I have been seeing a lot of blogs and forums posts lately concerning shops on servers, and the practically of them on varies servers. With that said, I recently wrote..well...a novel of a response to a fellow PMC users blog post. So I figured since I was well-seasoned in the ins-and-outs of shops on servers, I'd post my little guide to how to have a good shop on any server, along with some pro's and cons of a server shop. But, before I get into it: this is by no means a plug-and-play solution! You will need to weigh your own servers unique aspects into this to make it work correctly, and semi-flawlessly.

The basics

-Servers need a central shop.

Why? To be fair. Any well-built server will have a well-built spawn in which players can't build too close to spawn. The placement of the shop to spawn allows for: A)Everyone to get to it and B)No one to be too close to it, and ultimately, being able to spend/sell faster. And yes, the speed of a sell.purchase is critical: think of it in the middle of a war.

-Server admins must be the only ones who can make shops.

This makes a central pricing system. I've seen server economies die because of players farming the same material, and purposely undercutting average players, forcing them out of a well-priced deal.

-The shop has to be that: a shop.

Having multiply shops leads back to the whole "player/team can be closer to it". You can always have multiple shops that sell various goods, but again, I would suggest you stay away from this unless you have a warping system on your server with the standard /spawn

-The default start value must be low.

For example, have it so a player can only buy something very simple with their starting funds: say torches. This will cut the field to something fair. If you make it so they can buy a iron pick with their funds, anyone with a XRay mod/texturepack can easily dig things up and very quickly screw with the econ. But you already have anti-xray, don't you, you good server admin you?

-You must be cautious with buying/selling prices!

Many server have had player and factions completely destroy the economy by taking advantage of certain items that can be sold. With that said, each server needs to take into consideration certain plugins they have along with map type as to keep the economy balanced. I can not do this for you! But I can give you a list of what not to sell/buy:

• Crops: DO NOT have a store that players can sell crops to! Sugarcane is a big no-no! You can offer to sell them, but do not set it up so player can sell to it. Reason being is that player can set up auto-farms.
  
  
• Seeds: DO NOT sell them. Same reason as crops.
  
• Food: DO NOT sell. Again, players can set up a good farm, and just loot the fruits of mob spawning, and get rich quick using that.
  
• Common blocks: Keep them cheap! Or, better yet, just don't sell the really common ones! One such block to not have in the store what so ever is cobble stone thanks to cobble stone generation with pistons.
  
  

The Pros to an Economy

Server shops (as well as the economy) provide awesome new things that could never be done without the idea of money, and here's just a few of them:

-Godfather-ing.

The econ can allow for player and/or factions (if implemented on your server) to play a "godfather" of sorts. A well-built faction or player can threaten others to do their bidding with the threat of raiding them. That is, unless they get a hefty sum of money. This may be viewed as a bad thing, but in a hardcore PVP, it's good.

-Jobs.

Some players may need a task done (say...remove a hill/forest). With that said, the one with the job, may not have something the person who is interested in the jobs wants. That is, until you throw money into it. This allows for people to do jobs, and get what they truly want!

-Dirt farmers get rich too!

Lets face it: hitting diamonds is a god send. Getting stacks and stacks of cobble? No where near as hard. Players can sell there cobble and get some funds. This allows for them to then trade in all those un-goldy hours of digging into something: a shiny diamond shovel. To do some more digging...of the glory of circles...

The Cons

For every light, there is a shadow. And yes, I know, way to spiritual for minecraft. But it's true: everything has a down side to it. Even an economy in Minecraft:

-"Get rich quick" scheme

Everyone's seen them on TV: buy my book, and you'll get rich fast! Although it's not quite the same in minecraft, people do still do this. Granted, the people that fall for it probably deserve it (not being rude, but..common! It's minecraft! There is no "get rich quick" in this game without cheating!). But the person who hosted the scheme will profit, and if they manage to do it again...you got yourself an evil moogle on your hands.

-Hacks and all that

XRay mods do exist, sadly, and this does lead to players finding the rare materials faster. And, since their rarer, they sell for more. There really isn't anyway to totally get rid of XRay, thanks to texture packs, but you can try and stop it with plugins.

-Survival is..gone

Quite a number of people think that adding a server shop kills the idea of survival: you have a limitless supply of items, that anyone can get given enough time. There is, however, ways around this: varying from stores with stock, to player-based store and limited items (for example, ores can't be sold or bought expect from a main server store)

Fin

That's my "tutorial" on setting up an economy and server shop on a server! Hopefully, I was apply to help someone, and hopefully that someone didn't mind reading my novel of a blog. Thanks for the view, and good luck with that store!

If you need help with installing and runnig economy plugs, please do not ask me! I know very little about installing plugins other then essentials! If you do need help, go here. There is a list of plugs you can use, along with how-to's one installation!