Okay, more crazy questions from me. Why does it seem like players move around servers constantly, I'm sorry I don't believe everybody here has A.D.D. I understand when you leave a server for such reasons as no one is friendly, the server sucks, the admins are horrible, no one is ever on, and so on. What I find strange, my opinion of course, is why there is a need to be on many different servers at once. Back in the day you might have been branded a suspicious person, no joke. Loyalty, I would say sticking to one server is loyalty, especially if that server takes good care of you, few problems etc. If the server was to change the way it did things I could understand it perfectly. I'm asking this because my family has been running a server for like 2 years, and about a little less than a year ago we launched a little bit bigger and got a lot of new people on the server, what I noticed was you get the initial onslaught of let me come see it because it sounds cool, then they leave, and you get this is nice I'm staying here forever, and they leave in about 2-3 weeks. Then you get the really strange ones, they come and stay for a few months, build quite a few things, and then they leave. What your left with is like 2 more die hard people than you started out with, lol. That is an exaggeration, but you get the point, and in some people's defense at least for our server we changed styles and still haven't brought the new one up, but just talking about before it seems like people don't stay that long at all. Even on the mega servers, I bet it is exactly the same, just have more people. Just wondering what your thoughts are, if you see this differently. One more thing, seems like everyone wants to run their own server!
I have one server I'm loyal to, but right now I'm waiting for the plug-ins to update to 1.0.
Currently I'm checking out alternative servers to play on. If one gets infested by greifers, power-mad admins, spammers, or other idiots, I switch servers.
There's also boredom. If there's never anyone on when I am, I might as well play single-player. And once I've built a cool house, if there's no community feel, I leave my builds as a gift and move on.
For some people building is more fun than having, so once they've built up a fully working farm and a massive castle, the challenge is gone, so they move on.
Yeah, as I said, I see that, those are all good reasons. I will say though, with all the new things to do in minecraft it is well beyond having a working farm now, but I can see that point, I understand that is just my opinion. We too are waiting for the 1.0 update, but we are running vanilla for now with the loyals, lol.
People leave for many reasons - friend starts running a server, game came out and they're not playing any more, another server interested them, things started to feel stale.
I've been in casual guilds in MMOs - the same happens. You get a small core of people who've always been there, and then a load of people coming and going. If your server has some kind of site, you could potentially use that as a form of contacting them after they've gone (usually people tie forum accounts to a mail address) and see why they went.
For a lot of people, there's a honeymoon period where everything is new, fresh and exciting. This often leads to people announcing their intention to stay forever. Eventually that wears thin, and there needs to be something else to keep them coming back. If the server isn't very chatty or coordinated, that tends to be when the stale feeling kicks in. You get to that point where you might as well play singleplayer. Another thing that keeps people coming back is if you know them in RL, then it's a shared bonding experience. If you have a voice server, it can help give people a sense of belonging to voice chat... helps with me anyways lol.
At the end of the day, you're likely to experience a fair amount of churn. I'd say get used to recruiting over and over if you want to keep your server busy.
Well spoken, I concur with all. Please don't take what I'm asking the wrong way, I'm looking for opinions that's all. I'm used to the recruiting, it was just a throw it out there question, so far there has been really good insight. My kids and I along with some extended family used to play an mmo called RO and yes we had the same thing there, core group and then the comers and goers. Thanks for the input.
Is the chat active?
Is the chat just random spam?
Is it laggy?
Does the spawn look like it was made in a minute?
Did the admins greet me upon joining the server?
Does it have the features I want (survival, PvP, anti-griefing and security plugins, etc.)?
Are the admins mature?
If I don't have a good impression the moment I log in, then I just leave.
Currently I'm checking out alternative servers to play on. If one gets infested by greifers, power-mad admins, spammers, or other idiots, I switch servers.
There's also boredom. If there's never anyone on when I am, I might as well play single-player. And once I've built a cool house, if there's no community feel, I leave my builds as a gift and move on.
For some people building is more fun than having, so once they've built up a fully working farm and a massive castle, the challenge is gone, so they move on.
Raise your flag!
Well spoken, I concur with all. Please don't take what I'm asking the wrong way, I'm looking for opinions that's all. I'm used to the recruiting, it was just a throw it out there question, so far there has been really good insight. My kids and I along with some extended family used to play an mmo called RO and yes we had the same thing there, core group and then the comers and goers. Thanks for the input.
Is the chat active?
Is the chat just random spam?
Is it laggy?
Does the spawn look like it was made in a minute?
Did the admins greet me upon joining the server?
Does it have the features I want (survival, PvP, anti-griefing and security plugins, etc.)?
Are the admins mature?
If I don't have a good impression the moment I log in, then I just leave.