As almost no-one will know, I've been doing some... market research... recently (that's the reason why I've been a little less active for the last few days), going onto other server's, seeing what they did good, seeing what we did better and seeing what they did better than us. Now, a few things before I start all of this: I purposely chose good, well kept and similar to EMC servers. I didn't try and find terrible ones, because that would have made all of this pointless. I went on every server on an unknown alt, just in case anyone from EMC happened to be connected. I connected to each server with a open mind and no opinions about them. Everything that I now think about each one is fully based on my experience there. I looked for the positives and the negatives. I did not go in looking to twist the server so that EMC looked better, I purposely played like normal so I could get the true story behind the server. The amount of servers, and what I looked at on each server varied - so don't expect me to use the same server for every example. Use the coloured * after each number to see what server I'm currently talking about. I will mention experiences from every server, so I wont miss out anything positive or stuff like that. Now, why did I bother doing this you may ask? Well, people seem to complain about everything currently - the updates, the staff, literally anything. I wanted to see if there was any reason for those people to be complaining, and if there was, why that reason existed. Anyway, I've blabbed on enough, let's get on with this... The moderationI think that the vast majority of us will agree, EMC's moderation is more than average. In fact, it's pretty damn good. Now, I wanted to see how these other server's were staffed. * Upon first login, I was friendly greeted by one of the mods on this server. I thanked them, and that was that. After about an hour of playing, that mod was screaming at someone in global chat (using CAPS and swearing - both of which the server prohibited) for accidently breaking a flower outside his house. This is one flower, and the mod knew it was an accident, he said so himself. However, after hurling abuse at this player, he permabanned them. Later on, a group of mods and admins were being very sexist towards another player, which again, the rules didn't allow. * I have to say, this server was, in general, very well staffed. The mods were all very fair and didn't ban people just because they felt like it. However, they did two mistakes that EMC doesn't have. Firstly, they didn't require evidence for a ban (and I'll confirm that there were no antigriefing or similar plugins on this server that could have meant they know for sure that this player griefed). What basically happened was a group of players said that someone had griefed them and due to the amount of people saying it, they instantly permabanned the player. The second thing was the the server was overstaffed. People complain that EMC don't have enough staff, well what happens when you overstaff a server was shown here. Mods were repeatedly disagreeing with each other, meaning someone who should (and originally) got a 5 min ban, was banned about 7 times for varying lengths of time. It turned out that this server's mod application was based on your building skills. * This server's was next to EMC standard if a mod was logged in when an incident happened. They were all very friendly and more than happy to help. However, if no mods were online then nothing could be done about the problem, since there was no system like /report. So, what does it show? Well, I hope you now appreciate how good all the mods we have here are. They'd never hurl abuse at someone, ban people for stupid little reasons or without evidence. You may think there's not enough, but maybe you'll reconsider - after all, they have tools which mean they can kick/ban/see all without being logged in. Starting on the ServerEveryone who joins EMC has to complete the tutorial using the Empire Guide - I'm sure we all know that. Well, let's have a look at how other servers do it. * This server took a pretty unique approach at the tutorial, and I will admit, I liked it more than EMC's. The setting was in the sky, on some floating islands - it really did look beautiful. You walked around the sky worlds (there was a path that you could follow to prevent you getting lost), and when you stepped on a trigger block (a pressure plate surrounded by redstone lamps with an emerald block behind it) it would explain a small part of how the server worked. It was a very long tutorial, but the views and how well everything was set out just made it all worthwhile for me, and based on the number of new players the server had, I think other's agreed. However, you couldn't access the main world without being voted in by 3 people and have completed the tutorial - which sounds bad, but honestly wasn't - the greylist area was designed amazingly well. The only thing I wasn't too keen on was that if you needed to check something, there was no guide - you'd have to redo the tutorial. * This server was pretty basic when you started. You'd be given a basic starter set of food and tools, and had the option to read the commands and rules. Most people didn't take up the chance based on what chat looked like. So while EMC's tutorial isn't exactly the funnest thing ever, it does the job. Improvement to it would be nice, yes, but at least your explained everything very clearly. PluginsAs we all know, EMC's plugins are, on the whole, custom made or altered. People sometimes complain about them, yet I seem to be able to put every other server's that I've found under one simple category. **** While used pretty creatively, the plugins were all off Bukkit.org and not altered at all beyond the config file. Just out of curiosity, I also downloaded the original version of Residence (EMC uses an edited version of this), just to see how many changes had been made. There are significant additions on EMC, such as /res reset, /res claim, /res unclaim, /v (remapped version of /res tp), /res tpset, and much much more. I think it just shows how special EMC is with it's plugins. Everything works almost perfectly on them, and when something does bug out, the staff work hard to try and sort it. Sure, bugs happen, but that applies to every server. DonatingI don't think I even need to go there... I think we all know what other servers try to do, and give in return for donations. Thank god the staff don't give ban powers, god mode, /give or anything like that here in return for supporting... And finally... The CommunityActually, I can't fill this section in for each server for the simple reason that most of them had no sense of community, and the ones that did had very little. Ours is by far the best I found, for any server. We help and respect each other, on the whole get along well, and just have that sense of community spirit. That, to me, is what makes EMC the best. . Not the plugins... although they're amazing. Not the tutorial... although that works well. In my eyes, the community is the thing that makes EMC. By community I don't just mean the players. I mean the players and staff combined. With both of them together, we have an Empire that will never fall. One that is friendly and gets on well. But most of all, one that will thrive and flourish. Let's not lose that by stupid little arguments; at the end of the day, they're never worth it. /stupidlylongpost
Thank you for taking the time to complete this. Hopefully more people will see it and truly understand what many people, as you and I, already know. EMC staff works hard to make sure that we are the best server out there. Specially coded plugins that you cant find anywhere else and a mature moderator team backed by an amazing moderating system like square are aspects of this server that make it worthwhile. But above all, the community of EMC is truly amazing and the reason why I log on every day =D
I appreciate the time and effort you put into this. I agree with everything you said. It should help others to see how much they actually have on EMC and to not take it for granted. You did a good job with the research, too. I actually expected this post to be a huge cut down to all the other servers you went on, but you didn't do that. It's good to see well done constructive criticism. I enjoyed the read. ^-^ So, well done.
That is why I dont go on servers for a long time cause most the time there is abusive admins and they dont follow the rules so I will eventually get permabanned and that will affect me in the future. But when i do find a server like EMC where there is relatively low staff and the ones we have to their jobs to the best of their ability I enjoy playing.
I read through it, and you sir deserve a standing ovation. I pondered for a while about the whole tutorial thing (in the past) and I came to the conclusion that even if we change it - there will still be people who don't pay attention to what is said. But having a tutorial - in my opinion - is vital. We as fellow players need to show the Empire Guide up their nose because it DOES have all of the answers a new player would want to know
your right jack, it really is the community that makes EMC. No other server has a better community then EMC
You seem to have done a nice market research by visiting other servers. You named the strong points of EMC, by comparing it to their points. But more important, what can EMC learn from the other servers? It's not that they have nothing that we can't get ideas or improvements from. Ofcourse I love to hear that EMC is the best and I'll even confirm that without doubt, but it can still improve. (And that will certainly happen, with the amount of suggestions and the list of things that will come in the near future..)
Very, very, well done. I'm an admin on one server, a retired mod on another, one of the servers was closed, and a plugin developer on another one. None of them have as good a community as EMC does. The one I retired on was overstaffed, the admins were abusive and I didn't like to be with them, a donator rank gave the players the ability to /ban and /kick people... It was hell. Not only that, but they didn't have an anti-grief plugin. It was also a non-PvP server but PvP was enabled. The one I'm a plugin developer on is almost as good as EMC. I also made their spawn map. You hop around in the clouds, like the one you talked about, but on a plugin I made that makes 'cloud blocks', and a guide is given to you in a book. You have to find the right page, read a few lines of text, and hop onto the right cloud. Choose the wrong cloud, you get reset back to the beginning of the question. Also, the guide stays in your inventory forever in a tab at the top of the page when you complete the tutorial. Meaning you don't lose it. It also has a very cool community, the admins are never abusive.. But their way of updating is not in my control. They update as soon as the latest version of EMC arrives, which causes hell among players. They end up setting eachother on fire, killing eachother, and griefing. And they have no idea of the troubles they will have with 1.4... I have told them to run ahead, but they don't listen. The one i'm an admin on... Let's just say it was closed upon the arrival of 1.3.1 because of technical difficulties and will be coming back up soon.
I don't even know how you found servers of a half decent quality, every sever I see has a collapsing everything, really.
Jack -- this. This is well written and well researched. I'm lucky, because EMC is the first (and only) non private server I played on, so I never had to deal with any of the nightmares I read about in your post. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. You, sir, rock!
