Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• butifuldzastr (from CitizenDonatorPlus to ArchitectDonatorPlus)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

I created a chart displaying the incoming votes per day on the voting page now.

I have now finished the log-block webpage interface. All Elders can use it to identify any griefing issues in the empire, nether and darklands. The link can also be found in the Elder-section of the Userlevels & commands page.

To track places where griefing might have happened, elders can now use the logblock tools with /lb toolblock and /lb tool as well as the /lb commands to lookup regional changes wit the appropriate parameters.

I have now created a new world, dedicated for the planning of Mega-structures to be built in the Kingdom: The Draftlands

The primary incentive was to have a world where worldedit can be used. I made some intensive tests and discussed with Elders how to pull this off. So far Elders have been running private, local servers to do planning, and the lack of 100% backups and the complexity of running a server in general caused some issues that made me decide to host this service here directly.

As a result we now have a map that has the same lot structure as the kingdom. I highly discourage casual buying of these lots, which is why I put in the following limits:

• The lots can be bought by Elders only
• The lots are expensive (50k for a main lot)
• You can get only lots where you have the same coordinates on the kingdom already

However, there are also upsides:

• Elders can use WorldEdit (with some small limitations)
• It’s creative
• You can copy your kingdom lot as-is over into the same spot to work on it (still to be enabled)
• Elders can add lower level users to the lots

Before you complain now about not being an Elder and therefore not being able to use Worldedit: Even with the limitations that are possible, WorldEdit is dangerous. It is not possible to 100% prevent effects outside the own lots. There are numerous ways to make the server lag off everyone or even crash it. So I want to restrict this to the people I know well and where I know they can stand up for anything that happens.

I am fighting with the new heads plugin to prevent it from dropping mob heads. If you are getting mob heads after this has been posted, please make a ticket. I will try to switch that off. Also, there are some mobs which drop bugged heads that can be multiplied after drop & break. If you break a head and get 2 back PLEASE destroy those. I do not want bugged blocks around on the server since we have NO idea what other problems they might cause.

I have upgraded the voting lottery now so that it can handle block-types, i.e. different colored glass etc. I also included all the blocks proposed here.

I further fixed the skyblock 2D map. Seems nobody so far realized that it was 4 lots off in each direction, thanks tbrewda for reporting!

Further, I now have created a new logging system that logs all important activities on the server more systematically instead of just having the console log mixed in with the chat. I also created a web interface for that one and the logblock plugin. Once I cleaned that one up, I will give access to the logblock plugin to elders so they can lookup griefers and decide themselves if they want to ban them or talk with them. We had now twice for example blocks damaged in the darklands spawn and one time it was just a small issue, the other one was systematic destruction on a larger scale. With the web-interface one can very easily see how big the damage was and make a judgement.

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• EternalDarknes0 (from CitizenDonatorPlus to ArchitectDonatorPlus)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

I have currently 3 different items in the lottery that need to be updated:

• Common blocks
• Ore blocks
• Hand-made blocks

This list quite old and needs to be updated with the new blocks since the recent minecraft versions. So please make suggestions (provide block IDs) what should be added where:

• Common blocks are: stone, grass, dirt, cobblestone, wood, sand, gravel, tree, sandstone, netherrack, soulsand
• Ore blocks are: goldore, coalore, ironore, lapislazuliore, diamondore, redstoneore, snowblock, clayblock, glowingstoneblock, pumpkin, stonebrick, purplegrass, netherbrickblock, enderstone, mossycobblestone, stonebrick
• Hand-made blocks are: wood, glass, dispenser, noteblock, poweredtrack, detectortrack, whitecloth, smoothstonestep, brickblock, bookcase, obsidian, chest, furnace, ladder, minecarttrack, cobblestonestairs, jukebox, jackolantern, redstonelamp

Thanks!

I have now enabled the new trivia system and also made an instruction page for it. Please try it out and tell me if there are any errors, chances for improvement etc. So please keep the initial costs for answers low and check all accounts and winner reports for correctness. Thanks!

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• Kevinpowellaz (from CitizenDonatorPlus to ArchitectDonatorPlus)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

I have been progressing quite a lot over the weekend on the trivia quiz. The last things to do is to check if all the announcements are correct and program multiple payouts in case we have a tie.

This is how it will work: We have a catalog of over 7500 questions, some hard, some easy. Anybody can be quiz master and start a new quiz. The person will pick how many questions there will be and how much it will cost for users to answer. The the quiz master will get a random question. If he likes it, he can broadcast the question. I chose the [O] Offtopic channel for all quiz communication. Users can then send in answers and will be debited the costs. The quiz master can see the answers but not who sent them.

After the quiz master waited some time for answers, he can check which answers are in and then also see the correct answer for the first time. He can then decide to award one user the correct answer or to skip the question because nobody had a good enough answer. It’s in the judgement of the quiz master if he takes the funniest, best or whatever else answer to win. Of course it’s important to be fair, otherwise next time the same quiz master runs a quiz, people will be hesitant to participate!

A skipped question will also count in the number of questions for the quiz. When the initially chosen number of questions is asked, the quiz ends and the money that people paid to answer will be given to the winner(s). There will be a website where people can follow all old sessions and see who did a good job at asking and answering!

Achievements: Psiber contacted me today with an idea to implement achievements. We talked it through in quite some detail and found a good way to implement this. Essentially, all our handmade functions can be extended via achievements, for example the “buy xp” functions. There can be an achievement how often you buy XP and how much you buy over time. There will be different achievement points given to users progressively with milestones in each achievement they receive. Maybe the achievement points will be displayed as a name prefix, we still have to find out if things become too crowded on the screen. Psiber agreed to help me first with the general functionality, and then we can, over time and quite easily add achievements to many things in the system. There will be a website where you will be able to see all available achievements and for each user who has how many overall points and what type of achievements.

I would like to share with you that we have now, about 12 hours of activating the lot refunds in the Lot manager, already 7 main lots and a bunch of street lots in the kingdom returned into the wild! Thanks to the users who have abandoned them so that others can build there!

I have updated the lot manager. You can now chose to abandon, refund or gift applicable lots! The further missing function is the reset option for flatlands and older version lots. Please stand by until this will be activated! Please note that ALL those choices are effective IMMEDIATELY!

Because some actions those actions are now immediately, I removed the actions so far stored in the database. If you previously chose an action for your lot, please do so again now.

Please check if all the chosen actions are executed correctly! All actions are logged, if we find a mistake, we can undo it as long as tell me ASAP!

I discovered there was an issue with the Vanity titles. I made the recording by date, but if you were registering 1 minute before midnight, it would expire immediately. So I have to change the system to record the time at which you set the title and also take the proper timezones into consideration. Now everything should be good.

If you login now while the title is still active – and be it for one more minute – you can keep it until you relogin again. Unless, of course, you use the /vanity check command. That will discover the expired title and remove it.

Please see the latest upgrades from the voting system:

• hydroflame62 (from Architect to Designer)

Congratz and thanks to all voters!

I spent the day today, after being inspired by the recent suggestions, to make vanity titles. Everyone now can rent a title for any given time. Please see details here or use the /vanity command in-game.

Also, since we have now 5 communication options, I split those all into different pages and revamped the menu accordingly.

Thanks all for commenting on the last post. This was really interesting and gave me some insights that I want to share here. I think the big learning here is that we want people to USE the money instead of just buying something with it (such as a lot) and then don’t do anything with it. The next learning is that I want to stay away from people buying things that affects everyone else too such as switching the weather, warps or similar stuff. These items should be otherwise extremely expensive since they really have a huge effect. The other topic is about who is rich and who is not. The cash is only one sign. you would have to add the purchase value of every kingdom lot and then what they bought from the market minus what they sold and on top of that all the diamonds etc they hoard in their chests. So a realistic picture here is very difficult to paint.

Let me group the different expenses one can have a bit:

• Lots: If someone buys a lot, be it in the Kingdom, Empire or a new world, the issue is that they buy a space, but not necessarily do something with it. We see that currently in the kingdom. It’s not about the one person that has 5 street lots. It’s about every user that has one lot and does not build or even only mines there. It’s dead land that only causes admin efforts and server space. So we have to make sure that people buy this only because there is nothing else better to spend money for and because they really want to build something big and will do so.
• Vanity goods ( = name titles, hats etc): This is something I like a LOT. Why? People can rent those. People can show off an achievement. If rented, the money is out of the system and people have a reason to vote again to get more. They use the money, it does not affect others and the economy or the game. I will most likely do those.
• Services ( = /home etc): We could sell services that otherwise are not available such as /tppos. You could be taxed Uncs for every block that you are transported for example.
• Virtual assets ( = lot members, homes etc): These would be charged only when set, so the impact is not really big.
• Taxes: Everyone likes to avoid taxes as we know. People feel taxes are generally unjust, and it simply breeds behavior. So if I charge people on cash, they will just buy lots, and then we are back to square one. Same goes for a cap in cash. Unless we find a tax that makes people do something we really want them to do, I would avoid those. One interesting tax could be on the ownership of a kingdom lot. Not too much, but if you do not vote regularly for example, one should not be able to keep a main lot. The question is what to do if someone runs out of money when they go on holiday? Reset a whole city? Does not seem fair. It would require a complex system so people do not keep one without paying and not too quickly lose everything…
• Consumables: The XP- market and other consumables can be interesting, but this is a sometimes a bit like “pay to win”. It can have very difficult dynamics, so I would have to think about how that can work and which blocks/items are good sellers. Player heads is one easy option here for example.
• New consumables: Lottery tickets is definitely something we can do. I am also working on a new skyblock system as soon as the lot manager is finished that will encourage spending.

I have been thinking about how users spend their money on the server (Uncs, not real money). This has been an ongoing topic over time and we had several new mechanisms (the kingdom being one) where we tried to get people to spend their money.

Why?

If people do not spend their money, money has less value for everyone and the whole economy slows down over time. People do not offer things in the shops anymore and so on. Right now people buy mainly kingdom lots, but in the vast majority of the cases, people do not do anything with them.

So there are several ways in addition how we can make people spend money:

• Make kingdom lots cost incremental: The first main lot costs 10k, the second 20k, 40k etc, always doubling.
• Make people pay to use other features in the lot manager: adding 1 person? That’s 500 Unc. 2nd person: 1k, etc.
• Selling lots that are only available for higher ranks at 10x the price of a kingdom lot, with progression
• any other ideas?

I am not sure which of those to do or not to do. But think about it like this: If someone spend that much time on the server that he needs 30 people added to their lot, there should be people in that list being able to contribute some money for the privilege…