A note on the poll, may still be interesting to get those 2 numbers but I hit enter, not tab, so those are the only options, by mistake! If we want EMC to not only survive but thrive then we all need to do our part. We will all do it in different ways. The staff does a bang up job and is very responsive in taking care of all of us. Along with them the supporters and long time players have invested a lot in this community and server. However all of us can help in other ways and I think Voting is one of the best ways... Let's help move EMC up those vote ladders and watch the new players arrive. We have a fairly large and fairly active community yet we usually fail in being higher ranked than some of the one with much smaller communities. On 7/21 at about 2pm EST here is where we are: 27th on TopG.org 17th on ServerPact.com 96th on Minecraft-Mp.com 64th on Minecraft-Server-List.com 29th on Minecraft-Server.net 136th on MinecraftServers.org 3rd on MinecraftServers100 8th on MinecraftServers.biz Voting is not just about what the server will give you in a reward but voting pushes up the rank which in turn brings in new players. New players brings more fun, more rupees, more builders and maybe more supporters to EMC. With all that aside, EMC does reward each of us for voting and for voting at more places. Do you vote just at one site each day? Do you vote on any alts? Using a device (phone, tablet, computer) on different ip addresses can allow you to vote for your alternates or other family accounts. Did you know that you can vote for each account you have on minecraftservers.org and it does not restrict by ip just name each day. Have you explained voting to new players, including benefits to them? If you are crazy aggressive some allow voting every 12 or 18 hours. Voting is not hard. Voting does not take that much time. ...but you do have to take the time to vote.
Why is there no option in the poll for "I do vote"? Anyway: I vote around 8 PM, and when on iPad, as I usually am, I vote on the top four sites only. In the event I'm on pc, I vote on all sites available. Voting does cost a lot less time since this generation of Google's Captcha science!
Voting has surely been quite important for me... if I hadn't won a voter's block in the first ever voting competition, I might not have been here now!! :o
Its pretty obvious that you guys may not be the focus of this post but great examples of those long time players who've invested a lot of effort I mentioned. Some people do vote, some vote one website a day, others once a month and some never. Just trying to help get more votes for the server, no judgement on how anyone votes today. I tried to offer up some though why some may want to vote more than they have if they can.
OMG, a chance to impress aya and look cool too in front of the Empire Lets get some prejudice out of the way: (why would you want to impress your alt? shes not my alt. Why would you NOT want to impress your alt? shed kill me). Proof enough? I thought so too
I try to vote when I can. I'll vote and get a good streak going (my bonus is like 80) and then I miss "a day." Oops! I log in to vote and keep it going, and it says "last vote - 4 days ago." So I'm like "screw it" and just stop voting. Rinse and repeat.
But doesn't your streak stay, nowadays? I think the times of resetting to 0 for missing a day are long gone. And I was the first to suggest to change that, I do believe.
Hmm...To be honest, it is that painstaking task that I do every knight, because I care for my kids, and I care about the Empire. Why did I say painstaking? Well, contrary to 607's experience, I loath google's captcha. One night I literally spent over 2hrs, almost 3hrs simply trying to vote for 8 sites. Why? Because that ......hmm... yea...shouldn't say that....but anyways, I think google may have way too much fun and maybe they get drunk when they pick the pictures that I end up getting, and while some of the street signs are clearly hanging over in the next square, it probably doesn't really count. I have seen instances where picking the small signs in the distance are necessary, and times they are not. I have assuredly clicked the correct cars more times than I care to consider, and yet, if I get in too big of a hurry, and click the next one before it completely....painfully....slowly....SLOWLY refreshes....then I may jinx the entire chance and find myself back at square one yet again. The BEST site for voting that has taken things up a "Notch" in my book is ServerPact. Simple. Effective. Quick! I have seriously thought of making a video and posting it on youtube...yea....google's tube site, and rant about their captcha. Oh yea, and before you waste time posting that maybe it is my internet connection, no...it isn't. I usually sustain a 170mb connection. Everything on the net works fine, but voting is problematic. Oh, and yea, I have tried other browsers also to no avail. I recently thought everything was going to be great when I discovered the audio portion in which they just wanted me to listen to numbers and type them in. Over time even this was found to support my possible drunk scenario though as the way those people were enunciating the words...simply ridiculous at times. The numbers, however, were still doable...but then google had to go and tweak stuff again....now they want one to type in random phrases...bah...that is more than I care to do....especially when half of them start getting all kinds of static in them. So I have returned to pictures...as painful as it is. On average it usually takes me about 30 minutes to vote for the 8 different chars - 1 per site. I would attempt to do the 8 x 19 chars, but heh...not enough time in the day to accomplish that kind of task. Best case scenario would be 8 hrs sleep, 8hrs work, 9.5hrs voting?...nope that doesn't add up That is a nice streak there ThaKloned, I would like to think if I was able to get 2 votes per day, I would be in that range too, but since I bust up my voting for all the different people in the family, I trek along at 1 per day. So why did I take the time to blab all of this? Yea, maybe some was to vent...but truly this topic rings true with me, and I get where mjnoe70 is coming from. As a supporter, and somewhat long time player...I think I have crept over the Empire time frame halfway mark or am at least close, and I too have found myself thinking about how to generate more interest here. So while some of you may denounce the move as treason, I decided to browse another server and see what they had to offer. I only spent a month or two in that alternate reality, and no, I am not going to go into details about that server's pro's and con's, but will say there were some of both. One thing related to this topic though that I would like to mention is they actually had 13 sites on which one could vote vs. the 8 here. To me, this could be yet another option of possibility to get our name out in more places, and attract people on those other sites. People there may not find out otherwise, and would never know what they are missing out on here in the Empire. Ultimately, I feel the staff are doing a good job, and as time passes, we will get several cool updates that will really enhance the experience here. In the meantime, even staff that may not be directly involved in bringing us the bigger implementations such as Empires and Dragon Tombs are doing their part by offering us all sorts of cool things to do in the Empire - mining events, holiday events, arena events, and even some stuff that is not in the Empire....but is...hmm....sorta... out of this world https://empireminecraft.com/threads/event-going-to-the-moon.72733/ The voting sites / advertising mechanics will help generate some more traffic, but it is the atmosphere, and the community's interaction with those newcomers that will cultivate an environment which will help retain more of the traffic we are getting. If we get 100 new players a day, and boosting our vote status across the board were to say even double that number to 200 players a day, but we are only retaining 5% we would only go from 5 new dedicated players to 10, whereas, if we simply work harder on bolstering our retention, we could not only raise the number of people that stay, but in turn they would help vote and in turn help boost the vote stats, which in time would generate even more people if we were operating on a higher retention rate. So what does this mean, and how does it apply to me? Well, personally...it means I need to find a way to spend less time playing with the dark side ( Star Wars Game), and push to be more active in game here again. I am somehow reminded of a seed planted in the ground... for a long time it appears nothing is really happening...but it is...beneath...and so it is here behind the scenes I suspect....soon it will break forth, and we will watch it grow into something grand Opportunity Lies on the Horizon - Let's Go Seize It! KnightZer0ne Tempered Outpost Founder
@KnightZer0ne: Are you logged in to Google? I don't actually have to do the Captcha that often. Perhaps about half of the time, or a little more. Also, I don't think Google's got anyone to do with what is counted as the correct answer: I'd guess it simply compares your answers to that of others. That would be why it sometimes gives you two, even if you did the first one perfectly: that first one would be a puzzle that hasn't been done by a lot of other people yet, so it doesn't yet know what could be the correct answer. At least, that's what I think is going on.
I would almost love to see a video on this. This is not supposed to sound bad but I vote for 7 accounts on 3 devices (sometimes 4, sometimes only 2) but have to spread votes out due to IP issues. I can vote for all those in roughly 10 minutes. As far as "serverpact" I would like to agree but the downside to them is I would lose many votes if they all move to that type of validation since they do not allow mobile devices to vote. Having kids and family play is a great thing but when it comes to voting the IP restrictions are a real killer. Making device restrictions will make it worse. As a reminder, this really wasn't a debate over how hard it is to vote (which may vary) or really about voting streaks. It is that to survive, EMC will require supporters and players. Voting is one of the best ways to ensure we have some traffic, more players online, possibly more supporters and likely even more voters.
Just to avoid confusion here: 607 is absolutely correct. This got changed quite some time ago, your vote streak won't "just" drop down anymore and if you miss one day you don't even have to worry about your streak because after the 'missed' vote you immediately pick up the pace again. I did some digging, this seems to be in effect ever since January 2015, just look here. Also noteworthy is that you can even be off by 6 or 8 hours (too late) and still get your vote streak increase bonus.
Nope, that was just the cap of 10 days. Before that update, your streak would drop for every missed day, but not to 0 at once, if I recall correctly. I don't really know when the first update that made it so your streak wouldn't drop to 0 immediately came out, actually... I do know it was after the first voting competition. I'd guess late 2013 or early 2014.
When I first started EMC and got settled in I voted often but then I slowly just stopped because I was lazy and it takes too much work ;-; Even now I WOULD vote but I am way too lazy and busy to do so xD
I used to vote like a year ago, but I am so annoyed with the voting system here. Like every day, I would vote and then my bonus would go down or wouldn't count. So, I gave up. :/
