My Opinion on Minecraft Server Activity

[pointlessbob]

Hello, this is my personal opinion or theory on how Minecraft servers create a successful community of active players.  In no way is this 100% accurate considering how it's based on my opinion.  It would be nice if you were to take this into consideration because it could be good knowledge to have while running a server.
There are two primary things to have to ensure a successful server.  These things are expansion and retention.  I will go over each of the two fields in depth and explain why they are necessary for a successful server.


Expansion

Server expansion in simple terms is 'the ability to bring new players onto your server'.  This is obviously important because without it your server would be void of players since there are not any players joining.  Expansion is the primary way to bring a constant or temporary flow of new people into your server and you can expand your server by lots of means.  A very popular way of server expansion is the voting network; your existing members vote on sites where potential new members look for a server to settle into.  More ways of expansion include:  server endorsement, youtube endorsement, in-game recruiting, friend invitation award system, etc.


Retention

Just as important at expansion, retention is the ability to retain new players (ways of having players return to the server).  Retention is incredibly important to have because it creates ways to keep a longer term population of active members that came from server expansion.  Server retention is vital to have once you've expanded your server?without retention those new players will not stay on the server thus making your expansion methods useless.  Ways of retention can stretch from having a welcoming community that makes connections with new players to having unique game mechanics that are fun and interesting to use.

In conclusion, expansion and retention are both vital to a server's health.  You gain fresh members from  server expansion and the server's retention allows you to keep the new players returning to your server to eventually become active members.  These fields work together, you can not have one without the other.  Having this knowledge in mind, owning a server can become more objective?What do I have to expand my server and how can I retain new players?

Thank you for reading and I appreciate feedback.

TLR  Expansion = ways to attract new members, Retention = ability to keep new members returning.  Expansion and retention work together to create a successful server.

[Zeedin]

We appreciate post like this but we know what we need to do and we will start work on MCP again very soon(not TM) a dumping alot of time/money into it.

If it was going down you would see us talking about it like last time. There is really only one problem the we need to fix and the being Admins being active. If you look at the player count when me and silas are active on MCP the player count is in a good spot and player retention is high, also more active development with it and not just big burst here and there. Also MCP will probably not go down for the see able future dude to a reason I can't say, it is very good at what it dose and will just leave it at that.

Also the reason way we are not active on MCP is because there is no motivation to do so after 5+ years of playing the game you start to lose interest in it. Don't get me wrong though we still want MCP to succeed but there is not point trying to force something because it becomes very clear in the work you put out and would not meat our and probably your expectations.
And they boys and grills is whats "wrong" with MCP.

[pointlessbob]

You can't rely on  admin influenced activity, it's a false reality.  The server should eventually be able to sustain itself without the owner having to be online every second of the day.  My point with server retention and expansion is that all successful networks, businesses, companies, you name it.  They have some form of expansion and retention to make it successful.  Even the army has these qualities, they expand through advertisement campaigns and government support, and they retain recruits though unique army experience and pride of fighting for the country.

I look forward to seeing MCP become successful, and I hope you set up forms of expansion and retention to help with the success.

[Zeedin]

You can't rely on  admin influenced activity, it's a false reality.  The server should eventually be able to sustain itself without the owner having to be online every second of the day.  My point with server retention and expansion is that all successful networks, businesses, companies, you name it.  They have some form of expansion and retention to make it successful.  Even the army has these qualities, they expand through advertisement campaigns and government support, and they retain recruits though unique army experience and pride of fighting for the country.

I look forward to seeing MCP become successful, and I hope you set up forms of expansion and retention to help with the success.

But it dose MCP has been running with out us touching for the 6+ months now and it has slowly fallen because there of this. If the admins are not active on the server there is no new content being made for the server so there is nothing to keep players on once they hit X goal. And for the "networks, businesses, companies" thing they all are ever changing and adapting too, you cant find a company that is successfully today and look back 2-3 years and say they are the same company/business you need to adapt to stay current. If this was not true then nothing would ever change and the world would look the same as the 1900s. You wouldn't make one season of a TV show and expect people to keep rewatching it, you A) Make season 2+ or B) People stop watching is because there is nothing left to gain from it, the same goes for MCP.

For me I see Admins as content creators for the server, you may see them them as different.

But Silas and I have started work again on MCP/CDGS and like I said we are dumping a ton of time and money into it, so please enough with these posts these things take time we can't just spring 100+ people over night, if we could we wound. Hopefully we should see the effect in the next 3-6 weeks.

Also MCP in the past 3 months has gotten just about 4000 different people to join witch is not bad, the main problem is not having the core player base on and that is why new content is so important.

[Zeedin]

Also this is the most toxic MCP has ever been witch dose not help new players want to stay playing, ie you guys harassing the shit out of link.