Your rules suck. This isn't a server of a thousand players, it has at most around 100 on busy hours so it's pretty niche. You've said yourself that you were raised in a sheltered life, and now the biased and quite frankly obsolete beliefs about swearing have passed on from your parents to you. The hypocritical part is that you swear yourself while telling others not to do it because you think that it will somehow improve the server as a business model. The server has no doubt netted you a profit above a thousand USD, probably more, and most of that came from a time when chat was a casual and rules were lax. You lie to me in teamspeak as well, pretending that you want staff to not be seen as authoritarian figures but rather friendly members of the community. Now I see you've put in bold letters to "Respect Staff" after stating the rule "Respect other players." You yourself don't even view your staff as other players. I'm telling you this to snap you back to reality, I'm not trying to make your life hell. You are one of the few people I respect, because you never demanded it from me. You know that I'll never suck up to anybody, so I'm speaking based on every observation I've taken. You bring in a lot of new players with this fantastic voting concept, only to turn many of them away by attempting to bind them to rules that can be avoided by switching servers, and I'd do the same if I didn't enjoy hanging around you. If the server itself isn't enough to keep me here, then I imagine it'd be pretty tough for a new player to stay as well. With respect, Tristan
I'm sorry that I've offended you with the new rules, however you seem to be making a lot of false assumptions. The size of a server doesn't change how rules should be enforced. We never really defined a lot of rules and have been way to open with what people are and are not allowed to do. All this has caused is conflict and hatred between others. Building a community is important whether you have 10 active players or 10,000. Building a community requires people to feel welcome and appreciated by others. Condoning vulgar language and derogatory terms in open chat makes the community appear toxic to new players. This is just crap. It's not about me or my life. It's about being a server that is family friendly. Yeah, I don't like swearing a ton. So? I dare you to look at any of the top Minecraft servers that are in our market. 90-95% of them have strict rules against swearing. Most bring those rules into teamspeak as well (note: we don't). It's not just me that doesn't want to have profanity in chat, it's a massive majority of server owners who have realized that it does more harm than good. Also it's important to note that this rule has NOTHING to do with my own view on profanity. This is a calculated decision that is necessary for us to continue moving forward. I never swear on the server in public chat. Swearing is not banned on teamspeak, only in-game. The lax rules didn't make the server better. All it did was attract an audience that got used to having little to no moderation. Look at any medium sized server nowadays. The rules they define are far more strict than what I've laid out. I don't want staff to be seen as authoritarian figures, however after discussing with you I realized a fault in my argument. It would be wrong for me to task staff members with the job of enforcing the rules and not require players to respect their decisions. What I had discussed with you basically allowed anyone to openly question and attack staff members for their decisions. All that would do is make our staff look bad. However, it's important to note that I'm not suppressing "free speech" by doing this. I've provided players multiple outlets to complain/report invalid staff decisions of abusive behavior. I just want to keep it out of main chat to help us look better to prospective players. Separating "staff" and "players" in the rules section wasn't about making them appear as different groups of people. It was about defining rules. Staff can play the game just like anyone else, but if nobody takes them seriously why even bother having a moderation team? Staff have to appear somewhat authoritative because if they don't, their warnings have no teeth. I'm sorry, but this is just false. Please wake up and realize the average age of someone playing Minecraft multiplayer is ~11-12. Yeah, I run Mega more like a business now. You've noticed it, and so do others. As a business decision. I've determined that in order to appeal to our target audience, we need to be more family friendly. I have a very detailed analytics page and I can attest to the fact that we are holding more players longer for the first time in months. New players are staying on longer and becoming more engaged with the community. Forum usage has also increased significantly. I promise you we are not going to lose players over being more strict about rules. Trist, what you have perceived as a difference in our opinions is, in reality, your conflict with necessary decisions I've made in order to make Mega a better place for everyone. Trust me, I'd rather be more lax about the rules, but it simply cannot happen anymore. Being lax lead us into a massive ditch that started near the end of last year. If we want to stay relevant as a server, we have to realize that we aren't in the Minecraft Beta anymore and enforce the rules that attract new players. You also should know that I do value your opinion. I enjoy talking with you and trust that you are doing all of this for what you believe to be the best for Mega. I've had to make some really tough decisions in the last few months, but I stand firmly behind the tightening of the rules. However only time will tell what is right. Anyways, rules can always be changed if necessary. I hope you understand what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. Running a Minecraft server has never been more difficult. - Blue
Well, seeing as you've essentially dashed any hopes Ive had for bringing the few and rare people in our age group to the server, I am officially gone unless you change your mind in the future, because its nothing personal. Your lack of interest in server votes put you in that ditch by the way, not the lack of strict rules. I will pop on by to speak to friends, but my plans to contribute to the server will be spent with build teams who Id turned down for mega in the past. No hard feelings. Peace.
Don't let the door hit you on your way out Trist. These are the rules set by blue and seems like every time I see your post you are complaining about something
