User blog:Elestan Larcalaite/On Servers

Now, this may be a bit hard to understand in parts, but I think that it would greatly help server owners to read it, but that's just my opinion.

These days, there are lots and lots of servers that focus entirely on roleplay, but the amount of complexity needed can givee nearly everyone a headache. The biggest problem with it is to have a great system with everything, for each faction, joining, land, etc. (probably not the best explanation, but ask about it and I will explain it in greater detail in the comments). Now, this mod makes that problem SO much easier to solve that its quite unbelievable. I mean, it wouldn't take that much to crank up the difficulty on the server and do a few other things, and that's all you really need with this mod to make a roleplay server, but people are just not using that right now, nearly all the servers, despite trying, are very copies of one another, with a few minor differences in each one (not trying to offend anyone, but that's how it is). I mean, this mod gives you a map, many, many factions with full detail on them (content is another thing that roleplay servers usually lack or can't make much of), a more realistic weapon system, alignment, NPCs, etc. etc.

Now the second big issue with servers with this mod is the size of the community. You will all propably all go: "Ew, advertising," while advertising actually helps servers. I mean, the size of this comunity is very small (I'd have a guess of 1000 people at most, maybe?) and that is not enough to make a good server and is the main reason why nearly all servers die off at one point or another. Players are gonna leave servers more than the amount of people that will systematically join a month after the release of the server, so its good to make as much hype around the release of a server without being spammy (advertising is not neccesarily bad, its only bad depending on how you use it. It can help with making your server better A LOT) and the second thing that can possibly solve this (or at least decrease it) is telling all your friends, or just mentioning it in conversation, in the community or out of it. This is more on the players than the staff, as the staff are really just a few people. This is pretty much the only thing that I can think of that can even help to solve this problem without being spammy, but share your ideas. Now, this doesn't mean that being an extremely small community is bad, I mean it's a lot easier to make friends, EXTERMINATE problems in the community, etc.

Now, there's one more thing that I want to talk about, and that's applying to join a server, but you guys choose if you want to hear it, as this is already a very long post.

I may make a series to voice my ideas, but I want to hear what everyone thinks first. Constructive criticism is very highly appreciated, expecially from server owners and staff.