I'm new on this server, and I've been enjoying my time here immensely, but this 28-hour lockout for non-donors has turned me off a bit. On an economy server, I would think that the least reasonable thing to do would be to cease a significant amount of economic activity for an entire day. The ramifications of such an event are seen by both donors and non-donors. In addition, it seems unfair to all of the players that dedicate themselves to this community, even if it may not be in the form of donations. As a courtesy, a warning beforehand would have been appropriate. If the point was to have an early donor launch for Rising, then couldn't Rising have simply been accessible for donors only until 8PM EST on Saturday? I'm curious as to if anyone else shares the same sentiment regarding this matter, even the donors.
.....or you could donate. Just as in game, the server runs on money and after a big change (e.g rising, main world expansion etc) Andrew needs to test the waters with a smaller player base first. Donators are simply the most "worthy" group. If everyone was allowed to just jump on at first, there might be crashing problems. Andrew even said in game that the majority of memory was being used just on the 150 players, imagine if there were 300.
Andrew did give a heads-up for the "lockout." I believe in the form of a News Announcement, and on Twitter beforehand. All previous big additions like this were also donator-only for the first 12-24 hours, to see how things would run and to prevent any possible serious abuse of exploits, bugs, etc. Economy doesn't go down much, though, with these donator-only periods... In this specific case, adding Rising, there will be a lot more money moving around than usual. People are finding new biomes and basically fighting over protecting them, buying them, selling teleports, selling the materials from the new biomes, etc... As well, not allowing everyone on encourages more users to protect and buy new towns now (money going out of the economy) so that they don't have to deal with twice - or three times - as many users getting in their way. However, I do believe it should have been set so that you simply couldn't enter the Rising portal... but, unfortunately, people would just use teleport to get to Rising, even if they were not donators. :/ There was really no simple way to keep Rising donators-only while having Legacy open for everyone. I do know how it feels to be unable to connect, though... There were many times in the past where it was donator-only and I hadn't donated yet. However, I've learned to just.. go do other things than Minecraft during these periods, even though I have donated now. It's absolute chaos and mayhem during donator-only periods, even outside of the new "content." :/
Beta testing is without a doubt an appropriate donation perk. My only complaint is that the entire server is closed to non-donors for an extended period, while just the newly-released features could be closed to non-donors. The <mod edit> network is a great example of this; they opened The Walls 3 beta to only donors, while they maintained the rest of their network for all of their players. Delucaco I concede your point about testing with a smaller group, but there should be play for all after the completion of the testing. andrewkm I'm sure that I can speak for everyone when I state my appreciation of the administration for providing this server and the donators for allowing it to continue.
I am just fine with donator only events, but I think locking out all non-donors from all of the worlds for a full twenty-four hours is taking it a bit to far.
Then vote everyday and win a voting prize. Farm up in game money. I have bough over 350 USD with in game money. I know a certain someone who has 500 USD+ just from winning voting prizes.
We all realize the need for testing such a massive change to the server in a somewhat-controlled environment, and so, on behalf of those in favor of Legacy being opened prematurely, I would like to request that non-donors be allowed back on after initial testing is complete. On a side note, I'm really impressed with how attentive this server's staff is, and I appreciate the prompt responses to player posts.
Andrew, just curious, awhile ago, agent hare suggested a donator only period for rising, and you quickly shot it down. Why'd you change your mind?
I just thought of something. Couldn't you have kept the rising portal off, but made the warp in the /travel work? That way non-donors could access the server, but just not rising. Thanks for responding, we appreciate it.
What I suggested was different. I suggested that donators only could buy towns for about a week. I now realize that a day for donators only is plenty of time. I also can't wait for everyone to see rising and to see all the new mayors and presidents!
I haven't spent a cent of my own money of donations. However, i've bought ~$1300 in donations from other users. Although I financially can donate, I choose not to and can still reap the benefits of being a donator which is something I enjoy about ECC.
