Minecraft Forums

At first, my thoughts echoed most of the "p2w is evil!!!! Report!!!!" attitude in this thread. I agree that servers selling $50 diamond swords have a problem, and shouldn't be allowed to exploit players as they do.

However, I tried starting a server without selling anything, and it's hard! A decent server will cost around $20 - $60 a month, (just for one that can hold around 40 players!!) and it's really hard to afford that kind of cost just for a game. Don't say you can run it at your house, I have a very beefy computer and it struggles when more than 4 people are on. Without some kind of income, it's just not reasonable to expect completely payment free servers to be the norm. So I added some custom items that can be crafted, or bought for real money. I balanced them against normal players by making them extremely weak at PvP by giving no armor bonus, but giving effects such as extra speed to the wearer or whatever. I think this kind of thing should be allowed, since no one is put at a disadvantage, and non paying players can attain these same items ingame.

You're welcome to disagree with me, but unless I get a reasonable complaint against what I'm doing by someone who actually plays on my server, I'm not going to change it. It works, no one has to buy ridiculous $50 "God ranks", and the benefits are mostly PvE.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. I play an FPS called "Uberstrike" with my friends, and it's absolutely overflowing with p2w. It's still a fun game, but the p2w is everywhere. People are putting up with it for the sake of having a fun time with their friends. That's why these servers need to be reported.

Not familiar with Uberstrike, are there player created servers?

Quote from 3Stag»

Not familiar with Uberstrike, are there player created servers?

Quote from TheFriendlyVillager»

There are player created games, yes.

It's a fun game, and my friends and I love playing private matches. But public matches practically require you to buy stuff. Although I did manage to win a few public matches, mostly through luck and some quick shots with a sniper rifle.

The point being, it's possible to work around EULA-breaking servers, and I wouldn't shed a tear if they were taken down. But perhaps we shouldn't worry about them quite as much as this thread says we should.

(off topic, but why is it, whenever I'm in a debate, I'm always the middle-ground person? I mean, seriously.)

Curse would not be bale to enforce the EULA, change or shut down any sort of server since they are a individual company.

They can, however, choose what they advertise.

So tell your friends and family not to support curse nor it products as long as it advertises servers violating the EULA.

That's about all that can be done in this matter.

Quote from TheFriendlyVillager»

There are player created games, yes.

It's a fun game, and my friends and I love playing private matches. But public matches practically require you to buy stuff. Although I did manage to win a few public matches, mostly through luck and some quick shots with a sniper rifle.

The point being, it's possible to work around EULA-breaking servers, and I wouldn't shed a tear if they were taken down. But perhaps we shouldn't worry about them quite as much as this thread says we should.

(off topic, but why is it, whenever I'm in a debate, I'm always the middle-ground person? I mean, seriously.)

You could do everything in your questions if you wish. It's your right to rederess, never let a company strong arm you into giving that up.

Remember as a consumer, I have ever right to: A.)Have an opinion about that company that I tell my friends and family. B.)Not support that company's products. There's nothing Curse can do to stop that.

Advertising servers that are against the EULA is a decision that was made by Curse and we're all perfectly free to not support that.if we wish.

It's may be "better", it may not be. They may have two completely responses to direct mail and whatever bigger pressure redress would create. I ,personally, do not care either way as I'll stay out of the servers regardless of weather or not you advertise them, but trying to talk down about a legitimate form of consumer response isn't something I'm going to agree with.

It is a form a redress, it is commonly done, and as much as you don't like it (for good reason) it's a perfectly legitimate option for anyone who does have a major problem with it.

Saw Your edit is after my post: I'm more than willing to drop it at your request.

Quote from CloudBeak»

Can we try to stay on topic? If you'd like to talk about Uberstrike, try PMing each other or post on the off-topic section.

Yes. Unless anything about Ubertrike relates to my analogy, please PM me about unrelated questions everyone.

Quote from 3Stag»

Ah, I see. Would that not come down to the game developers? I.e. They are responsible for the P2W and not the servers? MC is kinda the opposite, servers charging +$50 for a diamond sword etc.

I don't have a problem when people report these ridiculous servers, I'm just not able to sit right with suggesting all servers do this or should be taken down etc. Your "perhaps we shouldn't worry about them as much as the thread suggests" is a good summary.

In the end, I still don't see why people would give servers that charge these ridiculous prices the time of day. If the community as a whole stood up to it, or abandoned the servers, they wouldn't be able to get away with it.

But maybe something about the server attracts a player. Whether it's the building style, unique gamemode, or just a good community, something about the server attracts them. To use Uberstrike as an example again, I enjoy the simplistic gamemodes and small learning curve. I consider it a good game, except for it's p2w aspects.
So while calling for people to boycott a server is a nice idea in theory, in practice,these little details complicate things. This is why we have this EULA problem in the first place.

Quote from CloudBeak»

Can we try to stay on topic? If you'd like to talk about Uberstrike, try PMing each other or post on the off-topic section.

I honestly don't understand what the big issue is if a server chooses to follow the EULA or not. There are tons of games out there that are all pay to win when they say they are not. Take World of Tanks and other games in that family. Yeah you can eventually after many many months of getting your butt handed to you finally be able to upgrade to a half way decent tank. Or you can go to their site and spend money to be able to buy the tank that it takes you months to get normally. Same thing with world of warcraft, league of legends, a ton of mobile games among others all do the same thing. I personally don't see anything wrong with a server offering donators the ability to get a extra xp boost when mining and all for donating some money. Do i think they should specifically sell a insanely high level enchanted sword for the donation. NO. But you have to remember it costs a lot to host a server for people to play on. From everything from server/box rental, to websites, to internet fees if the person has their own box at home which they are using to host the server. I have hosted servers for 3+ years and have paid all of mine out of pocket. And I can tell you it is expensive. I average about 200.00 a month in fees just to run my server network. That includes my box and vps rentals, teamspeak, website and everything else i offer to my players to use as part of my network. I accept donations and have the entire time. Does some of the stuff i offer probiably break the EULA. Maybe. But honestly the entire EULA issue came up when Notch was selling Mojang. Does Microsoft care about the EULA? Doubtful since there are games owned by them and their child companies that have alot of pay to win features. There has even been talk that Microsoft will completely do away with the EULA in the next few months. If they do then that makes the entire point mute. And if you want to get very technical about it, any video that makes money from youtube advertising can be concidered to be breaking the EULA in its original form. So long story short, if you don't like a pay to win server then don't support them or play on them. They will change their tune if their servers start to go unused.

Guys, please don't start back talking. Just stay on topic Oh, speaking of EULA, would giving /fly for people who donate to get a rank be inbalanced? It sounds stupid that I would ask that yes however, i've seen some servers do it and I just want to be on the safe side.

Quote from alberts1boy»

-snippity snip snip-

Do a bit of research. Games like LoL are not p2w, but have cosmetic features which can be purchased.

Ironically, the EULA permits this.

To answer CrunchyBaki, /fly would be acceptable as long as it does not give a player an unfair advantage in a minigame.

Quote from TheFriendlyVillager»

Do a bit of research. Games like LoL are not p2w, but have cosmetic features which can be purchased.

Ironically, the EULA permits this.

To answer CrunchyBaki, /fly would be acceptable as long as it does not give a player an unfair advantage in a minigame.

I was using them as a example along with the other games i listed. I could be wrong on if they do have p2w. But I have heard others say they have had to pay money to get special stuff that would otherwise take them a large amount of time to get. I personally don't play that game b/c i just don't see the point of it. But I have played World of Tanks and the other games in that World of family. And I know for a fact that they are p2w when there are people that just joined the game and already have tier 5 tanks or tier 5 planes and i have been playing for four months and have barely gotten tier 2 level stuff much less tier 5. My point in my post was and still is that the entire EULA fiasco did not come about until Mojang was being dangled infront of potential buyers and some of them did not like that you had a EULA that was not being enforced. That is when it became a issue. And of course we all know that not long after they announced that they were enforcing the EULA it was announced that Notch sold Mojang to Microsoft. And if Microsoft is not concerned about the EULA then why is everyone else worried about it?

Quote from TheFriendlyVillager»

Do a bit of research. Games like LoL are not p2w, but have cosmetic features which can be purchased.

Ironically, the EULA permits this.

To answer CrunchyBaki, /fly would be acceptable as long as it does not give a player an unfair advantage in a minigame.

Okay.... I'm going to put a end to this "topic" / Disccustion.

This is how it is: back in the old days of Minecraft, back when faction and other simmular "plugin" servers where coming around, al ot of people started playing that rather than vanilla Minecraft, which was good. It helped getting inspiration for vanilla/singleplayer work.if you look at statistics from this time period you will see a significant increase of server and player playing on those server. Not only did this revive Minecraft for players that had quit, a whole new community was bron from it the community known has "Bukkit"

Bukkit was the server engine that supported plugins and the majority of the server as this time was running on this engine, when allowing both players and Admins to use all these new features on their server new creativity was born. Server owners could set up new worlds containing new mechanics that the players could enjoy such as: Spleef, Hunger Games and much more. The best thing with "bukkit" and Bukkit servers was that anyone could code this thing called Plugin, or at least the one with a bit of a knowledge when it come down to coding. Not only did this bring players back to the game, it brought a lot of coders. Bukkit developed a forum to share and help both people using plugins and the masterminds creating the pluings, okay so far noting bad has really occurred, so where does this problem lay?

Minecraft was getting more and more subscribers that ever and business was going great, yes it took awhile for bukkit and all the developers to update all their pluings and such to the newest Minecraft release but apart from that everything was superb. Since the community was growing so rapidly, of course a lot of server owners invested in running servers for this game, I mean why not? So this brought us more and more server owners and more and more server to play on, and everyone of them was different from the other one. So what happens, Everything was looking good until Mojang of everyone was getting mail from 12 Years olds parents saying that "My kid is on a server and he needs to pay", "My kid just charged my credit card on some useless diamonds in YOUR GAME" What I'm tying to say here is that Minecraft has got a lot of emails phone calls etc, due to their kids going on and buying stuff on these 3rd Party servers, everything has a breaking point and in the 5 of June 2014 was Mojangs. At this time there where some extreme server that where having options to pay 500Dollars to get advantages, this is not okay you need to keep some sort of decency in the matter. However there was still servers that where fairly stable and some didn't even have a "pay to win" if you would like to call it that, but the point I'm trying to make here is that no one is forcing you to either pay on that server or even play on it. this is your decision and your decision only.

Result: a but load of servers went down and never came back, some survived with big wounds and some where still stable. Not everybody can run a Minecraft server, it takes time, effort and last but not least a big wallet. No one if running a public server for fun if that is what you think, it's the same thing, you would't get up to work 7 days a week to get paid. this was there jobs and they reinvested for both the server and upgrading and adding new features. I know some servers are Violating the current Eula, but there is no other way for them to keep up the server (thier income). So what you are suggestion now is donations "The answer to everything" no, that won't even keep up for a Monty server cost.

Ask your self: "If I join a server how likely I'm I to donate to this server"

Answer 1 (very generous person): Of course I would, I like to see the community grow and if my donation could improve current features, I'm In!!!

Answer 2 (fairly Generous person): I could maybe donate sometime in the future, when I feel like I'm really enjoying my stay on this server.

Answer 3 (Average Minecraft Player): I would not donate, I don't think I ever will. I have other things to spend my money on that a server I know I won't play on that often.

Analysation:

Answer 1: Is the least occurring player there is, this is a person that has money to spend, but doesn't know that he/she is going to find a new server or another game to play within the coming month.

Result: this player Is not a reliable source and a stable donation will not be for-filled.

Answer 2: This answer is going to be by the minority of players, where they wan't to have their fun before any payments are made.

Result: the chance of any payments are small, this player will either leave the server after a couple of weeks or support with 1 fairly small payment.

Answer 3: This is the majority of the current Minecraft players, they won't even bother looking into donations and what it will do, they are just looking for a server to stay one, meet friends and play around.

Result: this player has and will never be a reliable income source, He/She made it clear from the beginning that they won't support this witchery.

In my conclusion I will take the opportunity to say that I'm happy that Mojang took the decision they took, it clear a lot of bad servers, but they wounded the majority. It's not right when they majority will take the hit from what the minority did, but it is what it is. So I hope you now understand that it is impossible for a Minecraft server to get a 1:1 budget for a server. donations won't even cover as near as the whole server cost. there are more server breaking the EULA than you can imagine, but what they have done is to build up a strong and good community with their players. So instead of going around busting them, bare in mind that there are people like you and me that has but a lot of money into that particular server and that they are more losers that winners. It dosen't cost the server anything to give the player the abilities for money, but it costs the player; and if you are ready to pay money for flying, or diamonds you name it. Then the players on that server probably are having a good time, with friends and other.