Here's an interesting concept and one I've come across before that worked quite well. Player A is strapped for time, has a busy life but enjoys playing MC when he can. Player A is building something which is incredibly time consuming and he could really do with some Moderator assistance to bulk copy / paste etcetc. Player A submits a form on the server website detailing his request and what he needs done. Lead Moderator tasked with overseeing applications looks at Player A's application and decides if it's: A reasonable request for assistance or Not a reasonable request for assistance If it's reasonable, then Player A receives an invoice of, lets say, $1, and upon payment of that $1 to the servers Paypal account, Lead Moderator tasks off another Moderator to go and carry out the job. What is this? It's a simple, efficient and controlled way to aid players who genuinely can't spare the time required, need a bit of help without abusing the system and also a chance for people to give a bit of money to support the servers when they might not feel like being a full fledged monthly paying supporter. If controlled correctly it works really, really well. Thoughts?
Hmm, you don't really want to know my real thoughts on this idea, but let's just say it goes against my whole understanding of what minecraft is really about. I see minecraft as a way to put time, effort and thought into creating something which is fantastic. To have someone construct a large portion of an epic inspirational creation with the push of a button takes the credit away from the creator and makes it just another minecraft creation using worldedit. And we are all just too busy trying to stop you all swearing, spamming, griefing and arguing to do your building for you as well. (joking of course)
Hahah, fair one. However, that's where the applications would come into it. Is the player simply trying to get the moderators to do all the work in making his creation or has he a genuine request to move part of his build, etcetc. Was just an idea. For every one hundred crap ideas, I eventually get a good one. This is obviously not one of them.
I know some people have very strong opinions on both sides of this, so I am opening a explosive topic. But I get requests all the time for the ability to donate more money to the server in exchange for rupees. At first my opinion was that it sucks if you can just buy your way to the top. However over the past couple months I have been leaning to the other side of the argument. First you can already do this, you could buy multiple MC accounts and subscribe to diamond on each one, therefore we technically already have a system in place to buy rupees (I am too lazy to do the math on the cost). Second it doesn't destroy the game for you, it only changes the game for the person playing it the way they want. One of the great things about Minecraft is that you can play it so many different ways, and we try to embrace that in EMC as much as possible. Some players never leave Town and just barter and trade. Some players are Diamond supporters and have 100,000 rupees but still adventure and explore for everything. The point is that their is no right or wrong to play.
