Uncovery's Decline?
Hey all,
Is it just me, or is the server slowing down? Less and less people are on. I remember a few years back (like 1 lol) the server was crazy active, with a lot of interesting conversation. Now it's rare to see more than five people on at a time. Is this a normal thing, with the start of school and all that, or is the server really making a slow decline?
I really hope that the Unc community survives long into the future. I loved this this server, still do, and always will.
-KotP
Graph for evidence.
That's a slight but visible downward trend. There has been a ~50% decrease in average population since 2013, which was about when I joined.
What I'm seeing here is that the server population seems to increase in summer, but decrease as school starts. I only have two year's worth of data here, though, so I can't say that for sure. However, even in summer, we were in decline this year.
I definitely see where you're coming from. But, like any other game, people come and go in Minecraft. While it is unfortunate, I know a number of people have left this game as a whole because of personal reasons. I have a friend that used to be extremely active a year or two ago, and now just moved on to other games. Sadly, it's their decision to leave, but we can only hope that there are more newcomers to Uncovery and that they enjoy their stay here :)
I agree, but I think that instead of only hoping, there might be some initiatives we can take to reinvigorate the server. Maybe more advertising, or some more interesting features.
I think you are right, we have less players. Why? Some observations from my side:
1) Minecraft gets more and more "split up". There are more and more different style of competing game formats (prison, etc) that compete for gamers. This is making it harder for everyone to get people join their server.
2) Minecraft themselves is making it harder for us because of their REALMS server system. People like to play with their friends and realms is perfect if you have already a certain group of people (classmates etc) to play with.
3) We are running a certain type of server here (with tests, a whitelist etc) that rather targets serious (and therefore often older) gamers (as opposed to casual gamers who want to just join and build immediately). The issue with that is that older gamers are likely to decline over time since there are rather few new people who start playing minecraft right now for the first time. Most older gamers who would want to play minecraft have started when it became famous and have moved on to other games. They have less time to play as well and so ever new famous game that comes out takes people out of the pool that are likely to join us.
4) It's still summer for many people and summer is always the worst time for us. People are on holiday or prefer to spend the time outside. Once it becomes colder, this will change again. People will give the game to their kids for XMas and play with them. The traffic will increase then.
5) We have not done a lot to promote the server recently. There can be done more, but I personally have a huge time constraint right now. The question is if users are willing to do anything. We can consider of putting up advertising somewhere to get more users.
I completely agree with what you're saying. But, you have to remember that the people that the server still has are loyal to a fault. Is there anything we can do to fix the current situation?
Of course! Spread the word on social media and among your friends! Your personal opinion among your friends and people who follow you is the best thing you can do, more powerful than any ad I can place.
Make a facebook post for example!
Seems to go in waves. School keeps user's away from time to time. Or like myself, enjoying the last of the nice weather.
The thread is not too new, but I would like to offer to mention that Uncovery, to the extent of my knowledge, is the Minecraft game server where no lots resets are taking place (unless player abandons their lots long enough, so they are recycled.
I only know one another Minecraft server which didn't reset players lots for at least 4 last years. The rest of them do restart game servers, at times several times a year. To me, its severe disadvantage. I am not inspired to do anything if I will see 'cleaned up" lot one day.
Personally, this is one of major reasons why I admire to return to Uncovery, even though reality leaves less time to do that these days. I can return and continue working on whatever I had weeks and months ago.
I know this post is a little old, but I was just dropping by the website to see how you all are doing and I saw this post and decided you might want some input from someone who did leave. For those of you who have joined more recently, I used to be a part of Uncovery but I sort of faded away about 2 years ago.(I suppose this can be the formal good bye that I never wrote) Back to why I left, I left because minecraft just got old for me. I had been playing for a few years and I wore myself out. I tried to come back to Uncovery this summer, but I couldn't. This game just can't hold my attention (not even modded minecraft) for more than 15 minutes or so. I moved on to new games such as KSP and Factorio which have the thrill of new updates and such that minecraft lost around 1.2.5. Not to mention, school is getting harder as I get older and it requires more time. Also I'm getting involved with new extra-curricular activities and school sports that weren't previously available. Personally, I think that minecraft in general is slowing down. People like me, that follow the cycle of games becoming popular and getting old, have realized that minecraft is nearing the end of its cycle. Someday, it will become a classic just as all of the old Mario Brothers games and such. There are people who will never be bored of minecraft and I hope that they keep Uncovery going. And now, the good-bye that I never gave you: This server and all you people on it have been a respectable portion of my (currently in-progress) childhood. I don't know if any of you had anything to do with it, but I learned a lot about the world outside my friend groups in school and I really matured a lot while on the server. Thank you to all you peeps who have befriended me while I was here (especially Sleeping Owl) and I genuinely, honestly, not just repeating what other people have said, really hope that everything goes well for the server and all of you people on it. My best wishes to you, and good-bye.
-Kingoftheschool
I have to second what stayen has said.. it feels great to see that my stuff is still here, especially my old empire things. My most recent builds have been done in Kingdom and there I'm confident that they will remain for awhile even if my account deactivates.
I have found hard somehow to get back into the game at the end of the summer and went playing other stuff, but I like how things keep on building up here.