbled and so far very convinced of the quality. I had my doubts though: How can an international server provider with prices cheaper than David Hasselhoff's second-hand CD's provide stable pings to hundreds, maybe thousands of customers? That's why I continued pinging the whole day randomly and pings continued to be stable.

MUST-HAVE-THE-SERVER...

I decided to rent a Halo server for a month as a test. I went on with a 12 player public debranded server, which cost under 20 euros. I thought that what the heck, it's only a 20 - if it doesn't work out - I won't drink beer the next weekend There wasn't a Bank Transfer in payment options, Only Credit Card, Paypal and Money Order/Check. Previously I've used Bank Transfer to buy a server and it has taken a week or so to be set up. I don't have a Paypal account, and it would have taken time to set it up and transfer the funds there. So, I went on with the Credit Card option. I DO NOT have a real credit card, but a Visa Electron, which is also available to underage people here in Finland. I've succesfully paid Xbox Live with it online so I thought it might work here too - as it did.

Time? Who has time!

This is when the jaw-dropping fun started. Click. Payment made. I rented a server. I wondered when it'd be online, went to E-mail and got account details there and logged on. It said "pending" in server status. Went to smoke a cigarette, came back and hit refresh again. "Active... what the Family?!". 5 minutes after registration and payment submission, the server status indicated that it's up and running - and it was

More than just a server

Thought that it's enough when you have a server running and are able to play and supervise it? I thought that too, but that's because I didn't know any better. I surfed around in my account checking various options and noticed few valuable things: No storage limit for game files (especially useful for games which has custom maps, like Halo CE), free 100mb webspace for clan with subdomain name.gameservers.com and 50% off from Teamspeak and Ventrilo servers. Sounds nice but it get's even better: you can change the location of the server with a simple click, and the location change is almost instant plus it does not cost a dime! Very useful feature for multigaming clans who have members from different countries. Let's say that a match will be played by UK players and server is located in Netherlands: Click a button and change the server to UK! Also, you can switch between Ventrilo/Teamspeak servers anytime, and that's free too. gameservers.com certainly earns a -mark from us, GJ!

Here's the pros and cons:

Pros:

+ Cheap as hell
+ Stable pings
+ No Storage Limit
+ Fast execution to all server changes
+ Free and virtually instant game server location change
+ Free and virtually instant swap between Ventrilo/Teamspeak
+ Free webspace & subdomain for clan
+ Ability to add multiple Admins for server administrating
+ Visa Electron support (at least Sampo works)

Cons:

- No servers in Finland
- No Direct Bank Transfer
- It's not free
- It doesn't cook meat nor pay your bills

Note that this review is based purely on two days experience. I was too excited to write it now gameservers.com is a large system and I expect problems during our contract period. I'll update this review (the pros and cons) when something updatable occurs.

Meanwhile, if you are interested to purchase a server form gameservers.com, please support Invalid Mob and do it via us as it helps us to maintain our activities: