Advertising/whitelisting

[Rien]

I'd say LVM has a fairly stable playercount right now, it's not high, but it's consistent.

However, if we were to post just one topic at the Minecraft forums, advertising our server, we'll be sure to get more players. (90% of the server-topics there have multiple pages of posts, so one can assume that MC servers are fairly popular). This raises one issue though: griefing. We have a very useful plugin to detect griefing right now, but that doesn't mean we can simply stop caring about griefing now. If we are to advertise LVM, I'd personally like to have a whitelist. This means that not just anyone can join the server, but people have to apply, and get added to a 'list' of people who can join. This means two things; less people joining, but also better control of who plays on the server. On top of that, we currently have a max of 20 playerslots, having a whitelist would ensure that we wouldn't have a full server all the time.

I'd like to hear some thoughts on this, do you agree with advertising? if so, do you agree with a whitelist? let us know.


P.S. - Because only MacSto and thiaZ have access to this forum section, I'd like to hear some opinions from the management as well.

P.P.S. - I have a tendency of writing 'serious' topics at night, this has the nasty side-effect of my posts sometimes making less sense than they do in my head. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them.

[Lithirm]

I think that sounds reasonable.

I think we should focus more on controlling griefing than getting an insanely high player count. When we can control the griefing at the current player count we can start thinking about increasing it. And I think having a whitelist would be a good way to control that. No randoms will be able to join and just destroy stuff.

[MacSto]

I am glad this topic has been brought up, as I have been thinjing quite a bit about this. As much as I don't like whitelists, I think 1. The Minecraft Community is used to this, and serious players will go through the steps to fill out an application or whatever, and 2. It is the most effective way to stop griefing. The way I would recomend we go about this, is adding a level in Permissions below Builder, and call it "Noob" or something. This would be the default class, and build rights would be set to false. As far as Advertising goes, I think a well-written post at the Minecraft Forms like Rien said would be a good idea. Also, I would really like if we could register the domain "LVMineground.com", and use that as the hostname for the server. We could advertise this instead of an IP, and it makes for a clean, user friendly experience. And who knows, maybe if it's visited by a web browser, it can be forwarded to our board on the forums.

Edit: Also, instead of the "Noob" class having no build rights, what if noobs spawned in a different world where they could fuck around and do what they want, but they don't have build rights in the main world? Then, they can apply or whatever for rights in the main world. This way when people join, they can actually do something. Just a thought

[thiaZ]

I think we should focus more on controlling griefing than getting an insanely high player count.

That's all I have to say.

[Lithirm]

I've been griefed about five-six times now and it's getting really annoying.

I think having a whitelist would be the easiest and most effective way to control this. Plus, we'll have a list of anyone who could've griefed instead of having everyone who bought minecraft.

MacSto's idea of having a class lower than builder is nice as well. But just to make things clear; that'd be instead of a whitelist, right?

And as for the domain for easier connections; the only thing I can think of is LVP's finances, but last I heard having a domain isn't especially expensive. So as long as there's money, why not.

[Kase]

I don't even know if I'm allowed to post here, but I'll just do it. 

I've been in the server for a while and all I saw from newcomers is griefing, rarely building something, and then leaving. Having a whilelist is a good idea actually, griefers might get annoying, making regular players quit and go somewhere else.

Having a high playercount is not worth the griefing it may cause. Besides that, I'd rather play with a few friends I know well than with 19 players I never saw before.

[MacSto]

Along with our new website (http://mineground.com), we also introduced a build application system. This requires new players to submit an application before they have build rights. Now that we have such a system in place, what are thoughts on advertising? Like Rien said in the start post (about 3 weeks ago) we do have a stable player count (9-14 average), but that doesn't mean we shouldn't get more players