Best Posts in Thread: Apr 25, 2014: Towns Wilderness Refresh

I created a happy little forest town with my daughter just a couple days ago and we had plans for expansion. But now we're surrounded by desert and a half aborted NPC village. This totally wrecks the plan and we're abandoning the town. After having donated for ranks and Meebles to buy the town and set it up, it's pretty disappointing to have this happen. I will probably donate again (lest waste my time to earn another 300k, frankly its not worth my time) to start over. I know the owner is young, and as a fellow entrepreneur I'm impressed with what he's accomplished here. But from a business perspective, this is what I'd call "bad business". Funds collected are called donations, sure. But if the owner isn't making some coin off this then its not being run well. And if coin is being made, as I assume it is, there should be some consideration for paying customers who have invested money and, more importantly, their time, into the product before doing things like this. Sorry for the rant, but I feel it needs to be said. There's a sad kind of helpless acceptance of this, despite tons of people who are asking, quite rightly, wtf.

 

No, I agree, just stating the facts as I know them. As far as my opinion goes...

I know that a lot of the crap F uzzlr gets is from people who don't like change and love to complain, and I really want to give him and the rest of the administration the benefit of the doubt. I've been trying really, really hard to moderate my own comments in the past couple of days, but my patience and understanding is wearing thin (I'm sorry if it shows). This may be "just a video game," but it's also a business of sorts, and a group of people who (sometimes ) care about each other.

Baagag really did nail it in his post. Most of the time, when I refer to fuzzlr's age, it's out of admiration (and some amusement, because I kept forgetting it when I first joined). He is running a business and leading a sizeable online community as a 16-year-old, and that's no small feat, even considering the help and backing he has gotten from Onis, the admin team, and whoever else. What he's been able to do with the server, especially after the tough times it went through before I got here, is impressive. I've seen him ask the player base for feedback and adjust things accordingly, which I very much appreciate, whether I personally like the results or not. He's more involved and responsive than most owners of large servers, from what I've seen.

But IMO, this change, along with this one... http://www.meepcraft.com/threads/money-wipe-will-kick-19-residents-from-my-town.22140/

... were both bad calls, and from where I'm standing, they could have easily been handled in a way that avoided at least some of the problems that we're seeing now. Instead, we get no communication, no warnings, and abrupt technical decisions that don't seem to make sense because there are better options (like slowing the towny wild regeneration rate drastically, giving a warning to allow people to prepare for these things, or taking $5,000 Meebles from players who have been inactive for x number of days instead of wiping the balances of everyone who had less than $5,000). It confuses me even more that this comes right after an announcement that Towny Beta is back in the works - why not just start the new biomes and wild regeneration in that world, instead?

We all make mistakes, and this is part of running a business and being a leader - learning what to do when you mess up, and people feel hurt and/or are angry at you. It's necessary to face this at some point in order to be a better leader/manager/owner in the future. I don't envy anyone who is going through this experience.

But fuzzlr, part of what's bothering me right now is the total lack of acknowledgment on your part of how these two decisions have negatively affected the player base that your business depends on. (Edit: Besides "we're sorry if this has inconvenienced you," which is fine, but by itself isn't all that meaningful.) This has happened with more minor missteps in the past, and it's happening again now. It doesn't matter if it's not a big deal to administration or to some players - it's a big deal to a sizeable part of the community, and that makes it important. That doesn't mean you have to cater to every whim of the majority, especially when the average age trends as young as it does. This is your server, and you get to do what you want with it, and in many cases you know what's best for it. But that does mean that there may be consequences that come from ignoring the people who have been supporting you and who feel like they are not being treated fairly.

I tend to get defensive at first when criticized (I think we all do to some extent), so I understand that reaction. Now, you have the opportunity to handle it with grace and humility. You have an excellent admin team who can help listen to players' concerns and let them know that they matter (I'd probably leave one admin on the sidelines in this situation, and I think everyone knows who I'm talking about ) but I think it would mean a lot coming directly from you, F uzzlr. Edit: I hope that you consider, too, any ways to help fix some of the problems that people are reporting.

At this point, I'm glad I only paid for Exclusive and not Elite during the recent sale on ranks. This isn't out of spite, or because I don't want to help the server, or because I'm holding the donation hostage until some feature I want is implemented. I just want to make sure that if I donate again, my money (because it would be my own money) is used effectively, and right now I'm not convinced that it will be. I hope I change my mind.

tl;dr: What fuzzlr has done with MeepCraft is mostly awesome. The decisions to suddenly reset the towny wild and wipe money from players under 5,000 Meebles are not awesome, and there wasn't any real communication or warning about either of these. Things could be improved if fuzzlr recognizes this, or at least if he listens to and acknowledges players' concerns about them. Edit: They could be improved even more if some actions can be taken to fix the problems that have happened, wherever possible. I have faith that it will get better, but we'll see.

 

I found something relaxing to spend my time on when my kids are asleep and that is playing minecraft and I have played on a few different servers but I like Meepcraft and decided to invest in ranks. I newly became Elite and collected 300K to start my own town a few weeks ago. I found a perfect spot for my town on an island far away from anything else. I spent several hours every evening to build up the town and to get it to fit nicely on the island. I named the town corallatol (an atol in the sea made from coral). I did not open the town yet because I have a few things still to be built. I also made my own house there with a beautiful sea view. A really nice place because of the surroundings.

Now after the towny reset I have no sea as far as I can see. Half of my town is located inside a mountain and on the border to my plots are steep mountain walls completely flat and it does not look natural at all. My house now has a few of a mountain (no natural light can get in!).

I donated for Elite rank mainly to repair my tools and mine spawners because that is really helpful when your building a town and planning to have a grinder there. I just invested my own money and a lot of time in a product that suddenly changed totally! I realise that there was some corrupted chunks and its very nice that stuff if being fixed but there should have been a better way that this?

Can I more my town? Can I get my 300K back? Can I get money back for the ranks? Please help me move my town to a nice location! Please also move all the animals i´ve been collecting swimming across the sea with to get to my island! And all the villagers i have been creating from zombies! Everything is a BIG mess!!!!

I am really pissed off right now and feel like someone just stole my time and money from me!!

I really hope that you have a backup of the server! All the work i put down! I wonder how close this is to fraud? Now I should stop writing before I write more stupid things! I can just say WTF!?

Right now I don´t know if I want to connect to meep anymore.

If this change will be permanent I really suggest that you help people with towns in bad locations to move their towns to a better place. If you can't move the town then at least try to give them what they had in the old location for free and let them start a new town without the 300K cost! Otherwise you will lose a lot of people and also future donators!

 

Good News:
Hornemans's road is surrounded by a giant mountain

Bad News:
Lakewood's lake is mostly gone

 

Worst idea ever

 

You can move your town without deleting it by making an outpost and using /t set homeblock.