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The problem with the Minecraft community isn't really a problem - it's just the way it is. Minecraft is aimed at young kids and the majority of the Minecraft community are (from experience) ranging from age 6 all the way up to 62.
The reasons why you can't get a popular server without money is fairly simple. You have to pay quite a lot for a high-end host that can handle a lot of players for a start, and even then you have to advertise your server, and here's where the problem lies.
Marketing is the key aspect to a popular server. I've seen really poor servers that litterally just have a nice spawn, server shop and that's it, yet they have hundreds of players simply due to the fact that they've thrown money at advertising - and a lot of it too.
You cannot target adverts at specific age groups because too many people of different age groups play the game, so your adverts are less effective due to not being able to target your adverts as effectively. Most players also go on a server listing website to find a server, and the listing services want money and they do that by getting you to pay them a monthly fee or even bid for places which can cost hundreds.
How else can you advertise a server? Spamming on others? Nope. That just gives you a bad reputation. How about making YouTube videos? Not as effective as you might expect... unless you're a really famous YouTuber like the Yogscast or LDShadowLady or the like, and if you are that famous, you're likely to be spending more time making videos than improving your server.
You see... no matter how good your server is or can be, people won't join it because of that. They join it because their friends play it and others are online too so you can raid them if it's a factions server or you can build with them if it's a creative server and so on. People don't want to play on empty servers by theirselves and empty servers are empty because people don't want to play alone for long.
A real life scenario of this is my server. I've been working on my server for over 3 years now, yet it's still frequently empty or at best has a few players on for a day or two. I've had times where the server was full up and people were asking me to raise the slots, but that wasn't just because they liked my server, it was because it was advertised by someone famous at the time who liked my server and the associated game and thought I deserved the popularity.
I have experience for myself that quality doesn't seem to be the dominating factor for popularity - but popularity in the first place. I am the author of the CraftMine modpack that has been featured on the Technic Platform for months on end, had constantly been praised by random people because it's so good and people on the server coming on and thanking me for my work, which I really appreciate, but as you can tell, people just leave because there's not a lot of people on already, and when they stay, they eventually get fed up of being lonely and either quit or come back in a month's time or so to see if it's gotten any busier.
The reasons why you can't get a popular server without money is fairly simple. You have to pay quite a lot for a high-end host that can handle a lot of players for a start, and even then you have to advertise your server, and here's where the problem lies.
Marketing is the key aspect to a popular server. I've seen really poor servers that litterally just have a nice spawn, server shop and that's it, yet they have hundreds of players simply due to the fact that they've thrown money at advertising - and a lot of it too.
You cannot target adverts at specific age groups because too many people of different age groups play the game, so your adverts are less effective due to not being able to target your adverts as effectively. Most players also go on a server listing website to find a server, and the listing services want money and they do that by getting you to pay them a monthly fee or even bid for places which can cost hundreds.
How else can you advertise a server? Spamming on others? Nope. That just gives you a bad reputation. How about making YouTube videos? Not as effective as you might expect... unless you're a really famous YouTuber like the Yogscast or LDShadowLady or the like, and if you are that famous, you're likely to be spending more time making videos than improving your server.
You see... no matter how good your server is or can be, people won't join it because of that. They join it because their friends play it and others are online too so you can raid them if it's a factions server or you can build with them if it's a creative server and so on. People don't want to play on empty servers by theirselves and empty servers are empty because people don't want to play alone for long.
A real life scenario of this is my server. I've been working on my server for over 3 years now, yet it's still frequently empty or at best has a few players on for a day or two. I've had times where the server was full up and people were asking me to raise the slots, but that wasn't just because they liked my server, it was because it was advertised by someone famous at the time who liked my server and the associated game and thought I deserved the popularity.
I have experience for myself that quality doesn't seem to be the dominating factor for popularity - but popularity in the first place. I am the author of the CraftMine modpack that has been featured on the Technic Platform for months on end, had constantly been praised by random people because it's so good and people on the server coming on and thanking me for my work, which I really appreciate, but as you can tell, people just leave because there's not a lot of people on already, and when they stay, they eventually get fed up of being lonely and either quit or come back in a month's time or so to see if it's gotten any busier.
| Credit | Pikachu298, who got my modpack incredibly popular for a few months, TheWalrusEffect & PurpleDino for making popular videos of CraftMine |
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Either learning something, promoting something or constructing something.
Quality may not lead to popularity but it will keep people and it will also make it easier to advertise.
If you can convince them that buying the "SUPER MEGA DONATOR ULTRA RANK VIP" is better then buying the ones below, and buying VIP on other, more popular servers, you already have a near-permanent member on your server. They will want to stay because they have the perks on that server and not on the other one, making a sort of "consumer trust".
Whilst non donators understand that the donors have an advantage it can't be as blatent as giving them diamond armor when they ask for it. Also with the ever so unfollowed eula, it's impossible to make anything which gives a player an advantage.
If the non donators dissapear then the donators don't have anyone to beat and they lose interest, if there isn't any donators then the server dies from lack of funds.
It's a thin line between these. However, mojang clearly states that selling any items which are not cosmetic will be a violation of the eula and mojang has the authority to take the server down, however, with many crates and booster loop holes there's still ways to make money.
Hardly any servers follow eula but it's important to realise that monitizing should be thought of when creating a server not added on to the end. You should think about if people want a particle or leather armour. To be honest it would be better if mojang just altered their eula back because it's not really changed anything.