How to run a WARDOGS map vote on your server and in Discord

Let WARDOGS players vote on the next map from the server page and Discord: the ballot, when it opens and closes, who may vote, and how the winner is queued.

Updated 25 September 2026

Why a map vote needs help on WARDOGS

A WARDOGS server plays its rotation in order, or at random, and the only way to pick what comes next is an admin with the RCON password queuing it by hand. There is no vote in the game itself. So the question every community Discord ends up asking — “can we play Bakurani next?” — gets answered by whoever happens to be online with the password.

A map vote hands that decision to the players, and takes the admin out of the loop: the winner is queued on the server by itself.

How a vote runs

With the map vote turned on for a server, each match goes like this:

• It opens once the match has run for a while (a minute by default), with a few options drawn at random from the server’s own rotation. Only maps the server actually allows are offered.
• Players vote on the website, where each option is a card with the map’s picture and its official name — Bakurani, Zestafona, Ozeti — and in your Discord, where the vote is one message with a button per option. Every server has a short vote link, and the in-game broadcast names it, so players reach the ballot straight from the game. Anybody can change their vote until it closes, and the counts update as votes come in.
• It closes when a team reaches a share of the score cap (80% by default), or after a maximum time. The game does not report a countdown, so the score is the honest reading of “the round is nearly over”.
• The winner is queued as the next map — the same command an admin’s Set next sends, recorded in the audit log with the tally. A tie is broken at random; a vote with fewer ballots than you ask for (one, by default) changes nothing, and the rotation carries on.

The server can announce it in game too: a broadcast when the vote opens, with the link, an optional reminder halfway through naming the map in the lead, and another with the winner. You write all three messages yourself.

One ballot is one vote. There is no weighting — not for admins, not for regulars, not for supporters.

When an admin steps in

The console shows the running vote live. An admin can start a vote now for the match being played, even when the automatic vote is off, close it now and queue the leader, or override the winner with another option or any map the server allows — before or after it closes. Each of those is in the audit log under the admin’s name, and an override names the map it replaced.

What goes on the ballot

• Maps, or maps and zones. Vote on the map alone, or on each map and control-zone layout the rotation has.
• Two to five options, drawn fresh every match.
• No repeats. Leave out the maps of the last few rounds, so the map being played cannot simply win again.
• Maps you never want voted on. Exclude a map, or one map-and-zone layout — the seeding map, say — and it is never drawn, even though it stays in the rotation.
• Random zone and random weather. Let the winning map land on a random zone, or a random time of day and weather, from what the server offers.
• Not while seeding. By default no vote opens on an empty server or one still below its seeding threshold — there is nobody to ask, and a seeding server usually wants its seeding map.

Who may vote, and double voting

You choose separately for the website and for Discord. On the website: only players on the server (their linked Steam account has to be on the server, or have left it in the last few minutes — loading the next map does not lock anybody out), anyone signed in, or anyone at all. A player without an account still sees the votes so far, with a Steam sign-in that brings them back to the ballot. In Discord: members with a linked account who are on the server, anyone with a linked account, or every Discord user once.

A linked account votes once across both — the site and Discord change the same ballot. The two modes without an account are the exception, and the settings say so: somebody can vote again from another browser or another Discord account, and once on each side. That is a fair trade for a casual server; a competitive one should keep the account.

Setting it up

The map vote is part of the Starter, Community and Enterprise plans. Set it up once for the whole community under Settings → Map vote: who may vote, whether it goes to Discord (and which role to ping), what the game says, and the ballot every server starts from. A server that should vote differently — more options, a different close, its own Discord channel — overrides just those settings on its own Map vote page and inherits the rest. For Discord, pick a Map votes channel under Settings → Discord once your community’s guild is connected.

Every server with admin tools can vote on the website. One that counts toward public stats shows the vote on its public page; any other gets a page of its own with the vote and nothing else — no stats, no address.

If the plan lapses, a running vote ends without queuing anything and no new one opens. The settings are kept, and the vote picks up exactly where it was when the plan comes back.