If you read the information about the return of Build Contests and the addition of Feature World, you should be aware that we are going to be making quite a few changes to the server. Yes I know we made a TON of changes 6 months ago with 1.7 and a bunch more with Factions, but these changes should make players a little happier and return some of the excitement back to the game.

These changes will not all happen at once, rather we will be implementing them one at a time as we have time. So tomorrow we may do one or two changes and then the next day one more, and then the next day a couple more, etc until they are all complete. We will also be spending a lot of time tweaking things to make them perfect.

So you are probably wondering ... what are we changing and why? The overall theme for these changes are to bring back some of the things we removed or changed. We are hearing loud and clear from players that they loved the way things used to be, and seeing as how some of our changes just didnt work out ... we are bringing things closer to where they used to be. Some things, like the world borders, will stay the way they are because we had a legit reason to do it and it would hurt things if we reversed it, but a lot of things are reverting back or simplifying from our over-complicated setups.

----- Survival -----

1. We are getting rid of PreciousStones. No one is using it even though we lowered the price several times. We will either go back to admins protecting builds for free using WorldGuard, or we will use another self service protections plugin. Either way, protecting your land in Survival WILL NOT cost money*.

*If we use the Protection plugin that we are currently testing, you have a block allowance that is determined by your play time. You can purchase additional allowance for a cost, you can also sell your allowance to other players. - DONE, we went with GriefPrevention

2. The Return of Biome Warps. We will be placing Warps in each biome in Survival, this will allow players to quickly find the biome they want. We will have signs in Spawn to get you to those biomes - DONE, /warp biomes

3. Quests. We will be adding Quests to Survival (And removing them from Factions). This will give players a way to get money through Delivery Quests (Otherwise known as collect x of y quests) but these will not be the only quests. We will have story lines through quests and adventure quests, farming quests, exploration quests, anything you can think of quests. In addition, the Quests plugin works with McMMO so we can even reward players with mcmmo levels for completing some quests. Overall this should be a lot more valuable than Quests in Factions

4. Mob Prices. We will raise the mob prices significantly. This should allow players to get some more money. Mob Arena mob kills might not change or may be raised but not as much (to avoid Mob Arena giving too much money).

5. Mob Farms. We are evaluating our ruling against Mob Farms, seems the staff have varying opinions on what should be allowed and what should not. The current rule still stands and will be enforced in the mean time, but this may or may not change.

----- Factions -----

1. Quests ..... GONE - DONE

2. Outposts ...... GONE - DONE

3. Battle for Olgdun/Shipwreck Cove ..... GONE - DONE

4. Verified Clans ...... GONE. We will allow all players to create clans and we will "unverify" the verified clans. It will cost money to create a clan, but anyone can create a clan and invite their friends. We think this will encourage people to play in Factions more and will encourage more battle since there are any number of clans potentially fighting against you. In order to prevent tons and tons of inactive unverified clans. If no one from your clan logs in within x period of time (for example lets say if no one logs in within 2 weeks) your clan will be automatically disbanded. No refunds if you disband your clan or if it is auto disbanded. - DONE

5. Protections. PreciousStones will likely continue to be used in Factions. We think PreciouStones will be more valuable in Factions given that griefing is allowed. We will likely adjust the size of the protection that PreciousStones provides and also the price of that protection (i.e. the protection size may be smaller and cost less). However, everyone can be assured that there WILL be protections in Factions. If we continue to use PreciousStones, you will still be refunded half your money if you break a protection.

6. Command Restrictions. We are looking at this and determining what absoloutly must be blocked and what we can ease up on. For example, we may open up /back and beds but leave it so you cant /back when you die. Teleports and Homes will likely remain blocked, but anything is possible.

----- Additional -----

1. Build Contests are BACK!. Take a look at the build contests thread for more info: http://silverknightgaming.net/forums/vi ... 7671#p7671 - DONE

2. Feature World. This is a rotating specialty world. Each month (approx) the world will be removed and replaced with a different world. Currently the Feature World is Survival Amplified. In a month or so we will remove it and create the next Feature (At the moment, we are planning on Apocalypse World being the next featured world after Survival Amplified). More info here: http://silverknightgaming.net/forums/vi ... =33&t=1868 - DONE

3. Sky Wars. This is a new plugin that was added recently. It is an arena and required 4 people to play. You can join using /sw join, this will put you in the queue and once there are four people in the queue, the arena will be started. Your goal is to kill everyone else, last man standing wins. Each island has the materials you need to build out and over to other islands (BEWARE OF SNOWBALLS!) - Ran into some issues, we are trying to fix them.

4. The Return of War Hub! We will be adding the warhub back and will add in some arenas (mostly capture the flag and other types).

5. Revamping the current Arenas. Some of our current arenas are a bit old and broken, we will be spending the time to get them fixed up (i.e. Spleef arenas are half broken when you start, etc). We will also be looking at Hunger Games as we never really took the time to fully configure it and set it up, it works ... but it could be better and we could certainly add more maps to it.


----- Suggestions? Questions? Comments? -----

Like what we are doing here? Let us know! Questions? Ask them! Suggestions? We will take them!

We are very much open to suggestions for this project and we want to make sure we are making things great for the Players. Keep in mind though, we may have reasons to not go with your suggestion, and we will try our best to explain why we cant do what you are suggesting. But you may also have suggestions that we have not thought of and we would love to try and add them into the server.

I would kill to have Wedit accessible in build contest to everyone...

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Prepare your nipples, cuz they're gonna get CRIPPLED!

THAT ... wont be happening.

The Plot Plugin that we are using in the new contest world actually does support allowing people to use world edit in their plots ... the problem is having 20+ people using world edit at the same time. This would likely create a lot of lag/server issues, so it aint happenin.

Please note: Our opinions may differ.

[Opinions disproved, I have taken it upon myself to remove them. They were solely opinions from someone who hasn't seen the inner workings of the server (Like looking at a clock and going "This should be like that" when you don't know anything about clocks). I didn't really think I would be taken very seriously anyways I: ]

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5th highest post count

Striker, I disagree.

As for world edit, world edit us a very intense program that does a lot of complex things, so much so that in order to curtail lag that was getting generated from admins and tillian using world edit, we had to add a special addon to "queue" world edit processes. I have no problem with giving world edit to everyone in contest world, cause they can only use it inside a 64x64 square. But 20 people using world edit WILL cause lag, and this is why we will not do it. Me and silver talked about adding it a few weeks ago and came to the conclusion it was a bad idea. On top of that, the plugin we have that helps with the WorldEdit Lag, it essentially creates a queue, so a large World Edit gets broken up into a bunch of smaller chunks and the plugin manages how much World Edit is doing at one time, this means that World Edit is only doing a little at a time. Now experienced player or not, lets say we have 20 people using WorldEdit. Player 1-5 enter their worldedit commands and it enters the queue, player 6-10 run their worldedit commands and ... nothing happens (cause it is in the queue), so they try their command again .... and again .... and again. Players 10-20 are doing the exact same thing ..... WorldEdit will be CONSTANTLY doing stuff becuase the queue is so damn big cause everyone submitted their commands 3-4 times. Meanwhile all those people are complaining because WorldEdit "isnt working". Now while WOrldEdit is constantly doing stuff and taking up memory, other people are doing arenas, parkour, mining. Im sure you have been on the receiving end of lagging into a lava pool or lagging off a cliff or getting killed by a mob cause you were lagging .... With that many people using WorldEdit ... it will happen ALL the time, and then everyone leaves cause "This server is too laggy".

As for protections, you are way off. You get more protection from a protection. If you protect your base and let someone in, that is your fault. If you don't protect it and you let someone in, that is also your fault. The staff should not be rolling back something for someone you allowed in your area PERIOD. the protections are beneficial because they protect everything, animals, blocks, chests, etc. A roll back will not give you everything you had back, you won't end up with all the animals you had, some things will be missing from chests, etc. In the long run, the protections are vastly superior. If you get griefed and you aren't protected will we roll it back? Of course, as long as it wasn't by someone you let in. This is why we made protections free, so you can choose to protect your build if you want. It is your choice to protect it or not.

In short, we put a lot of thought into the things we do and everything we do is for a good reason. We have been running this server for years and have been doing the work behind the scenes. Please dont come in here and pretend that you know better than we do in regards to how the server runs and what is going on in the background. We have witnessed what World Edit does to our server, which is why we have other methods in place to help with that, but to come in here and act like you know everything and we dont ("It wont lag the server ... trust me"). Your basing that off of nothing other than you had ran your own server for like ... a month? You did not have all the plugins we had, and I can guarantee you that you did not have 20+ people using worldedit at the same time, in the same world, in the same confined general area.

Finally, as for contest world. The whole point is for everything to be completely equal. Everyone has creative, everyone can fly, everyone has the same plot size, everyone has access to the same materials, etc. We wont ever offer something to some people and not others in contest world because then it isnt a fair contest. If the "veterans" can use world edit and make perfect circles with a simple command, then why should i compete and try and make this circle by hand? Contest world needs to remain even across all players.

EDIT: Added more and fixed the typos from my phone


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I was hoping there would be some way around that, but no worries. Could we get a few more donator perks?

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Prepare your nipples, cuz they're gonna get CRIPPLED!

We are hesitating to add new stuff at the moment because 1.8 will be coming soon. 1.8 is going to bring with it the massive uuid update and it is highly likely that some of our plugins would have to be scrapped if the developers don't update them for uuid support.

We have some thoughts regarding things we would like to add, but we are waiting for 1.8 so we can figure out which plugins are staying and which are going. We don't want to add a bunch of plugins now and then have to remove them in a month.

Note: for those who have been waiting for "ranks" (cough striker cough) this is still going to be added, but it has to wait until 1.8. Otherwise you would spend time getting ranks, and then the uuid update would start you back from the beginning.

In short, we are in the process of evaluating ALL of our plugins to see if the developers are working on uuid updates, some already have the uuid update, some likely will never get the uuid update. So this means we need to find uuid compatible versions of some of our plugins or replace them with another plugin that is uuid compatible.

Also for those that don't know, the uuid update is for the ability to change your name. The reason this is so massive of an update is because 80% of our plugins rely on your username to keep track of you (mcmmo levels, hawk eye, protections, permissions, the stats page, chest shops, homes, warps, etc). So if you change your username, you lose all of that. This is why developers have to update their plugins to use uuid instead of player name, and if they don't update, we can't keep their plugin

Excuse any typos, I typed this on my phone, I'll fix it when I get to a real computer

Edit: I fixed the typos. Also, incase you didnt realize this from the paragraph above, you may LOSE some of your donator perks as part of this process. As we evaluate plugins, the reality is some of these plugins will have to go if they dont get updated and there is nothing we can do about it. We will make an attempt to replace any plugins we lose with another plugin that is similar or equal ... but if there are not any suitable replacements, then that plugin will just be lost. An example, we have already scrapped VirtualPack, the plugin was causing other issues and it just had to go. VIrtualPack was your Virtual Items (Workbench, Furnace, Brew Stand, Chest, etc). We are evaluating replacements for it, but you should be aware that some aspects of VirtualPack will likely never return because there are no suitable replacements. For example, we can get Virtual Chests and probably Virtual Workbenches .... but Virtual Furnace/BrewStand/Enchant Table is likely gone permanently. Seeing as Virtual Chests are the big draw of that plugin, I dont think this will be an issue.

Also, any time we remove a donator perk, we are always trying to think of other things that could be added to fill that space. For now, Virtual Pack wont be replaced with anything (unless we find a Virtual Chest plugin that we like that already has the UUID Update). We will re-evaluate Donator Perks once 1.8 comes out, but keep in mind that you will also get additional perks from the "Ranks" system once we add it (after 1.8).

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