2 years ago, on March 24, 2018, i decided to start my own Minecraft server. I advertised a bit here and there, and i got around 8 players per day. Half of them stayed. I was doing pretty well for a new server, it was a hardcore anarchy server. Naturally people died and soon enough, i had no players left. I switched it to normal anarchy server, I got around 12-30 new players per day and i was doing pretty well. But i noticed a disturbing trend. Players would play, get pretty far into the game, and then just leave... forever. That was about 90% of my players (they were pretty far into the game). Players would be in the middle of building something then just leave forever. Players would donate, play and then just leave forever, it was very weird. Nobody was backdoored or anything, i was the only operator and i checked frequently for anything suspicious.

  Several months later i decided to do some serious advertising and upgraded my own host to something better. This got me several new players, but the same thing that was happening earlier was also happening to these players. They would just randomly leave forever (there was no autobans or anything that could have caused this server side). But a few stayed and didn't leave forever. But there was also something else happening, it was like the players that joined my server weren't motivated, they would join, punch down a few trees, and log off forever. My struggle wasn't finding players, that was the easy part, the hard part was finding players that actually wanted to stay on my server. Fast forward to a month later, i did it! My server is full and running smoothly! I thought this trend would continue, but a few days later it was the same as before, just a small handful of players online (anywhere between 2-8 players. usually on the lower end of that count).

  Fast forward to the middle of 2019. I sank lots of money into hosting and advertising. But it was like no matter where or how i advertised, i couldn't get anyone to join my server. I was getting annoyed, how do other similar servers have so many players but everyone avoids my server like the plague? I looked into my internet, my host, everything. There was nothing stopping players from joining and playing. Granted i did get a few joins, but it was mostly just old players and a few new players begging for stuff or operator or other stupid things. I have had players join my server, and then tell other players to join a certain ip and they all leave! Very infuriating (most of these "servers" that got advertised on my server were minigame servers and modded survival etc...).

  Fast forward to now, nobody has played on my server for a month (one player per week that logs off 5 seconds later doesn't count). I am tired of wasting money, time, and effort trying to advertise my server just to get nothing in return. It still annoys me how some of the worst servers can get tons of players the day they advertise. Maybe some things just aren't meant to be, but i wasted 2 years of my life that i wont get back and im not very happy. If you actually read all of this, props to you. This is just my sad story of how i tried to run a minecraft server and failed.