Hey its Zoppp from World of Keralis (Co-owner). I remember back when WoK Started I started with around the same principles as you: Easy rank structure, Custom world, schematic importation and all that. See the thing is, at first when the server is small it may work but as you grow it gets harder and harder to cater to all. The rank structure on WoK used to be Guest ----> Builder ----> Advbuilder ---> Mod ----> Admin. Advbuilder got WE and people were happy. Issues started arising with people derping with WE and so. Mistakes happen here and there, someone accidently deletes part of the map -_-. Then you have people who you think you can trust with Advbuilder but end up griefing with it. We tried applications and everything and it was just chaotic on the logistics side. Even with applications we had issues with WE griefing and derping. Its a balance between security and privileges. We now have Builder+ and Trusted above builder. Builder+ is just a fancy tag, basically a buffer that we can pick Trusted candidates from. Trusted candidates get full WE. Ever since we switched to this system we have virtually no griefing. We do expect that our Trusted members along with staff help out our lower members when they need a minor land clearing, terrain smoothing, water filling etc; so we have a good compromise
Now onto the schematic importation and "plots". On WoK we want to keep that realistic city feel. At first I used to just World edit giant plots above water and call that a city and connect it with roads. As the server grew I realized how ugly that looked. Ever since we stopped using world edit for schematic importing and massive land clearing. It just looks unnatural and ugly. Go ahead and look at our largebiome map compared to the beachtown map (
www.keralis.net/map). The largebiome map looks much more natural.
If you are starting out small, you should start with those ideals. They are very sound and good for a small server. As you grow, however, your core ideals should evolve so that you will not find yourself in a mess of griefing and complaints.
Good luck man, hope this feedback helps!
