Cracked or uncracked would imo depend on whether it'd show up on the ingame server list. If that doesn't matter, I'm with Jamie on this and it would be a good start to begin with cracked to create a large enough core of regular gamers. Keep an eye on PB tho, you never know with what kind of how-to-annoy-players-even-more things they come up with now...
While you're adding S&D to Mayhem, add more gametypes (HQ, CTF, why not all of them). Since you get to vote for a map and gametype of choice, you might as well give players a chance to vote for any gametype they like. Don't have to worry about an impopular gametype, as people won't vote for it if they don't want to play it
Could you take another look at the voting options tho, as the other day the server was going back n forth between gob_rats and gob_icestation and it was getting rather boring. Not too sure, but I think there must be a setting that if enabled takes the current map and previous map(s) off the voting list, so you get a nice variety of maps played.
Also, have you had a chance yet to look into adding the custom maps I suggested yet? Think they would be a nice addition to the current map list.
No nades on icestation has made it a lot more playable imo. It was utter chaos with nades, especially as ranks went up and more nades came into play, so that nearing the second half of playing time you'd get killed half the time getting straight out of spawn by a freshly trown grenade.
Players don't really seem to miss them, only seen one so far asking what happened to the nades. Now it's just pure shotgun battles, and if only I could get better at bashing people...
As for the flamethrowers... Has two sides for me. First and foremost, I've always been anti weapon restrictions (and especially on a server called Mayhem
) and do find the flamethrower a welcome addition and feel that it surely creates more fun for the less-skilled players because you can grill those rifle/sniper freaks... BUT (there's always a but)... I don't know if I'm the only one experiencing this, with my uber laptop-powered gfx card, but I've noticed that the flamer creates huge amounts of lag. Whilst this makes some sense if it's being aimed at me, since the heat doesn't really make you move more smoothly, it also happens when someone else is being flamed.
If this does happen to more players, perhaps the amount of flamers should be restricted to only a few, even though this goes against my opinion on weapon restrictions (main disadvantage with restrictions is that those who don't load as quickly, will not have the possibility of choosing the weapon of their choice as it's been taken by someone else already), but if that decreases the before mentioned problem, then imo it only adds to the playability for every player and thus the fun that everyone has.
Last but not least (yes, this novel is nearing it's end), I've got to say I'm mighty proud of what Jamie's done and the way Mayhem seems to be going. Every day it has players on, and only a few weeks ago 10+ players was unthinkable, now it goes up to 16-20 some nights. This may not come near player amounts during FuN's glory days, but it's only the beginning. CoD2 of course hasn't got such a large player base anymore, but I keep seeing the same names drop into the server and the amount of regulars is growing. I believe that once the server goes past the 20players threshold regularly, it will attract even more players, including those that check the serverlist and won't join a server unless it's got at least 20players on.
Also, think of all the current Mayhem regulars that may start playing CoD:WaW and how they will of course join FuN's server because of guaranteed fun. To be honest, I now see no real reason why FuN can't start reliving it's glory days in the very near future. Well done guys, bloody well done... I shall say then!