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It seems like a near pandemic these days. hundreds of servers, of all sorts, factions, towny, pvp, creative, all over the internet, and almost every last one of them dieing before they ever truly get off the ground. And it seems as though, for every dead server, there's a different theory. From blaming the server's closure on Youtubers who only play on popular servers, to saying that you didnt hit some sort of imaginary magic combination of plugins, but in the end, there's really only one reason that can serve as the final nail in a server's coffin. And ironically enough, it's the very problem that's causing most servers to close.

innactivity.

As the co-owner on a server that has been around for a year, and that has been fighting a lack of players almost non-stop, I've had a lot of time to think, watch, and listen. and i feel i've truly hit on the source of the problem for almost every server. The Cause of the innactivity of a lot of players, put simply, is innactivity by the players. Now, before you close out of this blog, because it likely sounds like some noob's ramblings, I implore you read the next paragraph at least, so you might understand, So that you might see the truth in my words, and perhaps, in the future, you might too work to help stop the problem.

You see, it's occured to me over the last year, that there is a vicious circle goings on almost every small server on here. And put simply, it's the fault of impatient players, ones who cannot see beyond a playercount to see the potential of servers they visit, who see that no one is on a server, and immedeately assume that the server, with no players, must be of poor quality, and then leave. Unfortunately, as some of you have doubtless already figured out, this leads to a vicious cycle of people coming on, seeing no one on, and leaving, because no one stayed on, leading to a server that lies empty until it dies, no matter how much thought, work, and effort was put into a server to make it unique.

Take for example, the server I co-own, Alluring Realms. As a Roleplay server, we knew that it would be a niche server type, leading to a lower liklihood of new players by merit of it's type, unfortunately, but we had thought that, with all of our features, planning, and detail work, it would still be enough to engage players, and for a time, it seemed like it might work, with a small number of dedicated members cropping up, but after a few months, their schedules seemed to part, and almost all at once, they all stopped playing save to hop on, peek around, see no one on, and leave.

Of course, this leads to the problem that is at the heart of this. With no players willing to be on and just look around while no one else was, new players would come onto the server, find no one on to talk to, play with, or ask for help, and leave, assuming the server either crap or dead, which in turn led to the problem again, with the next new player.

Of course, a server can try and fight this, with having at least one or two staff members who are on a lot, but in the end, this also seems to help little, with players being almost as likely to leave, due to the fact that staff only being online on a server tends to still lead to a similar feeling for players that, with no regular players on, the server must not be a good one, with many players not even getting past the spawn area in some, due to this brutal cycle that seems to set in on almost every small server.

On my server, we've had many people say that they think it will become a great server. And that might be true, if players were to actually play, and try to help it grow. And that same statement might apply to many other servers as well.
But as long as people are too impatient to see a server grow to it's true potential, small servers wlil continue to die before they even had a chance to grow.

I would also recommend reading another short but sweet blog by Ambassador Pineapple, which covers another aspect of the situation at http://www.planetminecraft.com/blog/why-a-lot-of-smaller-servers-fail-early-on/