Future Worlds vol. II.

It has been two years since i posted a forum thread with the same name. A lot more experience allows to think about different scenarios:

Scenario 1

ImDeity Kingdoms minecraft server will close down.

Let's face it - everyone wants to have the "golden age" with hundreds of online people back, but nobody helps to make it happen for various reasons, be it school/job/family issues, being interested in other servers or games, or simply tired of drama.
Deity cannot expect big income from donations but he still has to pay for the server upkeep, so one day he might say "Guys, it has been great and wild ride, but the game is over." and those who still care would reply "Thank you for lots of friends and memories." and that would be the end of it.

Scenario 2

ImDeity Kingdoms minecraft server will stay for long time in its current condition.

Assuming that Deity is okay with spending some of his money for the server upkeep, but he certainly doesn't have enough time to spend several hours daily updating, fixing or developing stuff, Main/Creative/PvP worlds will stay in 1.8 version with some patch to let new clients join, and Vanilla world will be kept up to date with Minecraft updates but will lack any plugins.
Then it is up to players to catch newbies and persuade them to try economy, towns, creative world and all features that the server can offer. Also, newbies will have to learn that this is not just anarchy survival, but a world with strict rules. Most of them, however, will be disappointed by the simple fact that "there is nobody online" and a handful of addicts are busy with their own businesses.
Even if veterans come back to the server, they have to face the simple fact that their old friends are gone for years, or in better case, gone for few minutes, because nobody likes to stay online alone all day just to look for friends who might return.

Scenario 3

ImDeity Kingdoms minecraft server will be sold to new owner.

A new owner will then hire a developer, milk more donation money from players and offer bunch of minigames, few more survival worlds and possibly some other ideas. Server staff will be replaced by new people and a handful of veterans will not last long against an income of new people, unaware about the history. The server name will remain, but there will be a completely different business hidden behind it.
But on the other hand, such "new owner" can rather start their own server and spend money on advertising. Also, as with buying an existing town, you have to deal with old members who often return just to cause troubles.

Scenario 4

Main World reset will bring some players back for some time.

Those who know impact of map resets already have an idea what would happen. Few turbulent weeks with a lot of new towns, fun and drama, followed by few boring months or years of paying town taxes and struggling to find some entertainment. The more resets, the quicker it turns from excitement to boredom and more players leave because their builds and achievements are gone.
Resets are tradeoff. You lose what you had or built and you get a clean canvas to paint. But experience from past resets says that to justify the need for a map reset, there should be more changes than just an empty map.

Scenario 5

The change of how the server works will change the playerbase and gameplay and give more sense to a map reset.

Veterans want some advanced stuff like FTB, but can FTB be the main part, or even the only part of the server? From past experience with FTB on ImDeity, it needed higher level of maintenance than Deity was able to handle. Remember those who needed to have their player profile reset just to be able to play?

Another way of changing the server is more evolutionary than revolutionary. It all has been suggested before: Third tier of class ranks, voting to rise the /home limit, ability to get gold ingots, tax system changes... But it may still be not enough after half year when taxes will start to pull towns into debts.

Other ideas

- Having a square world map would make expanding easier even if Terrain Control update changes the way of how the world is generated. Just keep a not updated version of the world somewhere, generate more land and copy region files.
- Basic thing that survival players need is a safe place. Only after they claim their plot, they should be taxed or able to review recruiters.
- Cross-world kingdom chat would help to make kingdoms more important.
- An ability to protect the land without tax, e.g. pay-once-protect-forever can help to protect town streets and other builds, thus removing the need for rollbacks.
- People do things that are against rules, but not technically impossible. Kingdoms plugin can cover some of these, for example creating a town within some area from an existing town would need an approval from the mayor of that town. Changing the mayor can be logged into ledger and checked for timestamp to see when the last change happened. Same with joining or leaving kingdoms.
- Quests can be a source of super-rare items. Giving a quest reward chosen randomly from 3-4 items could sparkle some trading of these items.

Well. There is million of little things that can be thought of, and a handful of things that can be done. I hope that someone can help to make things happen.

Deity: Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas and soon Happy New Year as well as 6th anniversary of the server. Thank you for letting us play here.