October 22, 2008 by sharky
Looking for a quick invite to What.cd? Well, you probably won’t find it on many ‘Tracker Invite’ forums anymore. What once was a gimme for an easy giveaway has now been banned. We can’t hold fault to What.cd for the decision. There’s just too many people joining up on a tracker forum, and easily acquiring an invitation after a short probation period. So why is it that these Torrent Invite sites are complying with What.cd’s request to be removed from any invitation giveaways or account trading? Simple, really - they’re protecting their own members from being disabled on What.cd. To quote a TrackeReactor staffer, “What.cd staff has denied what.cd giveaways here. Many users from here were disabled”.
The bottom line is this: If a tracker doesn’t want their invites to be traded on public (or semi-public) forums, so be it. There’s really no point in trying to get around it. Not only do many people use the same username on a private tracker as they do in a torrent forum - which makes for an obvious connection - but even without it, this is dead simple for tracker staff to circumnavigate: They simply join the torrent forum, ask for an invite, and then ban the inviter. So it’s safer to comply with the wishes of What.cd than risk the accounts of those members.
Too many Invites?
Personally, I think What.cd gives out too many invites, which is why they were once so commonly found. Every Power User can easily receive 4 invites a month (1 + 3 bonus), as long as they’ve invited decent members. That’s a whopping 48 invites a year! I couldn’t even begin to think of 48 people that I could trust with an invite; hell, I have many friends but not too many are torrenters, and the ones that are, probably already have an account there.
Furthermore, What.cd would not be a suitable “first private tracker” - the high learning curve (for seeding & ratio) would just about scare away any NoOb from all private sites, altogether. Which is why people have turned to ‘Invite’ forums to give out their invitations; it may seem safer to offer them to people who have at least some prior experience with private trackers. While still risky, it’s thought to be a better option as opposed to giving them out to friends that are surely going to tank their accounts in short order. Sorry, Dad, I’m still not inviting you - you’re still using Limewire, and you think that µTorrent is a new automobile model from Pontiac.
What.cd - Setting The New Precedence?
It’s unlikely that the majority of private trackers will follow suit and start banning everyone who blindly hands out invites like Halloween candy. As it stands, torrent forums are a great place to promote a new tracker, as well as finding new members for an older one. And as long as BitTorrent continues its explosive growth, competition will remain fierce to get into the top sites. Fortunately there’s always a steady influx of new trackers to accomodate all the new torrenters.
Meanwhile, SaveTheCoratee has followed in What’s footsteps and also banned their invites to be given out publicly.
Getting into What.cd
You take a big chance when receiving an invite to What.cd from a torrent forum - and, as we’ve seen examples of many times over, you may end up getting a lifetime ban within the first day of logging in. We’d like to reprint something that a What.cd admin has posted on popular invite sites:
1. Getting an invite:
Potential users should never ever look for invites from a third party, namely invite sites. ONLY get invites from members of what.cd or from passing the interview. While this may not stop what happened recently to fellow members, it may prevent you from experiencing the joy of getting in only to be banned almost immediately.
2. The interview:
To join What.CD you have to keep a good upload/download ratio or you will get banned pretty quickly. So only try to join What.CD if you are serious about keeping a good upload/download ratio and just not going to join just to download as much as possible and not upload anything.
To join follow these steps: First you need to download an IRC client if you haven’t already got one. I recommend mIRC an easy to use free IRC client, which is downloadable here www.mirc.com.
When installed and ready to go. You need to join the What.CD IRC server which is irc.what-network.net Port 6667. Once you have connected you got to join the channel #what.cd-invites. DO NOT GO TO ANOTHER CHANNEL AND ASK FOR AN INVITE, YOU WILL BE BANNED FROM THE CHANNEL OR IGNORED.When in the channel read the instructions that are given. Type !queue into the channel and you will be added to the waiting list to be interviewed for an invite. Please be patient waiting in the queue can take up to 4 hours or even longer. This is where you got to be one of them people that really want an invite as you could get an invited to the interview at anytime so you really need to stay at your computer watching to screen.
When you get invited to an interview room you will be asked a few question about yourself, how much you know about music e.g. do you know what a FLAC file is? And you might need to provide and image of your upload/download ratio of other private Bittorrent sites. So before you go to an interview room be sure to have a speedtest.net result ready.
Don’t be nervous when answering the questions.
If they accept you and are willing to give you an invite they will ask for your email address and then they will send you an invite. So just go to you inbox and you will see an invite. From there on it is easy street as you just got to sign up and you’re in.
Please be aware that they might not give you an invite for many reasons. So don’t be too disappointed if you don’t get an invite. You can try again, but the interviewers might get tired of you if you show no signs of improvement.
Good luck. And remember to keep up a good upload/download ratio.
3. One third option is to look for What.cd recruitment in other private trackers (forums); while usually this is only available to Power Users and up. This is a great option to avoid the interview hassle.
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