501warhead

Please send us an email, [email protected] We have to process it through this manner for proof of identity. Thank you!

Greetings LotC, Sorry for the long delay on explaining what was happening with the terms of service changes. In a complete break of character however I’m going to communicate about something since there seems to be a bit of confusion about our ToS. We pushed out a small change to our terms of service about a week ago that covered a few updates to our privacy policy, which you can find here. The Old In the process of updating we then required everyone to re-agree to our existing terms of service and privacy policy together. In doing so several players rightfully pointed out their concerns to us privately and on the forums here about a longstanding clause that we had skimmed over and never really questioned related to Content Ownership on lord of the craft. It read like this; This had been a clause that had largely been overlooked for a few years and largely skimmed over. However, as anyone with a decent pair of eyes can read this clause is pretty terrible – especially for a server that is almost entirely based on creative works provided by players. We received ample feedback on this through forum messages, staff chats, and private dms by concerned (and not in the least frustrated) players. @Tythus Took a look and, as someone with a pair of eyes, also agreed that this isn’t right. The New We sat down and drafted up a new Terms of Service to address the Content Ownership along with a lot of other outdated or poorly worded clauses. The result is the new content policy as shown below We have high hopes that this is the right policy for Lord of the Craft but also understand that with the constantly rotating TOS plus the legal language this has gotten a bit confusing for players, so I hope to shed some light on this. Basically, when you create something you are the single copyright holder (assuming you did such by yourself) and no one else has the right to even host your image on a website or use a character you’ve made in a game. This is somewhat difficult as we allow players to upload images directly to our website as well as create characters for use on our server. In order to alleviate this we have a clause that states when something you’ve created is shared on our services, so forums or game, we obtain a license so that we can show the work on our services. There’s a few other things there that relate to us being able to edit your work and stating that we cannot be responsible for providing you a copy of your work, such as a build, but it doesn’t stop you from downloading stuff you find on our website. The Confusing Now, there’s one other clause that might be somewhat confusing when it comes to content ownership, as it seems like it covers the same ground. That is the following However it should be stated that this clause applies almost exclusively to LOTC trademark material. These are things like the Lord of the Craft logo, the images we use to make our forums look the way they do, and so on. This doesn’t apply to works that you upload to share with the community. Wrapping Up So, hopefully that clears up the Terms of Service changes we’ve gone ahead and made in regards to content ownership. It should be noted that within the near future there will be a requirement to agree to our terms before you play the game, as these terms apply across our mediums. We have to do this so that we’ve done legal due diligence to require acceptance before allowing continued usage. If you are still confused or you aren’t happy with the terms still and would like your content destroyed please send us an email at [email protected]. I can answer basic questions here but most I’ll have to direct you to the email for the best medium to communicate about ToS issues.

Should be fixed This is mostly up to the moderation team as the plugin itself only allows you to manual resize after mods have upgraded or downgraded your charter If you need assistance feel free to send me a forum pm. I'd like to know what you're confused about so I can improve the wiki guides posted.

Currently not but in the future this might be possible. Would require some coordination with the moderation team. Depending on how well the release goes we’ll see about expanding it to freebuild as well EDIT: Clearer wording

Greetings! I’m happy to (finally) announce the release of the plugin Charter. This plugin automates the claiming process used to create charters. This allows you to select regions that more accurately reflect your build, as you can create rectangular shapes rather than perfect squares as long as the area remains the same. To begin claiming a charter head to cloud temple where you’ll find this shop which sells the selection tools to make your charter. Once you’ve picked up your tool visit the following wiki page to learn how to claim a charter! Wiki Page Existing charter applications that have not yet been completed will be denied as the application process that currently exists will be removed. If you’ve paid a deposit currently on a charter like this contact the moderation team to get a tool to complete your process. This plugin is intentionally small feature-wise and doesn’t override world guard functionality. /rg addmember and /rg flag will still function normally, and you can ask for moderator assistance if you have issues with the plugin. Please use the support subforum if you notice any issues with this plugin, I’ll be keeping an eye out for anything there. You can expect more features added for charters in the future if this goes well.

This players questions have been answered and the situation resolved. Should you wish to have this reopened, please PM me your reasons why it should be so.

Apologies for the late reply, but it’s unlikely that we can resolve the issue if it’s still persisting. Going to close this out for now.

This players questions have been answered and the situation resolved. Should you wish to have this reopened, please PM me your reasons why it should be so.

Greetings all, Just letting you know that tomorrow, June 11that 1PM EDT the server will be going down for maintenance for approximately 30 minutes to an hour if things go smoothly. The work being done is that we’ll be migrating some data on the backend for our plugins to resolve a few issues we currently have with the present structure. Apologies for any issues this may cause and the short notice, but this is an important change needed as soon as we can fit it in.

Hey all, just dropping by to let you know that the Map has been updated at https://www.lordofthecraft.net/map/ You can view it full screen if needed by visiting https://map.lordofthecraft.net It includes nation locations as well this time, though druids are a little off (a work in progress!) We’re also done a little bit of footwork this time to ensure that we can update the map frequently, preventing it from getting too out of date. Thanks for being patient with us on this, we’re slowly working on restoring functionality to a few things across the board.

Someone was breaking the signs and apparently a rebuild is scheduled for Curon. Let's not jump on the "GMS ARE BAD" hatewagon already. They're doing their job, but if Curon is going to continue to stagnate I'll put a notice on the place from the WD Team to improve.

im a light blue boi now like you

Hey folks. It’s been a long journey here on LotC as an Administrator. I knew it was going to be tough from the get-go but I didn’t let that stop me. I started in December of 2016 and I’ve been going ever since, it’s had it’s ups and downs but I don’t regret a minute of the decision I made to put myself forward for nominations. I’d like to think my time has been a productive one, but it’s hard to say. Just about as soon as I got on the team I focused my attention to a passion of mine; Map Development. Previous generations of Administration could probably reaffirm that my goals around this were passionate albeit at times nebulous. Never to be dissuaded however I left the “admining” to Tahmas, Ever, & Telanir and reached out to what I now recognise to be some of the most talented people on LotC that I have ever interacted with. They had passion, motivation, and vision. Between Kilgrim, Hiebe, Shift, and Chaotikal I spent most of those months having fun, talking out ideas, and planning what would eventually become Atlas. I was proud of the work they put in and I knew that they were the cornerstone of that project, I worked as hard as I could to try to make sure Atlas was going to be great. I wanted to make sure that they had the room to explore their creative visions and I worked to always provide more ideas and fuel for their drive. It wasn’t easy but even still it was fun. I fought for what I believed was right, for the server and community. At times I became jaded but worked to balance that and return to a positive mentality. Probably the lowest time during my period as an Admin was the time after the Full Disclosure post by Thomas. I never responded to that thread because I didn’t know how to. It was stressful, and I constantly thought about how to just talk about it to clear the air. Those thoughts lead me to anxiety and stress that I don’t think anything, not job interviews or my professors “do-a-4-month-project-in-1-week-or-you-dont-graduate” assignment, has come close to. It was rough for me because I saw Thomas as a friend who I disagreed with and who we quarreled with, but both had good sights for the server. I wouldn’t have had the wonderful opportunity to work on the server without him. I wish I could say I’m all jovial and have forgotten it but the truth is it’s still a sting to think about that leaves me cautious, anxious, and sometimes downright paranoid when interacting with others. Eventually I pushed through that time however and we began Atlas development in full. I had graduated from school and didn’t have a lot to do during the downtime trying to decide what to do with my life. In that time I grew inactive on LotC; /seen could show me offline for as much as two weeks. That metric, however, was deceptive; instead I was active on our private map building server, spending the days flying over and smoothing terrain to pass my worries away and enjoy the time I had and the work I was doing for LotC. We never reached my goal of a fully detailed work to rival Athera (perhaps a bit ambitious!) but we accomplished so much in that time regardless. All of the builders helped so very much and I’m thankful for everyone who poured their talent into Atlas. Time passed and I saw a point to fight for in the development process to finish the initiative Shiftnative started with Athera; the World Developers. I had always wanted a team that was dedicated to one of the most important aspects of LotC; map design. I didn’t like waiting for an admin to start a map design process with just a handful of burned out Event Team Builders who often lacked the motivation to pursue, or that there were just far too few of. Event Team Builders really shaped our previous maps and some tried their hardest but often it fell dramatically short of the quality that we, as a community, often would come to expect. The World Developers were that solution, and I wanted to pull active builders onto a low-maintenance team that gave people the opportunity to be truly creative and contribute to LotC amazing works of art only they were capable of. The start of the team was rocky under my guidance. With little idea as to direction and a generally already complete map, most of the upper management organized by myself, it was listing. I was fighting I feel almost day in and day out with other admins as to the point of the team and it is here that I have to just stop for a moment and praise probably one of the most talented individuals I’ve met since returning to the server in 2016; SeventhCircle. Without him the World Development team would likely not even exist and he’s been working so hard between the ET management and the World Dev team to really push the server to a brighter future. I handed off the WD Director position to him and he’s continued to stun me with his creativity and motivation and I sincerely hope, for all of us, he continues to do such amazing work. After Atlas released and the World Dev Team was handed off, I stagnated. I had spent a year(!) working and focusing on a single thing not even related to the Administration. In my free time I would hang out in /ooc (I still do!) and just talk with players - and a lot of times I spoke my mind. I felt it liberating to have a chat like that to go to and even some of the more abrasive players (RIP Space) were comforting to talk to even if they did ultimately call me garbage. It was fun to just know I was a part of a community larger than myself and it motivated me to keep working. After Atlas launched I continued to do so and listen to folks in OOC talk about their likes and dislikes of Atlas, to try to get an idea as to what we did right and wrong. In the background the lack of a map design process to get lost in left me drifting and it was noticed by our very small Administration. As Paleo and Vaynth left and we brought Harold on we kept the team intentionally small because we didn’t want to spent 2-3 months trying to find new admins when we were already falling behind on big stuff. During that time I was told by both Telanir and Harold to step down, and they both did so in their own unique ways. They were concerned about my state and felt increasing pressure from my lack of contributions, but I decided against it - and instead rapidly became incredibly active starting in March as I left my job. I spent time in game and developing, trying to focus on improving a few things that were critical to me. I founded the monk order, took on an attempt to rewrite war rules, tried to hash out issues with some of the major warclaims, all while trying to keep the server physically going. I was active, but it was a little much. Soon the monk order fell into decay where it remains today, the war rules are unfinished, even though the major warclaims I handled are settled now. The Community Manager position was my last big initiative to push some change for LotC and I hope that marimbamonk will continue to show all of us how talented he is in the future, and I have hope for it. As for me, I’m resigning from the Administration. Two weeks ago I was offered a full-time office position on salary as a Java Developer and I’m loving every minute of it, and while I had wanted to continue contributing as an Administrator to LotC it’s come to a point where I’m no longer having fun coming home from work or being home on the weekends. It’s stress that I don’t think I handle well and comes off poorly in how I talk, and so I don’t believe Administrator is the right role for me anymore. But (fortunately? unfortunately?) I’m not leaving. LotC is my first and only minecraft server and I’m brimming with so many ideas (mostly code or world dev ideas) that I’d probably talk your head off if we had a chat; but I want to let the new Administration lead the way, and I’ll pursue my ideas as a Developer, World Developer, and interim (or perhaps permanent?) Wiki Team Director. I’m having an absolute blast working on a code project for LotC and I think there are a lot of things I can really do now that I’m not a part of the Administration. Thanks for everyone who has supported me as I pursued this position, even those who couldn’t after I prioritized it over them and our friendship. I’m hopeful for the future of the server and I’ll do everything I can to pursue a creative and unique future in the roles I serve now. P.S. Sorry to everyone I ignored this week! It wasn’t intentional, I just didn’t want to start handling something I couldn’t finish. Thanks for everything, 501warhead

Greetings LotC! Today I come here to talk about what I briefly talked about on the FAQ posted this week; the Community Manager. I hope to break down this new role to the LotC staff for you today and announce who will be filling this role for the first time. What/Why The Community Manager is a role that we've come to believe we need that fulfills a critical role which we have not yet been able to fill properly. Often times the days of the Administration are busy with the daily tasks and goals we set for ourselves and in doing such we often find that we forget or even are unable to find time to organize events, make announcements, and gather feedback - all things that, while we view as critical, we have unfortunately left to neglect. The Community Manager is a role intended to assist with this subject, bringing on an individual whose sole focus is on the state and concerns of the Community. The hope is to work closely with this individual to try to increase our communication with the community and hopefully as well try to offer more events for the community as a whole to attend, both serious and non-serious. They'll be working with the Administration and Team Directors to remind us and encourage us to be more forthcoming with out ideas and passions while also organizing events for us to share our thoughts with you, the playerbase. Who When we were looking through the applications for the position one name stood out above all the others and I believe that many of you reading will already know why before I even explain. We've selected @marimbamonk (formerly BoogerBuster/BGBuster) as the Community Manager. He has gone above and beyond lately in his efforts, trying to bring together the community he loves and find ways to address issues within it. Even without holding this role he has pushed the boundaries of what we've been able to accomplish in the past while also fighting for what he believes in; accountability, communication, and unity. We're very proud of his efforts so far and hope that he will be able to go above and beyond expectations from both ourselves and the community as a whole. That will be all for today from me, expect more from @marimbamonk himself in the coming weeks!

You misunderstood that paragraph. I never implied it was the sole purpose, but moreso since we operate under the idea that every administrator has the power to veto anything a member of staff, including another administrator, tries to do (short of an action from tythus) we require a full 4/4 vote to complete anything. A no is the equivalent of a veto. So we operate collectively and we do this so that we all can be sure that the direction we're going is the direction that we, collectively as a team, believe in. We don't pressure people to stay around so they can vote. We try not to pressure people at all, but it's moreso when we have an idea that most of us believe in but 1-2 admins aren't sure of they may feel pressured to vote yes rather than vote no and "deny" the movement, so they vote along with it. That's all. We usually complete all of our votes in ~2-3 days of the initial movement, and people don't stick around just to vote. Now, I have to say that I do try to talk out ideas that might not go with the general community opinion (or even those that do) with all levels of staff that it effects. When we were adding new rules and some war rules (I added a few minor ones) I took the time to ask the GM team what they thought of it. As a matter of fact, there were several proposed rules for alliances that I was very, very excited about and thought were good before I presented it to the GM team. They never saw the light of day. They made solid points and they convinced me that the idea that I was backing super heavily wasn't good for the server and wouldn't work in today's environment; that feedback changed my mind and my decision. I try to get feedback on controversial stuff because I know I can be pigheaded and bullheaded, and lately it's been pretty effective albeit even if it doesn't feel like it. I announced several points in my FAQ that were opinions/statements, not really rulings or additions - any that I do make (the last one being the monk project which I still need to try to work on ? ) I have gotten a lot of feedback and discussion on before I went through with it and made sure that when I did that I was certain it was the right direction for LotC. It's easy to point at my actions of a year ago and say otherwise but I have, I believe, grown quite a lot since that time. I've tried asking more opinions about stuff from the GM team and sometimes the community (when I think the feedback is less subject to 180). I talk out a lot of some of my project and code designs with the team and have done a few livestreams for Territories to ask some player questions and show my development process. Probably one of the major points that I think is brought up to the contrary is Limited Creative; and I can rant about why LC doesn't work and it's not just from a top-down view. There are a lot of dev reasons, economy reasons, mechanical reasons, plugin reasons, and management reasons why LC isn't good or healthy for this community, but I know it's going to be pushed back against. I've had a lot of conversations with various groups on staff about this, and I feel a good number of folks there agree with me after argument. And some who dont, I know, but it's still my stance.

A well constructed and thought out post. You have good points and I'm glad to hear them, though I do wish you mentioned them sooner ?. You were quiet on the team but I suppose that mainly came from being uncomfortable, so it's nice to hear feedback relevant to how we work. If there was some way to ensure all admins could feel heard and a part of the team while minimizing delays it'd be my dream to pursue it personally, but it's hard to consider a system that allows it. If all decisions are made by three out of five members of a team then the two that are left out will grow bitter. It sometimes happens still where I know some admins have or do vote a way that they don't want to vote because they feel pressured but the intent is to try to leverage out opinions. Yes, that is a quote from me. I get frustrated at times because the community matters to me a lot, but it's hard to make calls based on popular opinion. It took us 3 years of effort to finally pull Nexus from production and within the first two months of it being absent we heard calls for it's return. To the people who are asking, yes - there were many polls. Leowarrior's profile has a few of them if you wish to investigate them, we didn't do official polls because we knew the general community response at that time would have been "Ofc we want nexus removed stop polling just do it". In the end we worked silently on the goal. I'm glad nexus is gone (the hours I poured into that thing was unhealthy) but I'm still left with a flinch whenever it's mentioned that someone wants Nexus to return. It's a sore point, because it represents to me a continuous highlight on the ever shifting matter of community opinions. So, it's for that reason that in my time as an Administrator I tend to try to look deeper than unrest and investigate roots of unrest. If someone wants nexus, what is it that they really want? Nexus itself was poor, but if I hear someone asking for nexus I hear "I want a return of custom crafting options" or "I want something to do in off hours" or "I want something to grind". This is what I feel like I have to do. Taking opinions at face value has left us running around in circles over and over because of LotC's cyclic nature, what may be popular one month is the opposite the next month. One day I had everyone asking for raids to be looser, and the other I have people asking for raids to be non-existent. Maybe I'm paranoid, or maybe I'm reading way too much into things - it's hard to see fault in ourselves sometimes, but after working with LotC for so long it's the only way I know to approach topics like this. And yes, at times it does mean that I tend to argue against popular community opinion, especially if there is a reason to do so. Sometimes we make gameplay decisions that people don't like for the betterment of the server, such as voting mina rewards. We see the need for it, and try to do it the best we can, but it's still not going to be something incredibly popular with everyone.

> literally spent an entire day dedicated to increasing communication, works full time and yet comes home exited to work on/for lotc "No passion btw XD" XD my mans, XD. Glad you don't pick admins, you wouldn't know passion if it hit you on the head. I don't stick around because I want to stroke my own power ego, the power trip disappears after about a month on the team. About a month in you realize the scope of management as an administrator, realize how much you've got to juggle, and realize how much stress it is. Administrators without passion drop like flies. I'm here because of passion, because of vision. But of course, clearly I don't have passion and should step down - I'm contributing nothing to the server!!!!!

- We're currently attributing the retention issues to issues getting new players involved in the community (either through getting lost on the roads or not being interacted with by people), new players not finding anything to do, or new players not really getting into roleplay properly. The monk project was a big effort to try to resolve that which should hopefully start up again and get traction soon, being in-game people to guide folks and teach them the ins and the outs of the server. Then trying to promote community activity with a bunch of stuff so that they can find people to interact with. I think it's a pretty good summary of the retention issues. - We have a general idea for media team director but there arent exactly people chomping at the bit, the team is very small. You'd be surprised at how few really want to do this, it's been like pulling teeth. - Running rules like that would be a headache. Maybe a live stream? I'm not sure. We should do more community reviews though. - Because honestly there are, at any given point in time, between 0 and 2 good admin candidates. Often leans to 0. If we have to kick someone out for activity, then we've got to hunt a new pick which will likely be subpar to the person we put there originally. The pick might come in and they might be bias, inactive, or a combination of the two and then we've reset the cycle. Suddenly we're back to priorizing finding a new admin, and our time is once again consumed by that creating an infinite cycle of not getting shit done. I'd rather work with an admin I can contact over discord every now and again when I need them and they'll be there vs working with an admin who can't do the job, who isn't there, who is incompetent, who is unmotivated, and unreliable. I need an admin I can message, ask them to do something, and they'll get it done and I know they will. I don't need an admin who is going to brush me off, ignore me, or just forget about what they need to do - and all too often you'll find candidates of the latter but not the former. So fishing for new admins every month when someone has a real life change is just absolutely detrimental to the team as a whole and eats far too much time. They'll be around when their real schedule allows them to be around more, but it'll fluctuate.

Ya, honestly I could probably have worded this more professional but at this point I felt the community wanted something a little more sincere than that and usual "I'm super professional 501" weren't doing anything. I didn't want to spend 24 hours carefully drafting up a response and going through every nitpick detail to make sure I can't be misunderstood. I did that, it sucks. If we're going to start communicating then I'm just gonna start talking, and hopefully that honesty is at least to a degree appreciated. If not then oh well