Danny

Salmon Red!

Looks like I'll be seeing what I wanted then.

I want to see RP hubs that people go to roleplay in, but also people having the ability to have their own homes in freebuild regions in even the most centrefold areas of the map (fully achievable by just giving incentives to arriving at the hubs). I want to see a simple set-up of just four main nations with their sub-races being somehow integrated into their overarching nation's cities, of which there should be but one per nation - with maybe an extra town if population allows it (again, simplicity is key to things like this - don't overstretch the population, but don't over-centralise either). I want to see an end to overcomplexified systems of governance or nationhood with the eradication of systems that are based off of medieval-esque systems of religion, taxation and government (that, however, is just my personal preference -- if the nations want that, I as an individual won't stand against it). I want to see a map and a server that is built around the concept of fun roleplay rather than mega-serious roleplay. I want to see a friendlier introduction to LotC through the tutorial experience that is being created and this is something I am drooling at seeing. I want to see a bigger, better, stronger and funner server for everyone - a server that caters to more than just settled roleplayers, but also to Minecrafters who have just learned what roleplay is - I want to see us achieve what I believe the true purpose of LotC is: a platform through which people have the chance to play Minecraft and roleplay simultaneously, where skill and ability are not a barrier to fun, and where the main focal point is simply letting people play Minecraft in a similar way to its original form, but with the extra value and fun of roleplaying through it, with neither of these being a priority over the other. That's just me though.

I think the true 'failure' (perhaps a bit too strong, but still very much apt) of our wiki comes from two things: It's isolation from the rest of the site, and its (quite frankly) ugly nature. It's located off of the main site and requires external registration, etc to change which is never a good thing and the design of it is truly not that great. These are two birds we are able to hit with one stone, and it is something that I'm gonna go pester Tythus about some time soon. We're totally able to integrate the wiki on our own site, under lotc.co/wiki/ or wiki.lordofthecraft.net, whatever, and make it so that as soon as you're registered on the forums you're registered on the wiki, that's totally within our means. That removes the isolation aspect - and if you're worrying about any security risks there, it's totally safe - we can make it so only certain groups can edit it, perhaps creating a new player rank that requires 10 posts or something before they can change the wiki. That way we can allow almost every single player the ability to alter the wiki without needing to worry about spam-bots, or anything like that. Then, we can also solve the design issue at the same time. The real issue with most wikis is they're ugly as anything - let's be honest, they rarely have nice designs that fit in with the rest of the site they're part of. We've always really had that, except for the period of time we did actually have a design on the wiki that did match our sites. At the same time as sorting out that user authentication / database issues, we're also fully able to set the wiki so that it pulls the design of our website and implements that. To do this, it is third-party software we'd use, but it's tried-and-tested software and it'll let us quite frankly have the best wiki we've ever had. By removing that isolation and hardship of registration from using/editing the wiki we'll encourage a much more community-based approach as you'll be able to simply flick over and make an instant change - and by sorting our the appearance of it, it'll become more more user friendly for everyone and new players won't look at it and be terrified by a formidable design and fortress of content. This does mean that we'll again have to move every single piece of wiki content over to another wiki, but if we go ahead with a plan like this, then we'll probably not have to do that again. Besides, we can make sure it isn't just down to a handful of people to make that transfer this time, because of the ease of access, anyone can help. Like I said, I'll catch Tythus at some point and chat with him about it. I think this will revitalise the wiki and really bring it much closer to us as a community - rather than it being the furthest away piece of the site.

When I was an administrator I tried to keep in touch with the spending and revenue of the server and it was extremely rare for us to be in a situation when we didn't get enough money to run the server properly. When I returned recently, I did talk with Tythus and I know things are still going very much the same as that, except with a recent giant boom in donations that's down to the change in perks: this is a novelty however. When we discuss the money that LotC takes in, there's two main sources. The primary, but unreliable source, is donations - we can get anything from a few, to twenty donations in a month - that means that it can amount to $300 or $100, it just depends on the month really. That's then subsidised and supported by the money raked in from advertising - that's a surprisingly large sum of money, I was quite shocked when I discovered quite how much it was. I used to have access to both of the numbers for these revenues, but I obviously don't anymore. You're misgiven in thinking that we rarely get enough to keep things operating, because I can assure you that isn't the case. When you look at spending, however, you need to pay attention to the fact that we pay out for more than just server hosting. We pay for a web server, for DDOS protection on it and TeamSpeak, then more DDOS protection on the Minecraft server. We then have to fork out money on things such as forum skins, renewing licenses to software and in the past we have paid technicians to work on plugin projects for us up until we got the team we have now - I have full faith in the fact that Tythus doesn't skim any money from donations like some suggest. Indeed, the extra revenue from this month, as far as I'm aware will go towards redesigning the website for when the time comes IPB 4.0 decides to dance into our lives. I don't think it's right that we make it total public knowledge quite how the funds are spent - it really isn't actually people's business, as bad as that sounds. However, I feel more visibility must be made within the admin team itself as (unless things have made a u-turn), it isn't ever that clear how it's spent to them either. We were going to sort that a while back, hence why we actually registered a company and were going to create accounts in its name for handling money so every admin would be aware of expenditure, etc but we never finished that (and indeed the company still exists with entirely no assets at all!) I don't think, however, making public mention of whether we are in surplus or deficit is a problem however - I know Tythus has before had to supplement server funds to ensure things kept running smoothly - and I think things like that should be told to the playerbase, just not exact figures as I don't see any necessity in that. The server does handle quite substantial sums of money - over the entire server lifespan, I ain't sure quite how much has gone through, but I know that the sum for about 1/2 of it was extremely large (although the figure escapes me). I don't think it'd be fair to discuss things such as that publicly unless it was stored in the company accounts, as it isn't right for us to reveal the movement of money in and out of Tythus' own bank account. If there was enough demand for it however, I would agree with exact figures being revealed - even though I don't support the principle, if the demand is there sure - but only if it was going into the server's accounts.

I don't agree that the change that LotC has experienced is irreversible. Yeah, it does come down partly to the fact we've grown to know each other and we've built an integrated community around that, however, things have already been changed that show progress is possible and many of these changes are entirely possible, and undoubtedly would yield good results for the server and its progress. Take cliques and elitism for an example - these are things progress has been made on already, admittedly not enough, but the progress that has been made proves it's possible. I hold the view that the way the server was in the past largely did come from the community's attitudes, but those attitudes and indeed the actual servers play-value both directly stemmed from the systems and ways the staff had implemented their aims. I will give you it - /help isn't particularly ideal currently. I'm not quite daft enough to believe it is - however, with a fuller system it would work well. The /help command is these days fairly clean and easy to use and get, much more so than other Minecraft server's, and that's something unique to us that most definitely gives us the edge. I concede, there is benefits to a GUI system, but I still strongly believe in the command based Minecraft-default system. I'd love to discuss it with you and see if we could come up with a system that the staff team would agree with and one that the entire server would benefit from. In an ideal world, a system where players (upon first logging in) get the choice to use either a command-based or GUI-based interface would be perfect. Whether that's too much work to expect or not, I don't know, but that'd be a brilliant one. If we're recalling the incident that I'm thinking of with regards to an antagonist, we simply had different opinions on how we could tackle an antagonist system on the Verge. I didn't state exploration should be the only purpose, if I remember rightly, I had different ideas on how the Verge should feature antagonists and when they should be introduced. I'm more than happy to discuss that with you if you want me to, but I think the primary focus of this thread and my original thread shouldn't be on mistakes I've made in the past with regards to not implementing these ideas fully, nor the mistakes the staff team as a whole made by not pushing forward such vital changes.

I never shot them down as an admin, I just didn't put my full weight of support behind them and didn't realise the necessity of them - I did exactly what almost every staff member did and didn't realise the importance of them, and I take the full blame for that and as I've done before, I apologise for it. I did, near the end of my time, realise the importance of them (and many I pushed for before 3.0 also) but I didn't ever push enough to try and get them in and I totally appreciate that. I suppose through returning and not being where I was prior, it's been an eye-opener to the realisation that we now do need to push extremely hard for these changes. What I'm doing now is encouraging the current staff team to not make the mistakes that I made by not making these changes become reality.

Heya Tel, cheers for replying to the thread. Just before I reply to certain things, I want to clarify that I misunderstood the land system that's going to be actually used for 4.0 - it wasn't given a very clear description with regards to the fact there will be central free land, so that's not an issue anymore. I'm still cynical about the actual land claim system, but that's probably the only thing I feel we can play a risk-game on and if it doesn't work, it's a simple remove. We just have to be ready to take it off if it doesn't work and if it doesn't provide the fun factor. With regards to the economy, I don't discuss not having one / not allowing an economy to form because that's really not something that's possible. What I discuss is not focusing on building one as we've done in the past - every time we have made an attempt to design things based on the ideal of creating a working economy, it's failed and pushed us further from success. The ideal of building an interdependence on players for resources in the hope of encouraging roleplay is simply that, an ideal. Apologies if I misunderstand you, but that's certainly what it appears from what you've said. It doesn't provide any enjoyment value to the server, and indeed it hinders players further from reaching that 'fun' appeal of the server. I don't know if that is what you're suggesting, as you really haven't made it quite that clear or not. My other understanding is that you agree there shouldn't be restrictions on the economy or a focus on building one, but instead players should have the capacity to still make use of one of the vital mechanics of Minecraft, that one being crafting, unhindered. That's truly what I believe, however, I believe they should be able to do it via the default methods, that's another argument however. It is not true that with the removal of warfare-based roleplay people will turn towards trollplay or harassment - it means that, with the encouraging from the staff and the introduction of RP hubs and appeal to go to these places, people will turn to community based spontaneous roleplay as we've seen in the past. I'll miss out your second section regarding Regioning, as like I mentioned prior, there was some confusion regarding that and whilst I am still sceptical, I'm personally happy to see how that goes And then finally onto our old argument regarding UI systems. I ain't gonna return to the debate that we've had time and time again already because it's evident that we're both just as strongly opinionated on it and we ain't gonna budge. What I will say, however, is that I still fully believe that by introducing alien GUIs and brand new concepts on how to play Minecraft, you over-complicate things for new players. People are used to being able to type in commands and having the ability to type /help to get an easy understanding of what they can do, that's something every Minecraft player can do and gets, it isn't a learning curve at all - but I still strongly say that introducing these alien GUIs is a learning curve. I love the tech team and the plugins they create, and I think you're great too, but I think that your GUI system just isn't what the server needs to succeed. I appreciate the reply and I hope you didn't take any offence from any of my remarks or any of them as a direct focus on yourself or your team, however, I stand entirely by everything I stated in that OP (except with regards to land) because I fully know that if we want LotC to return to a strong position, with a large population and growth, great appeal to new players and for it to really achieve it's aim of being a truly fun, free roleplay server we need to take a step back and realise that we have to adopt the Aegisian way of thinking, return to Aegisian techniques and systems but of course improve on them (as there's much to be improved), but this time ensure that we climb up the correct mountain by the correct path, rather than losing our footing and jumping into the crevasse we did before.