Bad Time to Start Server?

Discussion in 'General Help' started by dragondeatth, Feb 11, 2015.

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    dragondeatth

    Hello :)

    I closed down my server almost a year ago, as a result of me needing a break from Minecraft. However, I'm thinking about starting the server up again, but is this a good or bad time to start a server? I've been hearing a lot about Mojang changing the ways servers are allowed to receive donations on. Is there a server owner who can quickly update me on what has changed and if the Minecraft community has grown/shrinked over the year I've been gone?

    Thanks a lot,
    - Dragon :D
     
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    quakemaster1209

    i believed it has shrinked.
    Before the recent changes my server used to have hundreds on at any given time.
    Since then there have been very few on and the recent donation changes make it harder to keep the server up to date and maintained.
     
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    LordDarthBob

    Mojang has said that they will begin enforcing the EULA, where you can only award cosmetic things like particle effects as a reward for donating. They have not begun to actually prosecute servers for it yet, though, so it's unlikely to be a problem.

    The Minecraft community has gotten a little younger as a lot of the original players have moved onto other games. Their younger siblings have moved in to fill their place. Smaller? A little.

    However, the current server market isn't great. At this point there are thousands and thousands of not-so-original
    servers (pvp!!!!spleef!!!nogreefzsurvival!!!creativeplotwooorld!!!play.theswagzznetwork.mcpro.com!!!!1!1!1) , owned, generally, by little kids who want to play god but really don't have any original ideas to contribute to the mc community. Everybody and their dog owns a server. Standing out among the crowd is getting increasingly hard, and with thousands of options the retention rate of players is really low. This makes developing a playerbase hard, as one of the key things that brings in players is lots of other players. Back in the day, if you launched a public server, you'd have players within a few weeks. Now, many good and not so good servers alike sit empty.

    TL;DR Running a server is fun and educational, but don't expect a ton of growth (and remember your target demographic.)
     
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    Bobcat00

    See:
    https://mojang.com/2014/06/lets-talk-server-monetisation/
    and
    https://mojang.com/2014/06/lets-talk-server-monetisation-the-follow-up-qa/

    The CraftBukkit staff went and quit in a hissy-fit, and one decided to DMCA the whole project, but the Spigot people have picked up the ball and created a 1.8 server. The catch is you have to compile it yourself, but they made it incredibly easy. See:
    http://www.spigotmc.org/threads/buildtools-updates-information.42865/
    This creates BOTH a CraftBukkit 1.8 AND a Spigot 1.8. Pick which one you want. You also need updated plugins like Essentials from:
    https://hub.spigotmc.org/jenkins/job/Spigot-Essentials/
     
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    mactso

    The number of servers and the number of players are both at record highs as of february, 2015.
    http://www.mcstats.org/global/

    However, supporting LDB's statement, there are an average of 6 players per server. (560k players and 100k servers).

    It's hard to differentiate and break out of the pack. And it's hard to remain stable because as soon as you hit 30 players, costs go up and support goes up. Prior to that point, people logging on to an empty server leave. And you end up with a series of people trying it out but not sticking because there are not enough people.

    I run a private server (it's free but we can't grow it or we'll have to move) and I play on a couple servers. Madrealms is good but struggles with critical mass. Gladius is good and suffers from overcrowding at peak hours (I have mined the same block 11 times).

    And people want different things. While there are a lot of young people, I just turned 54 and we have a half dozen 30-50 year old players on our server. I set up very hard core adventure areas which require 3-5 players to get thru with "Infernal Mobs" and custom bosses that require multiple players to defeat. Plus everquest like quests since I was a big everquest fan.
     
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