Best Posts in Thread: Moving Forward in 2016

Well people, the last few days have been pretty eventful, but mostly for the wrong reasons. I am sure that most of you have informed yourselves of what has been changed in regards to the rank/donor system. Although they are pretty unfavorable, and may seem unfair to some who donated for specific perks, the changes needed to be done. One controversial topic that some people are entitled to being upset about is the fact that our server's compliance with the EULA has been questionable at best ( I am being blunt, but it is the truth) for quite a long time now. If you take a minute to read over this post from mojang https://mojang.com/2014/06/lets-talk-server-monetisation/ you can see that this has been in affect for almost 2 years now.

For this reason, it is reasonable for people to be upset about how this issue was carried out. Unfortunately, there is nothing that can be done now, and personally I think that the staff teams reaction to recent events has been almost perfect. ( Let me put emphasis on the word "recent" because the amount of work they put into this issue over the last 24 hours has been crazy and they should be thanked for that)

Let me go back to what I was originally talking about in my first paragraph. That post by mojang was made a long time ago, and it is clear that after reading it, Meep has not been compliant with the EULA for a while, so this should have been expected to happen for a while. Of course, it is reasonable that the staff team was pretty laid back and confident about the state of our server because they did not receive any warnings about it recently. Complacency is a dangerous thing, and in this situation the only thing we can do after getting knocked down is to get back up stronger than before. We need to learn from mistakes, fix them, and move on.

If there is any group of people that can overcome a situation that we've been put in, it is the Meepcraft community. I have been a part of this server for 4 years and the community on this server is like no other. It is great to see the amount of suggestions that have been posted to help with this problem. Over the next few days/weeks, we should continue to flood the suggestions sections with ideas. Even if you don't have one that is fully thought out, or one that you don't necessarily think highly of currently, post it. Any suggestion might lead to a constructive thread that will fuel new and better ideas to help solve the problem we are facing right now.

It is 3am, my wifi is really bad and I can't really play on the server right now due to that, and my sleeping schedule is really messed up and I am really bored so I am kinda just mashing up my thoughts into one big thread. I guess what I am trying to say is although there have been slip ups and questionable decisions made in regards to the direction the server has been going in, the best thing to do right now is to stay positive and contribute by coming up with good suggestions. Toxicity and arguing about how there were better ways to handle the situation in the past are unnecessary at this point because that is in the past. Fuzzlr is a very busy guy, and the higher up staff members are also busy as well (news flash, they have a life outside of minecraft), but they are smart individuals and we should all trust that they are making decisions that are in the best interest of the server as a whole.

Things that need to be done right now at this moment to move forward:

-The staff team needs to acknowledge the fact that the server was not compliant for a long time and that is the end of it
-The community needs to acknowledge that the changes that have been made were absolutely needed and that is the end of it
-The community needs to keep fueling suggestions regarding ways the server is compliant
-Donors need to accept that their payment was technically a donation. I know it sucks guys, but the money you gave to MeepCraft was technically a donation. The owner/admins have the right to take away perks because your payment was a donation.
-Making the server compliant has to be the staff teams #1 priority until the issue is fully resolved.
-There should be total transparency with the decisions that the staff team is currently making until the issue is fully resolved.



Moving on....

Lets be realistic for a bit here. This situation is going to cause some people to quit. It is going to cause a lot of changes to the server's economy, and it is going to cause a lot of changes to the reason people are donating. We are going to have to add in a lot of new ways for people to donate. This means we will probably have to move out of the "donating for ranks" idea and shift into donations for certain perks or items that do not give an advantage in gameplay. The problem is that we are kinda running out of things to donate for.

Because of this, we need to focus on what type of server we are, and what we are advertising to be. I think we can all agree that this server has been advertising itself as a towny server. Therefore, the new people that have been joining are joining to play towny. The towny aspect of our server is very different from the rest of our minigame/parkour side of the server. It brings in players that will be here for a long time, meaning that an increase in people joining to play towny means an increase in playerbase for the long term. More longterm players = more donations. Seems simple, right? Well the idea of it is, but the implementation of the idea is not too easy.

Lets start off with one question that needs to be answered in order to carry out this goal. What makes our towny server unique? Can't I just go on any other towny server and do the same stuff? What makes MeepCraft different? Yes, it it advertised as the largest in the world, but that is not enough. Yes, you can answer and say that the community is so much better, but people who just join the server don't know how good the community is. They need something that will grab them and pull them in other than "The Largest Economy Server" when they first log on and see that there are only 70 players online at the time. That doesn't really make sense.

I was here before all the big technical and fancy equipment and development and new spawns and minigames left and right. I was here when the server was literally hosted on Fuzzlr's laptop and there were 15 people on at a time just working on the only town that was on the server. I was here to witness the growth that made the server become a community of thousands of long term, active players. What tactic was used to make the server grow at such an alarming rate?

Yes, it could have been just luck with advertising, and the time in which minecraft just got super popular, but the main idea that drove the server to success was the focus on where to improve. We always advertised as a towny server, made sure to make the server revolve around towny. At that time, it was enough to attract players that liked towny the best. I guess it just isn't enough anymore. We need new ideas on how to improve towny. The implementation of the next new mini game shouldn't be a top priority. We need to improve the stuff that we already have, not implement brand new things left and right. It is getting too complicated.

You've read this far... What is the main point of this post?

I don't know. I'm bored, and concerned with where we are headed. I guess if I were to mash it all up into a few sentences, this is what they'd be...

The recent EULA situation is over and needs to be fixed. No one should point anymore fingers and we should all chip in on suggestions and ways to fix it. Once we're done we need to focus on growing a larger long term playerbase by improving the depth and play-ability of the towny world that will encourage purchasing perks and items for towny specifically that don't give an advantage. This will lead to a more fun, unique environment that will attract new players and more donations.


One last thing ( I promise)

I want to emphasize that this is not a rant. I am not bashing any staff members or any other members of the community for their stance on the issue. I just decided to write what I was thinking about the subject and what I think we should focus on to improve the server after the EULA situation is solved. I think everyone is doing a great job with suggestions right now. Thanks for reading (if you actually did lol I know it was long and I'm sorry.)