Slightly updated for Love & War!

In the case where your server happens to be empty or quasi-empty, ask yourself the following questions:

I. Do I happen to be on the same timezone as the server?
- Is it a reasonable hour and time to play? If you're playing on monday at midnight (or whatever happens to be similar on the server's timezone if different), that might be a reason.

II. Are there some already filled player slots?
- No? You might want to check your friendlist for any of your friends that happen to be:
- Usuals of the server / Willing to play on that server
- Online
- Not currently busy

- Yes? Then you might want to do the following:
- Are the players currently active?
- Since how long have they been connected? If they've been here since a while, they might get bored and go away.
- Are those players known to be troublesome? If yes, you might want to wait until they leave first.
- Are those players part of your friends?
- Are those players willing to populate?

If you happen to have players matching those criteria, then you have a headstart! Otherwise, grab a few friends and invite them.

In order to make sure the playercount stays at a satisfactory level and eventually goes up, you'll need to work for it! Here's a few tips.

- Don't be a ♥♥♥♥.
- If they want to do something else, don't insist and go along with them.
- Try to keep a few 'utility' weapons you could use for those situations, even if you don't usually play with them.
- For the love of god, micspamming anything is not fun. You're not making the server livelier by micspamming. Unless you're asked by the majority.
- Don't be picky. You won't only have skilled and fun players, you might fall on some "russian kids".


Think of yourself as an entertainer, the other players want fun, you're here to provide! Propose them multiple activities!

Do you happen to have the new taunts? Great! Start a conga line, play some Rock-Paper-Scissors, challenge players to butt your head in, or do some square dancin'.

The other player is a Soldier? How about training your Market Gardener or Rocket Jumping skills with him? You could also try to do some base-jumping from the higher-up spots of the map.

The other player is a Heavy? Go for a round of boxing, a showdown duel, sandvich throwing, Shoot the Sky (tm) with your minigun, or in the case an engie is here, feed him some pootis.

The other player is a Spy? Go play hide and seek, do some fencing or do some spycrabbing.

The other player is a Sniper? show him your mlg pro noscope 360 leet skillz Give him a wave from the other side of the level, do some air-humping, have a jarate-throwing competition, or a skewer duel.

The other player is a Scout? Smash your face with a few gallons of Bonk! Atomic Punch, throw milk at everyone in sight, bean eachother in the face with a Frying Pan, race around the level, play Baseball, or send eachother a few parkour challenges.

The other player is a Pyro? Airblast eachother around, play some Dodgeball, or make pretty fireworks with a Detonator.

The other player is a Medic? Play a serenade for him with your Saw, do some long-range Crossbow sniping or if other players are here, make a medic conga line.

The other player is a Demoman? Sticky Jump all over the place, do some caber-powered Airjousting, have a demoknight duel and draw stuff with your sticky bombs.

The other player is an Engineer? Make a Whoa-engie migration with him, make fancy structural arrangments with your buildings, build a clicky, play a round of long distance, wrangler-powered Sentry Wars and help the other non-engie players have fun by working as a safety net for them.

You could also try to create some fun, personal minigames to help them have fun even though there's not much to shoot at, but remember, if they're bored, you're doing it wrong!


As a basic rule, people come when there's activity, and activity is more often than not measured in playerslots currently used.

In order not to disappoint them:

- Make sure everyone or as much people as possible are actually playing, not idling.

- Greet the new players, it's always a good way to make them more confident in staying.

- Invite friends, ask people that join to invite more friends.

- Propose them to join the current ongoing activities.

Once enough players are here, ( a good bar is around 8 or more, depending on serversize) it'd be better to resume playing normally, some people join only when the server is truly active (i.e not fooling around).

That's good! Here's a few tips on what to do and what not to do.


- Is your server known for changing gamemode? Maybe people are not interested in the current one. Try cycling around and see what is preferred.

- Is your server known for changing maps? Try changing the current map to see what your (potential) players wants.

For both, if there already are players online, ask them first. It's not fun to be suddently playing CTF when you were having fun in an arena match or somesuch.

- Even if that technically hurts your playercount, and thus, your attractivity, remove any person that disrupts the fun people are having. No one wants to play with idiots and hackers.

- Do some non-intrusive advertizing. Post on forums that allow such advertizing, tell your friends, your friends' friends, the friends of your playerbase, etc, etc.

- Make sure your server is up to par, if players have to suffer recurring lag, then you might want to fix that before everyone finds it to be trash.


- "Filler", especially filler admins, and ESPECIALLY filler admins that are actually here, just waiting. Joining a server with 7 players and finding out that they're all spectators is a sure-fire way to get your server blacklisted by anyone who isn't stupid.

- Being abusive. If they're all having fun, let them have it. If you start kicking or banning people for petty reasons, your server is going to get empty FAST.

- Giving privilege to your usuals in situations where they have no reason to have any privilege. You're going to drive off potential players if you don't watch out.

- Giving abusive privilege to paying players. You'd be surprised at how much players find that despicable, and will promptly blacklist your server at the slightest sign of "premium functions'. rewarding usuals with something simple and unobstrusive is good though.

- Raffling stuff, giving out stuff. Yay, lots of players suddently! Suddently =/= long term. More often than not, they won't stay or come back. Plus, if you do that a lot, your inventory is gonna go empty pretty fast. That is, if you don't get into trouble for it later.

- Not providing the players with any way to solve problems. Someone is screwing up the server? Hopefully you've got some automated measures, an admin function, other admins, or votekick/voteban. Impossible to remove hackers!= Oh god no.

Me - bcz i kno how to wriet, can u see?

HairyHog77- Giving me some ideas for the "minigames", hell, it'd be much smaller if he wasn't here to help me out.
Doge- airhumps r gud pls add

You - For knowing how to read.
You can also suggest additions to this guide, point out typoes, and so on, any contribution is good!