Hey guys, I want to announce that we'll eventually be retiring the Saxton Hell #2 server.
The reasoning for this is twofold:
1) The popularity of the server has been slowly waning over time, and is introducing a sort of "divide" where players split themselves between the two servers rather than making one server full.
You can the player count difference between the servers clearly here:
Saxton Hell #1
Saxton Hell #2
The VSH server landscape has changed from when we originally launched our servers. More and more players are beginning to prefer the Freak Fortress style of having many bosses, or some of the more the heavily modified flavors of VSH rather than the classic feel of the original VSH, and we're adapting to this gradual change.
Don't worry though, we're vested in keeping the original classic style alive and we have no plans to retire VSH #1 for the foreseeable future.
2) Our dedicated server has been in an increasing struggle over CPU cycles. This has been become more and more of an issue as our hardware ages, TF2 updates get released, and we introduce new plugins and update existing plugins with new functionality.
This has become so much of an issue that at a certain time a few weeks ago I reduced the number of available player slots on our other servers slightly (around 2 to 4 slots, depending on the server).
With VSH #2's retirement, we'll be able to increase our player slots again and we'll additionally get some extra performance leeway for our other servers.
I don't have a time frame yet for when we'll retire the server, but when it happens we'll place a redirection system to guide players over to VSH #1.