The problems of EMC: The great unrest (closed)

There has been a lot of conversation about the direction of this server, most notably in this thread, posted by Burki / fBuilders I know most of it is a long time ago, but the fundamental problems do not seem to be solved, and there still is a great unrest. Therefore, I want to take some time to analyse what I think is clashing and what I think the fundamental problems could be, whilst trying to give constructive criticism when I feel it is needed.

This post is not about any of the staff as a person, nor is it about old issues or problems that have gone by. This post is about the general issues EMC faces, moving forward.

Most of this is, of course, going to be influenced by my point of view, so I want to disclose that first.
I am formerly known as Jelle68; I’ve been playing on this server for more than seven years and you might know me as an ex build team member or as a builder connected with a few professional teams. I’ve been an active member of this server’s community for a large portion of those seven years and I’ve accumulated quite a lot of wealth, together with Tomvanwijnen.
After roughly a year of working for the build team, I got kicked out of it by Krysyy, in short because she and I couldn’t get along and because we couldn’t agree on fundamentals such as what good teamwork or good building is, with neither of us being able to explain completely to the other what we fundamentally wanted.

This is going to be quite a long post.
In the first part, (1.1-1.4,) I want to analyse EMC as an institution, that is, a collection of rules and guidelines and situations, and try to find the issues that might be causing unrest in them. These are the issues that would remain even if every single staff member would be doing their job perfectly.
In the second part (2.1-2.x,) I want to analyse all the issues that does not have to do with the regulations themselves. I don’t like talking negatively about people, but a lot of discourse has been focused on this, which is why I want to take the time to analyse this in the most objective way I possibly can, after which I want to show an example in which all the mentioned problems are shown.

Part 1: The institution of EMC.

In this part, I want to start by analysing the economies of economy servers, which is going to lead to observations that I found quite useful to understand the culture of EMC. Then, I want to analyse the economy of this server, and the ways in which the server has changed, which leads me to the first big point of unrest. After that, I want to use the observation of that change and show how it can explain more problems, to conclude on a more obvious [Out-Dated] note about updates.

Part 1.1: Marxist class analysis of Minecraft economy servers
(Note to reader: Don’t confuse Marx with Lenin! All the US seem to know about Marx’ writings is the things Lenin found interesting in them, even though Marx has written about a lot more. His main work, Das Kapital, is an analysis of how different facets of capitalism function in different scenarios, which is still used by economists, left and right winged, to this day.)

When I look at the gaming culture of this server, I see two distinct and mostly separated groups. They don’t just play Minecraft differently, they seem to disagree on what a good time playing a game is.
The first group is the “casual” group, the people who play primarily because it’s fun. Their actions in the world are directly related to what they think would be the most fun to do next. These are mostly, but not exclusively, the younger players, and usually the people who first joined relatively recently. Economically, they have a small amount rupees, which for them is enough for the smaller building projects they take up. They might own a small shop, or casually collect promos.
The second group is far smaller, but all the more influential to the economy of the server and its discourse. They seem to care less about whether an action is fun now, and more about if an action is going to make them achieve their long-term goals, or if it’s going to result in an interesting experience, none of which necessarily needs to be fun. I am, for a lack of a better word, going to call this the “serious” group. These are usually the people who have been playing on this server for five or more years, they own gigantic farms or large malls, and their wealth is a lot larger because of that. Traditionally, they are the ones who spent a lot of time on the forums. Most of this group seems to be in college or university, most likely doing some sort of engineering or math program.
One important note to make about the serious players, is that they tend to like to play at the edge of the game, looking for the most efficient setup to do what they want to do. This, usually, is fundamental to their playing style. They like going to the edge for the sake of going to the edge. With redstoners, this might be getting the last 0.5% efficiency out of a farm by looking through the game code; with collectors, that might be making detailed spreadsheets to estimate the worth of a promo, the point is that they do this for the sake of doing this, because that is their playing style.
This casual-serious group divide has always existed within the Minecraft survival community. It, of course, is not as black and white as painted here, but most people seem to really fit in one of the groups; it seems, to me, like a useful divide to make when analysing the economy of EMC.

Most survival Minecraft servers, especially the small ones, outlaw the second group’s playing style, as they “optimise the fun out of the game.” That is why this group usually tends to play in single player, or sets up a smaller server for their group of friends, (something that has recently also been made accessible to the casual group via realms.)
The only exception to this seems to be the economy servers, which are the only servers that are able to support both playing styles simultaneously. The casual players have a small amount of money, which is fine because the serious group drives all the prices to the ground, becoming extremely rich, and using that money to work on the large projects they want to work on. The small group can just work on their small projects, whilst not having to worry about the small amount of farmables that they need.
In fact: for an economy server to function properly, both groups need to exist. For any form of traditional capitalism to function properly, there needs to be some sort of class divide. This divide usually creates itself when everything is unregulated, but not for gaming. When there is too little regulation, the game will no longer be fun for casual players; and when too closely regulated, it won’t be interesting for serious players. That is why good regulation is so important for this type of server.

Okay: so, what is this regulation? In a normal capitalistic society, that would be taxes and a social security net, but, on a Minecraft server, it is something completely different, jet still completely the same.
The goals of regulating capitalism in real life and regulating it in Minecraft are very similar: in both cases you’re trying to protect the people from themselves in and from the competitive system that is created. The ultimate goal of rules in general is to create a system that everyone is able to live in. You want everyone to be able to do what they want, as long as it doesn’t harm other people. This has always been at the bottom of all the rule changes and arguments on EMC: What behaviour do we want to tolerate, and what behaviour does more harm than it does good, and should therefore be outlawed. Good regulation then becomes regulation that does this job properly.

Part 1.2 EMC as an economic institution.

EMC used to be the economy server. I don’t think many people realised it at the time, but the way the social hierarchy functioned was really good, seemingly unintentionally.
Something has changed since the time the economy of this server functioned this wonderfully.

The first notable changes comes from Minecraft itself. When Mojang got bought by Microsoft, the new owners saw that the casual group is far larger, and therefore far more profitable.
Mojang didn’t originally “do” marketing, only focussing on dedicated players and their worth of mouth. Back then, when the game updated, the focus seemed to be to satisfy as much different playing styles as possible, including these two survival styles.
Under Microsoft, Minecraft started to be marketed at younger players, and the updates got aimed at satisfying these casual players, usually neglecting the second group. The first update in which this was really noticeable was 1.13, which a lot of serious players haven’t jet updated to because of the amount of bugs and the lack of serious content. This meant less and less serious players continued playing the game.

Additionally, EMC itself started changing, too.
The rules have evolved over time to what they are now, and I would argue that they, over the years, have more and more become the rules of a casual server, one which doesn’t tolerate the other group. Probably the most telling is the last block in the rule page, our mission:

“The rules listed above should not be used as strict limitations of what you can get away with or bend to your needs. If a staff member notices that you are continually bordering on the line of breaking the rules, they may take action even if you didn’t completely cross the line.
Our mission is to have fun and create lasting memories on Empire Minecraft. Our rules are in place so that everyone can enjoy their time on the Empire. Do your best to follow these rules and we can all focus on having FUN, like we're meant to.”

I want to take a moment and analyse this, and show you why this is a problem if we want to have a functioning capitalistic system.
As we saw, the serious players usually like to have strict limitations on what you can and cannot do, and then look for the edge of them, not because they want to hurt others, but because that is the nature of the rules. I want to stress that most serious people I have talked to agree with the rules they are taking to the limit. It’s not malicious intent; It’s a different way to approach a game.
What the economic rules are doing is making sure the serious players don’t hurt other people by over optimising things, and making sure the system is a fair playground for everyone.
The easiest way to see how this manifests on EMC is by analysing is the auto-clicking rules: they exist because it’s ‘cheating’ to leave your computer on with a book on your key. In my analysis, saying ‘cheating’ would be the same as saying that leaving a book on your key creates a severe disadvantage between the serious and the casual, which makes the game less fun for the casual, and is therefore disallowed. We should not, however, then see the serious player looking for the edge of that rule as trying to cheat, or ‘living on the edge.’ This group’s playing style is to search for optimisation and a gathering as much as possible, for the sake of optimisation and gathering as much as possible.
When you paint going to the edge of a rule as intrinsically bad, as EMC currently does, you have misunderstood what the rule is trying to do, what the people breaking it are trying to do, and what is in the best interest of the economy of the server.

It is not just the rules that are hostile towards serious players, it also manifests itself in the general discourse on the forums, and the langue used to discuss these topics. The rules are simply the clearest example of what is a larger systematic change.

The ultimate result of this is that EMC, in effect, has slowly changed its player base. It used to be an economy server, but, with the slow change of rules, and, more importantly, the slow change of attitude towards the rules, EMC has more and more become a server specifically for casual players.
This, in itself, does not necessarily need to be a bad thing. A casual server is totally fine; there are not any intrinsic ethical problems with starting a casual server. It has a different type of economy, but none of the casual players care about that.
Thing is: EMC already has quite a large player base, and most of the loyal players are from the group serious. These loyal serious players, who have hundreds if not thousands of hours playing EMC behind them, feel like their favourite server is turning against them, which, in effect, it is.

There is no single answer here. I know some staff members would be glad if all the serious players would leave, as they are only there for the casual community. I also know some staff members who are a part of the serious community, and try their best to be as friendly as they possibly can to the serious playing style. This is ultimately a question of which path the ones in charge want to walk.

Part 1.3: On cultural differences, a Wittgensteinian theory of rules.

It would be inaccurate to conclude that the serious group is the only group that is dissatisfied with the way is currently ran. Most of what I said about the rules that moderate the economy, can also be said about the rules in general. The people who are hurt by this attitude towards rules in general are the people who happen to end up around the edge of a rule, which, I understand, usually is just bad intent. There are two exceptions, though. The first, we have already discussed: the serious playing style. The second might be a bit more complicated to explain.

Most rules on this server are kind of vague. Not only are the borders of the rules poorly defined, but the rules additionally use a lot of langue that can mean something completely different when you’re not raised in the same way as most of the staff, white American middle-class.
The clearest example I have seen is a discussion a friend of mine had with a staff member on what “family friendly” means, as used in the rules.
When this person thinks of “family friendly”, they explained to me, they usually imagine a young person sitting next to them as they talk to another person their age, to find out what they can and cannot talk about. In the Netherlands, (from my own experience,) that would mean that marijuana or light sex talk, like discussing different ways of birth control, or something that describes “having sex” without actually talking about the different actions that that consists of, would be totally fine, but showing a picture of yourself posing with a gun, or shooting, would be frowned upon. Swearing etiquette is also really different in the Netherlands compared to the US.
The person from my example had problems with a different cultural barrier, (The lgbt- non lgbt, which can have quite different cultures,) but the point is that that barrier exists, (and I do not what to get into lgbt rights on this thread.)
These cultural differences are really frustrating to people who aren’t American, as they sometimes end up breaking the rules whilst trying to follow them, but it does not need to be a problem. The problem is probably best showed with a quote from the staff member with whom this conversation was. This is what they said after they tried to explain the cultural differences:
“Not reading the rules is not an excuse to willingly break them.”

What is showing here is a staff culture that does not understand the limits of their own rules. This server is extremely US-centred. I know most people in the states tend to think “Isn’t America basically the planet,” (quote from a YouTuber) but the rest of the world really doesn’t see you as that anymore. To most of Europe, the USA is that narcissistic uncle you have, you don’t really like talking to anymore, but he’s a part of your family, so he’s still there, talking about how great he is and everyone nodding hoping he will stop talking soon. In short: it would be unrealistic to ask Europeans, let alone people from non-western countries, to learn about US culture to be able to understand the rules.
So, no. “Just think Disney channel” (The answer staff has repeatedly given me personally) is not going to cut it either. At least partially because Europeans have to google what that is.
(As you can probably tell, I have had this problem a lot. I’m sorry for the emotion.)

I think I can generalise this one step further, and say that most staff is hostile towards a misunderstanding that is created by differences between people, which creates a large group of people to get annoyed by the staff, (and especially their leader,) most of whom don’t seem to understand these problems.

Part 1.4: On the lack of updates and activity. [Out-dated]

It would be strange for me to talk about what might be going on on EMC and not talk about the lack of updates in past years.

As far as I understand, there does not seem to be that much to it. Most people of this server, most notably the casual group, really want to update to the latest version of Minecraft, though this is said to be impossible by the development team.
Most of the serious players don’t care so much about the update an sich, but care more about the amount of bugs that will get introduced if it’s done badly, and therefore encourage the devs to take their time. The casual players either don’t understand those bugs, or don’t care about them, as they continuously bug the devs on why it’s taking so long.
Some people, probably realistically, argue that the lack of updates is one of the reasons so many people have left (especially casual players,) and they argue that updating would probably increase the amount of new players on the server.

This emptiness can also be seen as another factor that might be causing the unrest, jet, that still lets the cause of that inactivity to be explained. Minecraft itself, and its demographic haven’t changed enough to completely explain it with “the members have gotten older and grown out,” as there has always been a stream in and out. What has to be explained is that more people leave and less people come in nowadays compared to the past. The reason for this, almost by definition, has to be a combination of the factors discussed here, which is why this issue doesn’t get a separate part, and is combined with what might be the primary reason.

The only thing that seems to be truly of note here is that, though most of the staff’s decisions seem to be primarily hostile towards the serious players, this situation (no matter of decision or not) is mostly hostile towards the casual players, making them also have something to complain about, and giving them a reason to leave, too.

Part 2: The staff of EMC.

The first thing I want to make clear before I start to talk about the staff, is how an interaction with the staff can be problematic.
There are two possible interactions with a staff member: as a fellow player and as a staff member. For the second, there are again two options, neutral interaction, and negative interaction. Neutral interactions are things like events or other staff posts everyone can attend. Negative interaction occurs when the player has done something that the staff sees as against the rules and/or guidelines.
I have chosen to analyse these three types of interaction separately in parts 2.1 to 2.3.

I want to stress that I am trying to be as observant as possible, and that I therefore have not used any of my personal experiences in drawing conclusions. Most of the observations come from me reading discussion posts between different people, to make sure my own emotional biases of the situation analysed has as little involvement to my conclusions as possible.

Part 2.1: Staff as fellow players

I do not want to discuss the personality types of all the staff members. Sometimes people don’t get along, and that is normal. Additionally, some infighting can be expected from a large group of volunteers that runs something they believe in, (which I know all too well as an environmentalist.) Sometimes you simply don’t get along with staff, or staff doesn’t get along with staff, and that is fine. This is the nature of groups of volunteers.

The only place where it can become a problem is with trust and reputation. Trust in an authority is essential for an authority to function as an authority. A staff team that consists of people who don’t get along with the members as players, might not be able to fulfil their jobs as staff members because of a lack of trust.
It seems obvious to note that this is partially a problem on EMC. The trust in the general staff team, and most-notably the senior staff, is fine, but the trust in the community manager is low, to a point where members actively try to avoid her with staff interaction, and members have expressed a sentiment towards finding “an EMC without Krysyy”

This lack of trust in the community manager as a person can best be explained as a combination of factors.
The first factor seems to be a misguided anger towards the state of EMC. The amount of active members is declining, and there therefore is a general frustration towards the actions of staff, which leads a lot of people looking for a scapegoat. The easiest target is the one highest up. This is how most leaders of public organisations see their end. The resentment is irrational, but real.
The second factor is a lot more real and reasonable, and can probably best be summed up as: an anger towards an incapability to understand and accept unfamiliar ways of thinking; one towards a dualistic attitude towards power; one towards an inability to fully comprehend longer posts and one towards a tendency to question people’s intentions, rather than criticising their actions.
The first anger, the one towards an incapability to accept other ways of thinking, is mainly expressed by the serious players. The community manager seems to be unable to understand and respect their primary goals and ways of play, quickly calling it malicious intent, both as a leader and as a fellow player. She has also shown to be unable to understand that there are nuances she doesn’t know in fields she hasn’t mastered, often trying to end a conversation with an appeal towards common sense or stating that there must be a simple solution, when the experts don’t know any.
The second annoyance seems to be towards something I am also oftentimes guilty of. It is a dualistic way of managing professional relationships. On one hand, the community manager tries her best to come over as formal and even-handed as possible, on the other, she often acts strongly biased by her own ideas and she is really informal about discussing personal issues, to then claim mistakes on her humanity, instead of learning from them. No one claims this is the reason for their annoyance directly, but it often seems to be the source.
The third annoyance is quite often present in PMs, where Krysyy fails to answer questions written halfway the post, or states things that already have a strong counterargument stated for within the original post. She also has a tendency to completely misunderstands the point of everything that is longer than five paragraphs, focussing solely on the last paragraph, ignoring all the different points made above.
The forth anger is not often expressed, but seems to be at the root of many heated arguments. Krysyy has the tendency to criticise people’s intentions, rather than their actions. For many people, this is the quickest way to their dark side, especially when she’s inescapably wrong sometimes. This happens in every type of interaction, where it usually turns a discussion quickly into an argument.

Part 2.2: Neutral interactions with staff

Though there are smaller issues at play with neutral interactions, none of it seems to be the cause of the great unrest. They seem to be truly neutral. Sometimes, a small annoyance is expressed with the statement that there are “not enough.” Sometimes members get annoyed by a general lack of management in them. As these interactions do not seem to be that important for this case; and as I have attended few events, I would like to end the discussion about this here.

Part 2.3: Negative interactions with staff

Fundamentally, there are two types of negative interaction one can have with a staff team member. One were the accused didn’t originally think they were wrong, and one were they did.

What happens when the accused didn’t think they were wrong is mostly discussed before in part 1.3. The fundamental point doesn’t seem to change with the different context this is in. Most staff is hostile towards a misunderstanding that is created by differences between people, which creates a large group of people to get annoyed by the staff, and especially their leader, who neither seems to understand these issues.

When a member agrees with a staff member on what they’ve done wrong, they can either apologise or deny. The deniers usually don’t stay on this server, and I will therefore let them out of the picture. Those who apologise usually face a strange situation.
Some of the staff team seem to live in a delusional world where there are good people and bad people, and any bad action can reveal if a person who seems to be good is actually inherently bad. This makes the people who just accidently slipped up being treated poorly by the staff team. This includes being actively lied to about basics, being excessively gossiped about and the staff team being lied to by the staff member convicting.

Part 2.4: What it looks like when it goes wrong.

I want to fully illustrate the type of drama these fundamental misunderstandings and disregards towards different attitudes, by telling a story of which I know a lot of the different sides. This story primarily shows the community manager’s incapability to accepting a different way of thinking, her dualistic attitude towers power and the bad person-good person dichotomy more staff seem to poses.

The one example I have is my own demotion from the build team. I am sorry I have to bring up my own story, but I think the excessive amount of information I have about this is invaluable to have for this conversation. However, it is an anecdote written to illustrate, so it can be skipped without missing any of the points of this post.

[Personal anecdote: my demotion]
I want to start off with saying that I knew the teamwork wasn’t working. I had had long discord calls with the team leader about it, which have apparently gone unnoticed by the community manager, and the build team leader and I tried our best to make it work for all of us.
I had a lot of free time on my hands, which is why they were thinking to give up some of their side to give me an environment I could work in, which the current wasn’t. We didn’t really conclude on anything, but we compromised every now and then when necessary. It all, honestly, was almost going fine.
The community manager and I also had a lot of text conversations about this, in which she completely refused to compromise, and in which I didn’t jet fully understand what the reason for my annoyance with the teamwork was, and therefore could not communicate that properly.
The primary issue, looking back, was technical planning (making a small mock-up before starting the actual project, deciding colour schemes beforehand etc,) which they had never done but which I couldn’t leave behind. I also valued historical and technical accuracy, which they did not, and some other smaller things, most notably that I prefer an environment where everyone gives criticism to everyone’s work, and where everyone is free to change any part of the build if they feel it looks better, compared to the rest of the build team who had always working with strict divisions where all the critique ever is “that looks great”. (You can tell I don’t like that…)
When the leader and I started the latest project I worked on for EMC. We first made a blunt planning together, establishing the basics and the colour scheme. He seemed to understand me better than I did myself. I feel like it could have worked, if the community manager hadn’t intervened in the way she did.
When I went away for holyday, the project as planned was almost finished.
When I came back to the project, a lot had happened to me personally: my ex-girlfriend and best friend had committed suicide, and I had just attended her funeral. I wasn’t in the best place emotionally.
At this point, joining stage again to free my mind with some building, I found the entire colour scheme disrespected, the composition thrown off and all the historical accuracy out of the window. I went away being decently contempt with the building as it was, but I hated the thing I found after that week.
What I then also knew I should have done, is to write a post on how I didn’t think I could continue to work in a disorganised and frankly disrespectful team like that, but that was not what I did, because that was not the place I was, emotionally. I ended up changing a lot of the building at once, using world edit to remove large parts of what was added at once. Then, when I still thought all my hard work was ruined, I rage-quitted.
The day after I rage-quitted building, I decided to join stage again, and undo most of the damage I had done, and write a post titled “I cannot continue like this” on the build team forums. I found, however, that my access to stage was revoked. There was a PM from Krysyy on the forums, which stated that I was demoted because of my unwillingness to work as a team member, and because I was insulting other people’s builds to the extend they didn’t want to work with me anymore.
Apart from this, the pm shortly stated that she appreciated my building skills, but found my social skills appalling.
I replied by apologising for my behaviour the night before, and explained what had happened to me personally, but she insisted that the reason was long term, and that that my actions the night before had nothing to do with it. The only thing she noted of my situation of that time is “I am sorry about your friend, but…”
I, by now, had befriended the build team leader, so I wanted to know if that was the case, and, if so, why he didn’t tell me personally instead of via Krysyy.
He called me first, crying. We first had a conversation about what happened the night before, then he explained to me that he had never wanted me to leave, and that majority of the build team members liked my constructive criticism, and would have never called it “insulting someone’s work.” He also stated that, though we might indeed not work the best together, he had never seen the problem as an unwillingness form my side, but had rather perceived it to be a fundamental incompatibility.
Then, some staff members called in. Apparently, she had justified my demotion to staff as “he wasn’t able to separate his personal life from his work.” They, by now, knew my story, and sited with me. I had I think three discord PMs from active staff members telling me this, all of which also asked how I was doing, and stated that I could always ask them for emotional support. None of the staff team had seen my demotion coming that day.

I have some more background information. I think I know what actually happened.
Krysyy and I have never been able to get along, and, at some point, I had decided to stop trying to work with her, and instead work around her by only talking to the build team leader, as those conversations proved to be far more productive in getting where I wanted to be. I was unwilling to work with her, and I even asked her to stop meddling in the build process, and just focus on talking about what needs to be done with the leader, so that the build team leader could decide how the process went, and so that I could avoid her.
She said I was unwilling to work as a team, which was true if you only look at it from her point of view. As it seems, no one had been able to convince her that I was willing to work with the rest, and she kept believing I just didn’t work.
Additionally, I had jokingly said something half-mean about a new wasteland spawn. I didn’t know who made it, but it was final, and I didn’t like it. She was immediately offended by me doing that, and, after I had apologised for the joke, and explained my reasoning behind it, which partially consisted of me explaining why I didn’t like the building, she still asked if I could also take that constructive criticism back, which I didn’t, as I felt like it all were fair points. After that, she told me she made it, and that she felt like I had insulted her work and building skills.
I would not find it strange if that was the reason she said no one dared to build near me. She couldn’t take my joke and constructive criticism, and therefore she assumed no one could.
When I then rage-quitted with all that before, I feel like that was the last thing it needed for her to demote me. She did not consider in what emotional state I was, or how the people who actually worked with me felt about it, she had a reason to demote me, and then did it. She probably assumed I would only talk about that last punch, which is why that is all she told the rest of staff.

What we see here, is that the community manager was completely unable to do her job as even-handedly as she claims she always tries to do. I was wrong, and that was the only thing that seemed to matter to her. She was right about that, but a professional person would have known not to act in such a way to someone so emotionally venerable. Neither would a professional lie about the reason of the demotion to her own staff, or to the one demoted.
I cannot conclude anything else than that the community manager, in this situation, completely failed to do her jobs as she is expected to. Because of the lies involved, it is impossible to say what actually happened, but it is probably safe to say she handled purely out of her own emotion, with complete disregard to the emotional state of the person she was demoting, and with complete disregard to the best interest of the build and staff team.

Drama like this is probably not specific to this type of situation, and has, in fact, occurred in all different possible types of interactions with the community manager, although the details of that drama is usually unclear to the public. According to most of staff back then, this was the worst she had pulled jet.

(Because it already was quite long, I have simplified some of the interactions I had with different people, and left a lot of details out, but I cannot see how those changes would influence any part of the overall story, which is why I chose to change them/leave them out.)
[/Personal anecdote: my demotion]

3: In conclusion

“There is accumulation. There is responsibility. And beyond these, there is unrest. There is great unrest."
- Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

To summarise this entire post:
We can observe a class divide between ‘casual’ and ‘serious’ players, which have different playing styles. Economic rules in an economic server are then made to regulate the economy between those two groups, making the server better for both of them.
The general attitude towards rules on EMC has changed significantly, which negatively impacts the serious players, the most vocal and active minority of players.
Most staff is hostile towards a misunderstanding that is created by differences between people, making for a hostile environment for minority players.
There is a significant decline of players, which some people claim to be because of the lack of updates. [Out-Dated]

There is a low trust in the community manager, which can be explained as an anger that is partially misguided frustration, and partially towards real problems.
Neutral interactions with staff do not seem to be a factor.
Staff, and especially the community manager, is hostile towards people who inevitably make a mistake and break the rules.

This post has been in the making for quite a while now. I hope it can help us to have an honest and informed discussion about these issues. I sincerely hope I have properly analysed all the major problems, but I am open to correct and change parts informed by people with different experiences than mine.

~Egeau

as a player that haven't been on the server for quite a while my experience and knowledgement is definitely limited. but there's still some players(like me) who don't care about updates, and still have a "casual" play style. i don't know would this make a difference or not, but i just want to point this out.

I recently re-joined EMC and the lack of activity is upsetting. I remember when this server was actually popular and had a "community field" factor to it. Today on the forums, there are only a few threads active. I do not even have to bump an auction every 12 hours now because it will still be on the homepage from my last bump.

I understand that the development team must have a challenging job on their hands with the updates. However, it is soon to be two years (July 2020) since 1.13 came out... In my opinion, it is simply not good enough. EMC is in a decline in new players because "Why would someone join a vanilla server that is still in 1.12 in 2020??????" I still enjoy EMC, I always have. However, the community is not what it is use to be. I hope 1.15 comes out REAL SOON so EMC can start to rebuild what it once was.

I honestly have no quarrel with any of the staff, I just really hope that EMC can return to being an active and enjoyable community. Some may not care that the server isn't updated, but like it or not, updating it to the current version of Minecraft is actually necessary for the server to stay afloat. A healthy community needs new players in addition to loyal veterans. EMC has lots of loyal veterans, but new players are likely to pass us right by when they see we're running an old version of the game. EMC is rare in the sense that it offers both a town and a vanilla survival experience. I really really hope EMC gets revitalized.

Of the 104 paragraphs of the main bodey, you are mentionned in 9, and I am critiqual of your actions in 5. I conclude calling the anger against you "Irrational, but real."
With the exeption of the one main anecdone, which is ment to illustrate what a cobination of factors looks like, I do not bring up any old stories. I tried to only write about the stuff that is relevant now, moving forward.

2925 words are spent discussing the problems which EMC would still have if all the staff would change, content that has, to my knowlege, never been discussed before. I mostly call the anger against you as a person a misguided anger towards these general problems, problems you are probably able to solve without changing anything about yourself. This post is not about you, this post is about the general problems EMC faces moving forward.

Krysyy, we're both adults. We might not have been able to get along very well, but that is normal, we are hugely different people, or, better jet, we're too simmilair.
You can ignore part 2.4, you know that story just as good as I do, it is meirly a way for me to show that what I say seems to be correct. The rest, I honestly want you to read, as it is clear you have not done so jet. I think most of this post is invalueble for you to be able to avoid the types of arguments you seem to think this post is trying to cause.

I am not smearing you in analisys, or writing this post with mallicious intent. Most of this post is an analisys of EMC culture in general, and a look on what is clashing in that culture. I am more criticial towards the general attetude of staff than towards you.

Neither do I.
(The rest of your post has alredey been discussed in my main post)

Yes, I know.

"Most" defenetly is an important word here.

In general, I think the issue of updates is trivial. It seems to me like it is easy to understand all sides of it, and I do not deem it to be worthy of any further discussion.

Wew, that's a lot! I won't have time to read this soon, but I am interested in what you have to say. I already skimmed paragraph 1.3 (Wittgenstein always catches my attention ), and recognise the point. I'll consider it and possible solutions (perhaps already implemented) further when I have more time for the thread.

I never comment on these posts, until I have read them. And I like to try to digest that reading, for a bit of time, before responding.

Some of your points are very observant, well stated, and quite correct.

Some of this has not been discussed publicly, at least not that I know of.

There is an issue with non-American players. Personally, I am tolerant - I would like everyone to be the best "me" that they can be. We are all pixels in this server world - but we have a great many emotions attached to the words we put into our keyboards. All players are wanted, unless you are hateful in your chat or vengeful in your breaking of blocks. Even in my own attitude, there is a bit of the 'good vs evil' thinking for the judging of intent there. I can see the issue with the regulations. It is a difficult thing to take in criticism and turn it around and make something out of it. The regulations are difficult to make, as there is nothing that you can write that someone else will not find a creative way to 'break' that rule but still be well within the 'technical bounds' of the same rule. There must be some elasticity built into the scheme. But on the other hand, saying "keep it PG in chat" is referencing a method of measure that is unknown to half of the players on (at least during the time that I play). I agree that this portion of the rules could use some expanded examples to give non-American players some guidelines that are easier to understand and attempt to follow. We already expect English on the server, so let's give some clear examples to help with the confusion.

I feel a measure of frustration when a time or deadline is announced and then it passes, with no activity. Example: there is a current plan to add some additional emojis to the forums. Kryssy said at one time that it would be done right after Thanksgiving. At this time, it still has not been added. So at this point, asking Kryssy is the only solution: she stated both the timing and the plan. Therefore: she has ownership of the problem, whether she intended that or not. This is actually a really teeny-tiny issue, but I can see it as an example of frustration with the public figurehead of the group and how it can 'snowball' and become but one of the gripes that get bundled together with many others to become huge problems (making mountains out of molehills, as it were).
I think an additional example is the old "Dragon Tombs Update" to which I have previously suggested: Just announce that it is dead and move on from there. An idea that could not be finished and is dead now. Although, it does seem to be finally removed from the "Development Status" box, so I guess that is progress of a kind. However, the "Empire Status" section still shows "Happy Thanksgiving 2018!", "Happy Halloween 2018!", and "The Survival Update - v2 - 6/30/18". All of which are well past and should have been updated to at least the 2019 comments?!?

Another frustration is currently the redemption of vouchers. There is a good reason for this issue, but it is frustrating for players to get moving on projects, if they are waiting for Kryssy to redeem vouchers for supporters.

Your post both praises Kryssy and bares her faults. I can see how she may have a hard time reading this from you. I would hope that it gets another look and she can see some of the support that you laid out. I think there were some positive things that you made note of in this 'novella'.

It was worth the read. There is unrest. There are no easy answers. And yet, we are hopeful...
Katy

I think this thread did not get as much love as it should have gotten.
@OP, +1

Welcome to EMC, Where many promises never happen or happen fashionably late.

I think this community is tired of drama, I know I am. I'm surprised someone is willing to bring that stuff up (stuff that has already been discussed before) again.

I've noticed that quite a few of the complaints both in this post and in the original post involve situations where Krysyy gives an ETA for a feature or service (voucher redemption, sending out prizes, etc.) and that ETA comes and goes without anything happening. Normally when called out, the response has something to do with being busy, real life coming first, etc. I'm not trying to be critical here; in fact, I'm absolutely guilty of this as well, which should be obvious to anyone who's participated in a forum game where I've been the host.

At the end of the day, these delays are because Krysyy has a job and a life outside outside of being EMC's community manager, and that job and life - rightfully so - always come first. Many larger servers can afford to have people whose job is to help run that server, but EMC just isn't large enough for this.

That being said, might adding a few more community managers help solve most, if not all of these problems? I know that it's much easier said than done, but I feel like splitting up the entire role of community manager between two or three people would be beneficial in the long run.

I nominate Moople RainbowChin would be really good too but idk how active

Edit: This may sound silly, but what if we had Community Manager and Sr. Community Manager

Move Krysyy to Sr. CM and promote 1 or 2 people to normal CM.

That would defeat the entire purpose of promoting 2 more if there is a SR.

True. I just don't think Krysyy would promote two people to her level, but who knows.

Yeah, same, to be honest. As you know, I enjoy it now and then, but between when this thread was posted and now I don't think I've ever felt like reading this thread, even if I hadn't forgot about it. It's also suuuper long...

Regardless, if there were more people in charge of the duties that are solely hers atm, it would certainly help speed things up.

It's a flippin minecraft server. Enjoy it for what it is and try not to over analyze or take it too seriously. Staff might not be perfect all the time but they are unpaid and it's a big job. Overall from my experience on other servers they do a quite good job here. As far as what was wrote above I gotta admit I didn't read all that much of it. It was ginormous. I had to think, 'why would anyone work so hard to criticize a server that allows you to play a video game with other people for free?'. And of course, no one is forcing you to be here. This isn't the only fish in the sea of servers. Lastly, great advice from the words of a gridiron legend "relax".