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Adding Master Servers

This page is for server owners: registering your own server with more masters. Just want your in-game "Internet" server browser to show servers again? See fixing the in-game browser instead — that's a client-side fix on your own PC and doesn't need any of this.

idTech3-family servers (RTCW, Enemy Territory, Quake 3 Arena, OpenArena) report themselves to "master" servers, which is how tools like this one (and in-game server browsers) find them. Official id Software masters have been unreliable, so registering with more than one master keeps your server discoverable even when any single one is down — see current live status of each master. Pick the tab for your game below.

Add this to your server config

Paste this into your server config (e.g. server.cfg) to register with every master worth registering with right now: the official one (in case it comes back), the iortcw project's own master, the two community masters we found still active while the official one is down, and this project's own master last. 

set sv_master1 "wolfmaster.idsoftware.com"
set sv_master2 "master.iortcw.org"
set sv_master3 "etmaster.net"
set sv_master4 "dpmaster.deathmask.net"
set sv_master5 "wolfmaster.s4ndmod.com"
Why these four
MasterWhy
master.iortcw.org Only pre-set for servers actually running the iortcw engine — most RTCW/ET servers aren't, so this is a master you need to add yourself, not one already covering you. Alive right now.
etmaster.net Community-run replacement for the unreliable official ET master. Currently the largest source of active ET servers we've found.
dpmaster.deathmask.net Long-running generic idTech3 master, widely used by RTCW servers (and Quake 3 Arena too).
wolfmaster.s4ndmod.com This project's own master — adding your server here is what makes it show up on the list itself.
Only sv_master1 has a default that applies broadly (the official master above). sv_master2's master.iortcw.org default is iortcw-specific — if you're not running iortcw, it's not covering you, so slots 2–5 are effectively all "free." The config above sets all five explicitly anyway, so nothing depends on a default you can't see just by reading your own config file.
Add this to your server config

Same sv_master1–sv_master5 cvars, same idea, different masters — these are the ones we found with real Quake 3 Arena / OpenArena populations: 

set sv_master1 "master.ioquake3.org"
set sv_master2 "dpmaster.deathmask.net"
set sv_master3 "master.maverickservers.com"
set sv_master4 "master0.excessiveplus.net"
set sv_master5 "wolfmaster.s4ndmod.com"
Why these four
MasterWhy
master.ioquake3.org The ioquake3 project's own master — by far the largest source of Quake 3 Arena servers we found.
dpmaster.deathmask.net Long-running generic idTech3 master. Also serves RTCW.
master.maverickservers.com Community Quake 3 Arena master with a sizeable population of its own.
master0.excessiveplus.net Another active community Quake 3 Arena master.
We haven't confirmed a broadly-applicable engine default the way sv_master1 is for RTCW/ET (id Software's original Quake 3 Arena master is currently unreachable — here's hoping it comes back — and modern source ports vary) — so treat all five slots above as worth setting explicitly rather than assuming any are already covered.