Minecraft's Oldest Server is in Trouble
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ก.พ. 2023
- Minecraft Online's notoriety for being the oldest Minecraft server is truly something special. But why is the server in such a bad state of disrepair in regards to player retention and server performance? Let's find the truth.
SlowRiot's full response to questions: salc1.com/hostedfiles/mco/rio...
I made a Q&A stream! Here's the link: • SalC1 Minecraft Online... - เกม
Wow, it must be frustrating to see your generous donation to the server squandered like that. Great vid as always
hi
i know, right?
Yeah, 75 months of priority queue on the oldest ANARCHY server in minecraft wasted :(
5th
Ayyyy
I've seen so many great servers die due to poor staff management, what a shame.
Bruh they had no hacks for 13 yrs isn't that what they should be praised for instead of getting bashed about a single incident
@@skullcandy_game601 shut up
@@skullcandy_game601 every single incident? isnt this just one incident
GACHIMUCHI KING
@@trees7878 yoo sorry i meant "about a incident" forgot a
I just want to clarify that here (3:10) that's not server's tps issue. it's caused by MC-5694 which creates ghost block even if it's server was running at 20 tps.
To workaround this: just update server to above 1.15.2(which still have this issue as MC-172550 but rarely), or don't try to insta mine blocks below/while dropping down.
I remember playing SMP with 1.12.2 at the time it was released, with that stupidly annoying ghost block bug. :(
People forget just how bad the ghost blocks used to be. Every god damn server had it, it was horrible.
@@brandon9172 yeah i still have the instinct to right click the ghost block stuck in my head to this day due to that
@@PhoenixT1953 same
I legit still do sometimes haha
2 years ago I heard about this server from MagmaMusen and was really interested in seeing the builds. Particularly, I joined with 1.7.10, and of course did the boring process of reading the rules and such. After that, I was spawned in and the server was a little more active then. I walked around, reading some signs and eventually climbed the stairs as if I thought I was "out of spawn". So I broke a torch on the highway thing as I wanted to test if build was on and a staff member INSTANTLY spawned if front of me. They asked why break the torch? Explained why but they didn't seem to "hear me" as we were both slow typers. I returned the torch back to its place and got the ban hammer. Nope, no temp bans, just the perma with a "broke a torch in spawn" reason. So I actually am really satisfied with how Sal also shows the world how a great server is poorly managed and got relaxed as if I'm not the only MCO sufferer.
LMAOOO you got banned for breaking a TORCH??
This is crazy
@QUBIQUBED Yep, even apologized after that but no, their hesitation was really strange
Power tripping classical
@@thestormwire I tried joining a year or two ago, broke a sapling on an island that was apparent player claimed same thing I tried reasoning and I got banner
Lol i did the exact same thing with a torch.
Dang. This puts FitMC's video on the MCO backdoor into context. Fact that they allowed a malicious actor to become admin and didn't even run any checks on what he was doing is baffling.
Yeah at first i thought it made no sense for a random to sneak by into admin just like that.
But now we know the administration is lackluster.
Who backdoored was a Developer, not all Developers are mods or even admins
Came here to say that, it's almost like someone could have squeazeled their way onto the dev team... then, following the Wikipedia "Be Bold" editing mantra, done the server migration solo. But instead, the weasel chose crime.
Okay they were never an admin they were a dev. And they were also a player in the server for years. It happens cheif.
It actually doesn't since the person who backdoored used "social engineering" and simply gained the trust of server members. It's been done before and there are steps taken to mitigate it, but in a server so large requiring so much manpower, sometimes things will slip through the cracks. This backdoor wasn't the first instance of this individual acting in such a way either, they've been banned a total of 4 times now, 3 of which were on a different account. They were unbanned twice on their previous account, second time by gaining the trust of another member of the server and getting them to vouch for their person. Due to the nature of the third ban, the vouch system was actually deemed to be unsuitable for the server and was removed. Their third ban was for a similar reason as this one, except they gained the trust of a single individual at the time. They evaded their ban under a new name and spent about a year on the server being a "normal player", some of which was as a dev. It wasn't incompetence on anyone's part, but a calculated strategy relying on trust and goodwill.
Sheesh, that was quite the video to make, but I feel this is information I really thought the public should be aware of. These server issues have not only bothered me for the longest time, but also a majority of the Minecraft Online community. If you want me to do a Q&A stream regarding this video, let me know!
Edit: I made a Q&A stream! Here's the link: th-cam.com/video/lDmtDdm6fUc/w-d-xo.html
A Q&A stream? That would be great!
Thank you for this.
i will say as ive been playing on mco for only 2 months and talking to most of the admins and mods that i dont think much will happen in a while but honestly i hope im wrong and that the team can get more sorted out ive noticed that too and it rather irritating that no one dose anything also the publicity of this vid will prob cause another invasion again due to fit also posting yesterday so uh gonna be laggy here for a bit
ok
u should do a community pool!
Y'know, when I heard you dropped 1 and a half grand, I immediately assumed that, in the same vein as quite a few major Kickstarter scams, someone on the admin team simply pocketed the money and ran off with it. Hearing it was more the result of a somewhat complex financial situation that was exacerbated by a needlessly janky and inefficient administration structure calmed my disdain for them a bit - but at the end of the day, going from "malicious intent" to "active incompetence" isn't much of an improvement.
I could run a 120+ slot MC server for...over two years with that kind of cheddar. As far as hardware costs. More than one even for that matter. 50-60 a month is all it'd take for the dedicated hardware and it'd actually be overkill for just a single 120 slot server.
Could just be made up. Don't understand how transferring a server could fail so bad. Not really rocket science.
Hey Sal! Don't know if you remember me, but I'm the former MCO dev/staff member that @draconiusultamius mentioned in her comment. I can't take much credit for the update to 1.12 though. The majority of the work had been done for years, but I joined the development team near the end of the process and my main contribution was enthusiasm to actually get the update complete.
A few things I experienced that agree with your points (I'll preface all these comments with the fact I've not engaged with the server in a long time, so it's possible that things have changed or my memory is incorrect):
-The data migration for legacy usernames and website improvements were projects that were ongoing back in 2021 so it seems weird that Riot mentioned them as recent improvements. That said the update from 1.7.10 to 1.12 took almost seven years. There are only a few active developers and most of them are busy IRL.
-I remember when running profiles on the server that weird legacy compatibility features of Craftbook, like applying redstone power to Netherrack lighting it on fire, took up a lot of CPU time. For sure most of the the performance hits came from the plugins. This isn't because the plugins were poorly written but rather that the number of them and the suite of features they offered was bloated and required lots of CPU time for functionality. There's also a philosophy of prioritizing backwards compatibility over performance that's become entrenched in the server's culture preventing things from being pared down.
-While the development team is open to contribution, it was not managed well. You could often find developers working on pet projects that only add to the server's humongous codebase without any real team planning or evaluation. When I was there, it was recognized that the development process of the server needed to be improved but as a new contributor I wasn't able to change this philosophy and the only major improvement I "scored" was development meetings (that weren't that productive due to the lack of existing structure.) When I attempted to underscore that more priority should be placed on improving performance or development organization, admins would cite the fact that they were volunteering for the server for fun or the bulkiness of the plugins as reasons to not do this. I see projects like the one Riot mentioned as a symptom of the problem--a noncritical novelty plugin that adds to the tech debt and poor performance of the server, making it even harder to update in the future.
-Riot was so absent that the majority of the moderator (not admin) team had never interacted with him outside of seeing him in-game once or twice.
The problem with being a developer or a staff member for MinecraftOnline in general is simply that the server is mismanaged. It's disappointing to see Riot talk about the specific questions you raised but continuously praise the team for managing themselves. In my experience that was a disaster.
Riot even pointed out the reason for the problem himself: he delegated tasks and responsibilities to the admin team without investigating *how* they were being implemented. The majority of the time, the admin team is left to swim. While certain admins have more know-how or skill than others, their positions are nearly equal and they only answer to Riot (who in turn is rarely around), which is a recipe for endless infighting/debate about problems both minor and major since there is no leadership to resolve disagreements. This conflict also wastes a lot of time that could be spent on improving the server.
My experience was that in the leadership vacuum on MCO, the loudest or most powerful voices dominated. While the admin team did listen to concerns, it was also extremely likely for valid points to be brushed aside with a lot of excuses or statements to the effect of "that's the way we've always done it." Admins were also difficult to contact if needed, with Riot even moreso. The poor communication you had about your donation and Riot's lack of reflection on your experience other than "lessons have been learned" is what the average concerned player could expect from a staff member about almost any serious problem. This pushback from admins and Riot is why people who actually try to fix the core leadership problems get "exasperated and leave," to quote helix. MANY talented people have tried this over the years.
I ended up being a pretty toxic person on the server as a result of my frustrations with these problems (plus plain immaturity), and I didn't realize how much I had until nearly a year after I had quit. I'm still trying to unlearn some of the bad behavior I learned there, and I would advise anyone interested in "fixing" the server to not try until Riot changes his approach to running the server lest you waste hundreds of hours of your time. Or $1500.
It's a shame that the server has the problems that it does. The server is very unique and it has a lot of cool history, and I do hope that things improve in the future. But until the way the server is run changes, I'm pretty sure it won't. In fact I fear your video might be counterproductive in that regard. Thanks a lot for bringing awareness to the problems, though! Yours is the best take on MCO I've seen.
Omg, it's the catboi himself coming back from the dead to comment about the situation (no he totally didn't tell me to leave this comment). I really like everything you brought up here, even though this is a lengthy thing to get through, it covers a lot of valid stuff. I didn't see much of the dev stuff myself, having not been too involved in that side of things, but I was involved in the staffing side of things for some time. Won't go into much detail since I actually enjoyed my time there and learned some things along the way myself, but I agree that looking back, I don't like the way I acted with new players. I kind of held myself above them, as hard as I tried not to, and I think towards my end, I really gave in to some of the staff mentality. I have only ever seen riot once myself, and that was during 2020 on the 10th year anniversary of the server. I didn't interact with him much at the time and I was also still quite new to the server, so I didn't know as much as I do now (not that I know a lot now, but hindsight is 20/20). I never really had any goals of fixing the server as much as you did, but I did still want to see it succeed. I was way more into finding out more about the server's history and past happenings etc.
I'd say that in terms of leadership, the main issue is still the absence of delegation, rather than the fault of any individual admin. Sure, the loudest people dominated, but often they are some of the people that cared the most about the server. Some of these admins have grown up playing here, and that does skew their bias a bit since they recall a time when the server was different. Others were people who had been away for a significant amount of time, only to suddenly return out of the blue and become very loud voices.
I do wonder how much of a grasp riot actually has on situations that arise. He might frequently communicate with admins, but we'd never know as outsiders looking un because a lot of that is done in such a secretive manner that nobody other than those involved directly actually know the extent of the communication. Not even the mods know how active riot is on the inside, and he said himself that he mostly speaks to the admins. I personally suspect it isn't much, as he mentions how inactive moderators are demoted, when that is actually no longer the case. I know mods who have been inactive in the server since 202 who haven't been demoted, and from what I recall, this was an admin decision, which riot doesn't seem to be aware of in his response to Sal.
What they admins relay to him might not contain the whole story or might have a biased version of a story, and nobody outside that sphere would know what was truly said. Sure, some things will need to be kept private, not everyone needs to know everything, but more transparency would definitely be the way to go. I'm not kidding when I say that the response Sal got from riot is literally the most I've ever seen him speak about the server directly. Or at all, for that matter. I don't know if he realizes that the lack of transparency and lack of proper leadership are such a massive issue when all he does is speak to one small group of the community, which holds the narrative. Even when he speaks to the admins, there's an undeniable imbalance of power, especially when he shuts decisions down. Like you said, he has exercised this power previously to shut down a unanimous decision. If so much weight is given to one individual's words, would there really be an opportunity for others to interject, especially if refusal to accept a decision would not change the outcome?
I wonder if anything will change. I hope it does, ofc, but at the same time, MCO doesn't "need" change to survive. The uniqueness of the server and the fond memories of those who have played there for years might always be enough to keep it afloat, even if it isn't the greatest server in the world. It is truly a very special place, and I can't say I've found another server quite like it, or that I ever will.
You guys berated and were derogatory when I joined the server I remember
@@Grandremone yuh they were
@Grandremone @MacaDamianut I don't recall doing this, if I did, my apologies. I'm not sure if you may be mistaking me for someone else though as my username on TH-cam differs from the one I had ingame. You might be mistaking ServL for KingServal, and they're different players with unfortunately similar usernames. Both myself and ServL have been off the server since Aug. 2021, though I occasionally chat in the discord on an alt.
Thats why you really need to specify the admin roles. Every company has so many different types of admins. Like someone needs to be the key admin for server administration in terms of hardware/hosting, backup, network infrastructure, software administration, general ingame administration would be a few sub parts i could think of for a cloud hosted server.
Yep agreed
they could have so easily prevented those 1500 from going to waste. If the new server was not being used and the migration was not being pushed how did no one think about just turning it off? It really went through 10 months of running without NO ONE using it???? HOWWW
probably they didn't go with pay-as-you go service and chose something that will charge fixed amount of money each month. And each month not much happened. So, no money
@@Seizen also because some hosts (such as OVHcloud and Hetzner) charge a server setup fee, so you end up not cancelling to avoid paying the setup fee again
Also because all of these pay as you go services (AWS, Google Cloud, etc) aren't good for Minecraft servers, so they probably bought a dedicated server. The hosting company shown in the video was Hetzner btw.
@@Seizen The crazy thing about that "10 months" thing is that it literally would take just a few hours to migrate servers. This guy had 300 days to do something that would take 6 hours and he just couldn't be bothered.
It's likely a dedicated server with a provider such as OVH or Hetzner. They charge a fixed amount per month (even if it's off) until you cancel the server, at which point all of the data is wiped and you have to purchase a new server which often comes with a setup fee.
Yeah, this entire bit doesn't even sound legit imo.
Makes me wonder which server really is the anarchy server: 2b2t with its minimal rules, but engaged Admin/Owner, or MCO with its many rules but complete lack of leadership? Great vid as usual, Sal!
Eh, anarchy can only be said about MCO's chat(its so toxic for a moderated server lmao), but then you break a torch somewhere on accident and get banned in the next 15 minutes
9:25.
As someone who was formerly a moderator on MCO, I can't agree more with that. My final straw was because of the interpretations of what Riot said. There was a situation involving a player who was sexualizing and harassing a minor who had joined the server, and nobody could do anything because the free speech rule said *all* speech is free speech as long as it wasn't spam. In fact, one of the moderators went rogue and banned the guy, and was demoted for it.
Add to that, all the mismanagement of the staff team, the problems still left unfixed, etc, and it really just rubs salt in the wound to see a server I once called home to be falling from grace like this. Its also no surprise that so many staff have quit. I can't blame them.
What is your username?
@@selimbits I can't tell you, I'm sorry. How've you been though? Haven't seen you in a bit :)
@@selimbits Hi, Sel. :o
@@SakuraTheFirst I’m good thank you, hbu?
@@ChloeVFX Hi Spek
as someone who has an entire city on this server,
i haven’t played on this server in a couple years, but it really has not changed i guess. the lag was completely unbearable, you’d have to break blocks like 5 times every time for it to even break.. and they’ve been constantly promising an update to a new version and it has never happened. i really hope MCO can get better, since it’s history and world are invaluable and absolutely need to be preserved
I started playing a couple years ago. It actually has changed. Back in 1.7.10 the server was literally unplayable, all you could do was explore. That hasn't been the case since they updated to 1.12. The block lag is almost completely gone, even recently with all the new players its not too noticeable. Entity lag is still a big issue but it's not as bad as it was years ago.
Play the server a week or so from now.
@@brandon9172 Yeah I played when it was 1.7.10, I’ve been on it during 1.12, but just a couple times to walk around for memories sake. But I’m super happy to hear they’ve actually fixed the block lag finally
Honestly noticing the Sponge setting that fixed block lag was the single most useful contribution I made to MCO
no block lag? i’m not sure about that…
@@SpaceBreakdown It used to be tick-based, but there was a setting that divorced it from the tick speed that I found. Doesn't mean that it works perfectly lol, but without it you had to break blocks multiple times in low TPS
I've had a good amount of experience with the hosting of minecraft servers, and i'll say, if you join a server that has technical problems that aren't fixed quickly, that's usually a perfect indicator for deep incomptence in the staff team. In many ways, the technical aspect of a minecraft server is relatively easy, compared to the community and leadership aspect.
A literal 10 year old can operate a server, even one of this size.
@@cykes5124 It becomes more difficult if you want to play vanilla though e.g. (fabric + lithium + phosphor).
I had to launch up spark a few times to see what is causing the lag.
Look you're not totally wrong, but I've spent around 1k hours on MCO and talked to various staff. The big problem is that many of the plugins are based on code bases that are abandoned and they're currently trying to remake all the plugins to a new "engine" in an entirely new language. I abandoned the server two years ago because staff are uber autists and the lag is unbearable just as a disclaimer
@@TheZebinatorofficial how in a new language?
@@nnnik3595 new programming language for it to work with the new "engine", idk what it's really called, I'm no techie
I think a technical analysis into the lag problem would be interesting, even with the old hardware a server should NOT be running that poorly with that few players
I've seen servers with 20 players all loading new chunks run way better than this, so i'd also be really interested in the technical analysis!
My home server has very similar specs to the ones listed and it can run vanilla+smp plugins with 20-30 players no problem. The rare drop to 18 TPS was the worst of it.
As someone who has seen this exact thing happen to another reasonably large server and being a high up staff. I feel for the staff they can’t do anything except try to keep the community functioning. I would recommend a staff manager and a co owner to handle smaller stuff so that only MAJOR things even need the owner. Yes it is a structural issue. The only ways it can be solved is a revamp and a active owner while it is revamped
Yep you need one person to be the boss and they need to be effective. And about the worst thing you can do is try to have some kind of rule by comittee, that rarely works long term and you always need one person that has the final word.
Thank you for having me contribute to this project, glad to see it turned out well :)
-NightSteak9
Hi there pal good to see you
yo wsp nightsteak! im the one that signed you the book few days ago :) (Novylen)
Good luck in the future, mate.
Btw, if Riot doesn’t give a flip about anything, then who does the money go to? Who has access to the server files/storage? Who is making sure the bills are paid? This whole thing doesn’t make any sense to me. Just.. how?
And I’m AxJag Films
wow gl in
Hey Sal, as a former player who spent nearly 2000 hours in one year (365 days) on the server before quitting, I am so glad that you've addressed the underlying issues without all the drama. I and a former moderator, @ServL Katt (who was one of the sole reasons for the update to 1.12.2), have discussed these things at length in the past, and we have all agreed that the lack of leadership and delegation is ultimately the largest issue. It's great to see that finally being addressed as its own topic. I really feel your frustrations with the server, they were what caused said former moderator to leave as well. I do hope the best for the server, even with its more problematic issues, such as the leadership and the cliques. It is definitely such a unique place, and one of the most diverse places I've joined. I do have my own personal gripes against the server, but i too would hate to see it die. There's so much more you could have gone into, and MCO truly does have a lot of lore, but the core issue is evident and I'm so glad you've actually hit the nail on the head here. Hopefully, riot and other admins will see this and finally remove those rose coloured glasses of the past to truly make it a better place.
I will say that part of the issue of manpower is actually because every plugin in the server is custom coded. Afaik, there's no plugins that are taken and placed in as is, they all have to be tailored to the server. Even WE and voxelsniper are custom built for MCO, and developers don't get paid a cent for their work. They are just individuals from the community who offer their services to the server and are entrusted with helping to code and update plugins. This in itself creates issues beyond efficiency, as any truly determined individual could gain the trust of the server simply by being active, and thus have an opportunity to cause harm to the server with their code. The lack of any incentives for developers also means that work only gets performed on a voluntary basis, as opposed to having paid devs for a server who have a track record of success and incentives to produce a result beyond satisfaction and praise from the community. I don't think any amount of restructuring could fix this specific issue unless devs start getting their due and people who are familiar with the code of minecraft are brought in, as opposed to just relying on unproven individuals from the community and the generosity of the admins.
On another note, I don't agree with updating to 1.19 due to the presence of chat reporting. An integral part of the server is its policy of free speech, wether that is for better or worse. 1.19 would take this away, even with no chat report mods, as a friend of mines found out, /me actually allows a player to be reported in chat for a certain amount of time. For now, 1.18 is the furthest I'd ever want it to go, despite the issues with free speech.
I do have some tidbits of information about the server and the whole leadership thing which might interest you. Someone had previously offered to buy the server from Riot in 2014 or so. They're a very rich person irl who is also an admin of the server, and is the only "supergod" rank, for which they paid over the amount of your donation. I forget what the offer was, but at the time, it was a lot. There is actually an internal organization of admins, with certain admins being known to have far more authority and power. They essentially have full access to the server and currently act as the voice of riot. I believe there are 2-3, though the number isn't publically known. They are the admins with full access to the console and who can act in an emergency to stop a "rogue" admin, which is what their position essentially is about. This was instated after one admin got frustrated about the lack of response from riot regarding their desire to resign and repeatedly used the console to unban players until they were removed by riot. There seems to now be a policy change to allow for admins to step down peacefully, which I think is an excellent decision. Previously, the doctrine was that being an admin was a lifelong privilege, but this was changed after a few years, likely due to the actions of several admins who were thusly demoted.
Overall, this is a fantastic video and I'm very glad that you made it. I'd be up for a chat on discord if you, or anyone else) ever wishes to know more about my anecdotal experiences (Draconius#0456). Thanks once again and best of luck with future videos!
¿did you really specify how many days there are in a year? lmao
up
Btw in 1.19 you can block the chat-reporting feature. Basically every server on 1.19 blocks chat-reporting. It's literally impossible to chat-report on most 1.19 servers.
@@kertobatr2814 well, some people might assume one year starting from Jan. 1st. I first joined 1/4 into the year, so I thought it might be nice to clarify that a bit.
@The OG Dominic there's mods that do this. A friend of mine has a 1.19.2 server and they've installed that mod. Unfortunately, while some people were messing around with it, they realized that doing the /me command made the person who did the command reportable again for some time, despite the mod, so they had to disable that feature entirely. It's not a perfect system at all, and it would detract from the experience overall. I'm actually a bit too nervous to play 1.19 servers in any real way because of the chat reporting. Even if both client and server mods exist, there's no guarantee that they will be enough imho, and someone determined enough could get your account banned.
Anyone can say "keep doing what you're doing" but it takes someone with real love for this server to say where it fails. I whole heartedly agree with what was said and hope we make the needed changes. I can tell you're really passionate about mco as am I, and would love to see this museum of minecraft live on for many generations. Great video sal :)
Kinda surprised all you really brought attention to was lag and ownership. I played a couple months ago and there were several other problems I saw:
- People abusing the reputation command: any time you go below 0 reputation, you take damage, and this amount increases depending on how far below 0 you go. Of course, you start at 0, so any new players are vulnerable to this. Members of the server would abuse this command whenever I or my friends spoke in chat, making several of them die and lose their items in the process.
- Anti-griefing rules: While the idea of this is nice, the execution is extremely poor. No matter what you break, even a single torch, if it isn't a natural block a moderator will instantly teleport to you and accuse you of griefing. One of my friends broke a couple of blocks so they could get out of an area they were stuck in, with the intention of replacing them later. They then got asked multiple times to recite the server rules to the moderator, and after the mod got tired of that they banned them permanently. Even after they apologised and we backed them up for not breaking things maliciously.
I believe there was also supposed to be another area/world the user got teleported to after breaking the rules (for what reason i am unsure), but this command failed to work.
No idea if these things just started happening recently, but it just goes to show that a lot of things need to change in order for this server to get any better.
EDIT: I talked more in the comments about the griefing rule but I have one more thing to add here:
Reading the rules on their website, it seems as if the only punishment is a permanent ban, which gets handed out only if the player is clearly disrespecting other players or is ignoring the mods' attempts at reasoning with them. Similar to the "No Lag" statement on the site, this information must be outdated.
It says they treat all players like adults, and that they "don't waste time with temporary bans", but all I saw was people being treated like kids and, as a role reversal, *having their time wasted trying to reason with the mods.*
Also want to clarify I'm not saying these are the norm on the server - I didn't play very long and it's not unlikely this was just one moderator in a bad mood or one moment taken out of context. But judging by the opinions of other people I know, this is not the case.
According to the rules, the intent doesn't matter, it's always bannable. If you get stuck in something, you either tp back to spawn or home, ask a moderator to tp you out, or get killed by someone and hope they return the items.
@@codetoil I probably wouldn't be upset if they were polite about it, but they were rude the whole time and it felt like they just wanted to annoy people and waste their time. It could've been a simple "we have to ban you for that" but it wasn't.
There's a difference between just enforcing a rule and being purposefully mean. Not that there's anything incorrect about what you said, I just don't think the rules excuse their actions.
One problem I have with the rule itself is that it's a permanent ban I believe? Usually bans are given based on severity, so a user who griefs on purpose or breaks the rules multiple times would be the ones to get a permanent ban.
Just breaking a couple blocks out of habit with no malicious intent shouldn't usually be the grounds for a permanent ban, maybe a week or a month long one.
Plus if the server has low activity I can't imagine being eager to hand out permanent bans to people would help with that.
It'd be nice if they published a world download, free for anyone and everyone to use. That way no matter what happens to the server, the world will live on.
Alternately, considering how much the admins don't give a shit, someone could go on the server with a "record loaded chunks" mod (which to my understanding doesn't interfere with the server, as it's essentially just "writing down" the map data the server has to send to the client anyway), methodically walk the entire map, and bam, bootleg world download.
@@WackoMcGoose Only issue with that is that the world is massive, and the server is....not so friendly to any sort of movement. Unless people are really dedicated to doing that, which would require 20 people going each direction at many angles. It could work.
@@WackoMcGoose Problem with doing that is that the server has chunks that range from whatever current version they are on now to like the first alpha version that supported servers, people have tried finding the seed and it just never works properly in a new world
Y'all know they can detect world DL mods right? You're not allowed to do that, and it would take away some of the fun of discovering things if you just grabbed a download and used it... I can sympathize with how the server isn't going to be accessible to everyone because of the tps, I would sometimes also like to revisit some builds without having to join, but at the end of the day, it is part of the experience currently, and there isn't a whole lot any single person can do about that.
@@draconiusultamius "I can sympathize with how the server isn't going to be accessible to everyone because of the tps"
Thats the issue, the server is unplayable. Unless you're patient enough to wait 2 minutes to do each task, wait 5 seconds per block breaking just to make sure it broke.
"...Like a fine wine, our admins have all matured a long time in the bottle..." - I mean, yes.. but sometimes the wine becomes vinegar. You have to keep regulated and have a periodic check-ups to see if the wine is evolving correctly.
Great video! I used to work for one of the larger MC server hosting companies. It’s sad to see such amazing servers that could be saved with just a little bit of planning and effort.
Heck I’d be willing to volunteer my time and help fix this server for free, if it means preserving it
"Why is the server lagging?"
It's been up since the Far Lands was an accessible location - when merely rendered, absolutely destroys a world's memory - so it is definitely reasonable to assume that it is a memory leak
Sucks that all that money was basically lost because of poor management. Hope this video brings changes to such a historic server
I was on the server about 2 hours after the video went public, it was packed and eventually crashed. Alot of what I assume was long term players getting mad at this video and fit's video
Hundreds of thousands of views about one server, 2b is able to handle millions of views, even though queue is unbearable lol
Yep, it probably went into someone's pockets...
@@lapislake6084 yea i always wanted to know if the mods got harassed or something
I’ll be interested in what happens with the server from this video. This server is really amazing and it does suck to see a lack of leadership is what’s causing it to fall into obscurity
I remember joining that server and noticed how the people on it were strange af. Really cool server, but really weird people keeping it running. Such a shame...
It really is a shame cause you outlined my exact experience on the server, got on, was amazed at the history wanted to be a part of it but after chopping down a few trees to begin preparing an area I just quit and haven't been back, I really want to go back but it's unplayable
I always like when you and Fit cover the same topic. I always watch both videos to see how you both approach this!
It was not the exact same topic though!
Fun fact: the overlap here was completely coincidental
@@ResonanceHub Did i say *exact* same? At least these are pretty similiar honestly...
@@pawer_themaw You said "the same" and it isn't the same. Period
@@pawer_themaw They aren't even similar topics, the only similarity is that the Minecraft server is the same, nothing else!
I love how you justified the dumb donation and refuse to admit that you got scammed hard. That admin blew the money for himself
This is what happened to the server I ran a while back.
I was so proud of it, working with the team that I had assembled to continue proper support of the server.
Though as time went on, and we reached our second year of operation, I began taking a hands off approach to the servers development. I thought I could just pass it along to my co-owner, though he too began to loose motivation soon after.
The server remained in somewhat of a limbo after that, staff was inactive, changes were rare, down times were immense, and the server player base began to dwindle.
We knew what we were doing, we just didn't have the motivation to keep going.
And just as the servers second anniversary came around, I decided to shut the server off on the same day it had been created, expanding the "staff graveyard" accordingly to house both my co-owners, and myself.
I miss my old server, but failed projects always come before the successful ones.
A video about technical problems with Minecraft multiplayer servers and what can make them slow would be absolutely awesome!!!
Your videos are lit, and you explain perfect. That video would be awesome!
I remember playing this back in 2012. Those builds are so historic!
EDIT: I came back to the world after finding the old hard drive with screenshots. My base or shack as I called it was in ruins, all that was left of it was a chest.
You should log back on at some point, see what you left behind.
This is giving me PTSD flashbacks to how this is exactly how my ~700 person D&D discord server floundered and crashed. It all came down to me thinking i could just have a large group of admins that handle everything and I float in occasionally to be final say on things.
That's unfortunately not how things work. While I wouldn't say micromanage the admins, you do have to confirm that they are doing their job properly. If they aren't, you need to not be afraid of either lowering their role temporarily, or removing them from the moderation team entirely if they can no longer do their job. Stepping out and letting others take care of everything but "the big decisions" almost never ends well long term and you're probably better off just letting someone else who is more involved take over owner operations instead of trying to maintain a kind of pseudo-control.
SlowRiot was still there to answer questions but sad how things go. Really wish things could get better
Incredible work Sal. Thank you for investing your time and energy to bring the wider community this important information.
I hope something good happens with this server, it hurts knowing how badly the server is being treated as it is so important and such a beautiful server
I was expecting something like embezzling but instead its more disappointing and sad. It seems that saving this server is near impossible…
I actually used to be a mod on MCO a while back and I'm not really surprised... From what I remember, Riot basically never got fully involved and I don't think I saw him in-game or even spoke to him. Being that the staff team is made up of volunteers, I do think that he should have had a much bigger presence on the server.
I loved the staff team but I would also like to add that there would constantly be issues/conflicts that would pop up within the team and cause more chaos, screw with management and ultimately lead me to resign as mod :/
thank you greatly for your donation that you made. It really is a shame that it went to waste.
Okay bro. I have one question for you: I visited this server once or twice and was shocked by moderator bullying some random players instead of banning for "griefing" (1 torch from what I heard)
Do you consider that behaviour to be completely okay?
@@Senessim no of course not, I think some mods may have just liked to ban people, however, I don't think this was the majority of the team. When I started as a mod I also banned people for much smaller things but after a while I got pretty relaxed on what I'd ban for.
Also I can't really comment on the current state of the server, havent played in forever
Nice video. And yeah, there's quite a bit of lag on the server. Kinna way of life at this point. Annoying? Yup. A way to fix it? No idea, but hopefully.
Also, I know that image at 2:35! Man, good time on MCO that was. I think one of very rare instances I saw Rito online. And I think the only time I saw Flippeh online as well.
Wait... 2017 was SIX years ago...? Man... I'm getting old
I played on this server actively from 2018 to 2019. The server was in 1.7.2 back then (as it had been since 1.7.2 came out) but I quit because of the lag. I joined again when they finally updated to 1.12.2 thinking they fixed the lag with the update. They didn't, and this video is telling me they still didn't. A real shame because even with the lag it was one of my favorite servers.
I played on this server for like two days until a mod banned me for "griefing". The build I was supposedly griefing was a floating line of cobble that prevented tree's from growing 💀Furthermore, all of the mods have some sort of humiliation kink where they ask you to repeat the server rules to them when they think you broke them? I wasn't gonna be playing into any of that so I just left 🤣
To anyone debating if to join the community, don't. It's a cool place to visit and observe the history of, like a museum, but the janitors ruin the experience of an actual SMP.
I remember joining once or twice a long time ago, and it was so nostalgic seeing all these old structures.
You should Buy the server and host it yourself , make a donation tab , so you can collect money for the hardware and recruit capable people to run or instruct the current admins on proper management.
Why don't you buy it and run it yourself? You seem to know everything about running a large minecraft server
@@IndianaNorthWestern he made a video about hosting his own anarchy server , and besides , i know the struggles and the technical difficulties but in this case it seams there is a clear structural problem in Leadership and management more than actual skills in technical maintenence , and also a lack of motivation due to the state of the server and recent unfortunate events
@@IndianaNorthWestern the do it yourself argument is possibly the least original one you can make
MCO would be impossible to run efficiently. Everything is handmade and has reliance on volunteer efforts, which means there's no incentive. Plugins can be left for years unchanged. The best course of action for MCO would to be to keep the map and start everything else clean over, but even that has it's own technical problems.
Have you tried to run a server…
These admins need to elect a leader by presenting possible candidates and speaking frankly about why they would be good and bad for the position.. Then they need to come up with goals for the server, then their steps on how they will hope to accomplish these goals.. You know, basic delegation stuff.
Great video.
MCO needs a coup d'état.
There is also the problem of... what if they elect a leader who doesn't want to lead / doesn't like the idea of leading? You'll get to a point where the leader isn't happy, you lose them (be it due to inactivity or leaving), and another will have to come to lead (and repeat) if say they get stressed out with all the responsibilities. It is for sure needed but I think a lot of things need to change in order. If anything I wouldn't be surprised if the admins are too scared to lead an old historic server, and only wanted admin rights for higher permissions and nothing else.
I don't know how many of the admins are around too, and how many of them actively play minecraft still (especially since some of the admins may be pure veterans serving the server for 10 years and maybe want to take the game more chill).
It is for sure a hard balance, the reputation may have already been drained as "that ancient laggy server running on an old version no one cares for". There are a few other ancient servers like this which have only a portion of their player numbers compared to what they were in their prime.
Heck even 10 years ago I used to be a moderator for a server I used to play every day, they have long since collapsed (though I am still in contact with a few of them now) and we easily got around 100-200 people (probably more it's been too long) amongst the Survival and Build servers. When Mojang brought up the monetisation and basically made buying benefits on servers something against ToS the server had to change and I want to say around that time the management collapsed or something, I had kind of left Minecraft too at the time (for a while) and noticed lack of people on the Teamspeak, with a notice of it being shut down. I personally only play Minecraft on occasion when I want to check out updates or poke around in servers.
They can’t elect a leader - Riot doesn’t allow admins to vote among themselves. Admins couldn’t even vote an admin off their team (with the vast majority voting ‘yes’) as Riot shut them down on it and scolded them for trying 😂😂
@@mel_arky on most community servers the solution is to just have people make applications that want to lead, shame riot is so scared of losing control that he can't trust admins to do their job
When a server dies like this it is very hard to revive it.
I think that playing on older Minecraft versions isn't a problem for many players and some of the more popular servers and events still running on 1.12.2 are a testimony to that. If the performance issues got fixed, it for sure would regain a lot of its playerbase.
ive played on the server before and joined a town named Logdon in it, i had a blast, seeing all those old byilds was really something special, but ive had very simmilar experiences with lag. Hopefully this kickstarts some changes for the better!!
Dont see this mentioned anywhere in the comments yet, but the server actually got new hardware a month ago and the server does run a lot smoother now. Half the time it feels like lag is practically gone and mobs just behave as normal, which is so weird after being used to the mco lag for so long.
The way it had to be upgraded was kinda sad though. Basically, the hardware got permanent damage after both FitMC and Salc1 made a video at the same time and we got double raided. It got stuck in a state of double disk failure for weeks without anyone doing anything about it. Server became practically unplayable with constant timeouts, getting worse every single day. They basically just *had* to do a hardware upgrade, or else there would be no more mco now.
I wanna clear up something that people might be thinking of when they see that the server is running on 1.12.2: 1.12.2 is a recent update, as it was running 1.7.10 for quite a while. It doesn't update farther as they have custom versions of plugins that are made by a handful of staff members that are a very very large part of the server (I'm talking multi-million block farms reliant on the plugins) and without as active of an input from the plugin creators, the version stays behind.
1.12.2 is like a checkpoint version
@@WatercraftGames Pretty much, I believe that 1.13 altered the way the game ran heavily, which affected plugin and mod developers
This has been an issue even longer than presented. I logged into the server around 2014-2016 (give or take), and it still presented many of these issues. Blocks took forever to break or place, warps took really long, and it was just generally unplayable. Sad to see how this has not been fixed since I last logged in 7-9 years ago.
This brings me to thoughts about how Minecraft became a universal way to express yourself and share yourself with the world, like no other game, like no other online activity. How even branches of Minecraft community together learn something about this world and how it can be better, on a smaller scale. How Minecraft players create another worlds, create a problems to solve and learn from themselves. Mojang did really create something so infinitely smart and beutiful.
The age of the CPU isn't really relevant to the server performance, as I've ran Minecraft servers on both my personal computers, through almighty Aternos, PebbleHost and Apex. In the end, it depends on what server software you run, such as Paper or it's most optimizer fork (which I know of) Purpur. The single core performance is the main thing, unless you run something like C2ME or some other multi-threader, which are heavily instable. After running so many community servers, these sorts of small communities and the operators can get annoying, at one point running the server can get tiring, even boring at sometimes. Thank you!
No the age doesn't directly tell you the CPUs performance, but since server hosting is mainly single core an old Xeon isn't exactly the best choice. Especially when even a 4 year old i3 beats it in single and multi core performance. Not mentioning the uplift I'd expect from moving to ddr4 over ddr3.
The age isn't the issue anyway since they claim it's hosted "remotely" (cloud based) so in theory the cloud provider should be handling all the hardware upgrades anyway.
@@twanheijkoop6753 songle core performance over the years has doubled in the past 10 years, which is rather minor. The main performance gains have been from adding cores to the CPUs to gain more multi-core performance.
Amazing video, Sal. Very well-done! :D
I was a regular on McO for over a year and a half, but left around February of '22 due to personal gripes.
I do have times where I want to be active again, and I do join the server every year for its birthday, specifically for the unique items.
I was the very first person to get the '22 B-day cake, as- the /spawn plugin, for some unknown reason, wasn't giving players the cake as it was meant to.
The plugin spontaneously started working when I did it tho! xD
Anyways, that aside, the staff team is a complete mess from what I hear from past moderators, and admins. Honestly, no amount of restructuring is going to fix the issues at hand.
What they'd need is a complete purge of all staff members to start over from the ground up. Kill all of the custom plugins, and make them open-source for those who, if at all, will decide that they wanna use 'em, and move to more stable, and well-supported plugins.
I'm sorry to see that your donation went completely wasted in the long run, it really sucks. ;~;
A purge of all existing staff members would kill the server. A lot of those people have a very long history with it and a lot of love to give, it just needs to be channeled in a more productive way. Removing all staff is just going to send the message that their time and dedication was not worth anything. What they really need is strong support and open communication. To know that it's ok to not be ok, and to ask for help if they require it, rather than trying to take on the weight of the server alone, or even as a small group. I don't think the admins are to blame as much as it is slowriot and the approach he takes. He's very heavy handed, so what he says goes, with no room for negotiation. It's a very patriarchal attitude that isn't very helpful to the server as a whole. Perhaps with this video, he'll finally realize that his job is to step up to the plate, own up to his mistakes, and be a leader again.
@@draconiusultamius agreed
What is the background piano piece from 12:12 and onwards?
EDIT: It’s Melancholia from final fantasy. I didn’t see the credits
I saw you there yesterday Sal it was laggy af 💀
lmao
I work in non-gaming-related technology and part of my job is to make sure our servers are nice and healthy and running smoothly. On top of that I have to actually build and maintain the product itself. If the servers aren't behaving then I have to go in and figure out how to fix it. Which I'm not complaining at all, I love my job. What's so shocking to me is these guys don't have a product to maintain at all. You could argue maintaining the rules and environment of the game-space is maintaining a product and I would say that's fine but at this point it should be mostly automated with plugins with the occasional audit. Their main responsibility is to make sure the servers are healthy. That's the easy part and they can't even do that! I'm absolutely floored that when give $1.5k it got turned into absolutely nothing. It sounds like whoever is running their IT systems has absolutely no idea what they are doing and are more of a gamer and less of an IT professional.
You SWE or DevOps? Just curious :)
But same, these guys are in a good position to get a healthy platform and it's surprising to me that they seem to fail at basic tasks. That strikes me as a lack of real-world technical knowledge.
yo sal, as always very nice video, where can I find resource pack you're using?
I hopped onto this server for the first time ever today and if it wasn’t for the lag, it would’ve been a perfect experience
This is a very good video. Im not an active minecraft fan but from an outsiders perspective, this is a very factual, unbiased, realistic and mature analysis. Your points are spot on. I do not personally understand its importance, but youre right. Something with such historical significance shld not be treated as a hobby. Leadership must be implemented for any project to succeed.
tbh the best course of action for this server is to migrate ownership to someone who still has passion for it and will lead the admin team in the right direction instead of leaving them behind. sometimes you gotta know when to give it up and step down as much as the current owner probably doesn't want to, it hurts the server and player base because of it.
true
I didn't know about this server existence till you make video about it.
Well done on capitulating all that Sal!
MCO Admins/Riot have always seemed to shove constructive criticism aside and waste it (like your donation)...
Let's hope this video brings change!
OMG MEEEEEECCCCCCHHHHHH!!!
Nice video, hope the server doesn't die only because of bad administration, and if it does It would be cool to at least save the map
Imagine being a SpongeForge's developer hearing your work called obscure
The video itself is very good btw
I remember that was the go-to after Bukkit shit the bed
the hardware got upgraded btw
SalC1 videos are always a good watch.
I have been a welder for 45 years and these are some of the worst welds i have ever seen. Do better salvator.
Another awesome video, keep up the good work
I know it's an odd question but what is the song being played from the start up until 0:54?
Amazing video on what looks like the downfall of what is otherwise a great server, but will we ever get the more technical video you were working on? Moving to new hardware is the easiest and most direct solution to the problem, but is there another way to improve performance?
That's why you separate admins and moderators. Why in the world did they hire so many _admins?_ Presumably to do moderator work, but that's not what that's for. Admins are supposed to do technical stuff exclusively, and there shouldn't ever be more than a handful, even on huge servers.
So one small admin team, and one mod team of any appropriate size. Now add at least 1 admin and mod leader respectively who report directly to the owner. The large mod team may be split into smaller teams if appropriate, or another leadership layer may be added between the head of mod and the normal mods.
This is just one way to fix the staff structure, but it should work.
Is there anyway to download this sever? Id be happy to install on one of the fastest 4-xeon servers on the plant running on bare metal.
It takes about one day to just setup required software on new server, upload files and reconfigure DNS. And probably most of this time will be waiting for uploading and downloading world save
Fantastic video Sal - really helps in understanding Fits video!
I think if Riot don't want to run the server, don't have time or don't care, he should find like "new owner", because it's very sad that one of the best minecraft servers die like this.
This has happened to one of the oldest servers I played on called muttsworld i have played it for 7 years and had watch it slowly die as the owner left it to die
Great to see Sal addressing this Great Stuff as always.
i always remember playing with my friends so many years ago on this server. its sad that we cant do anything to revive it
The owner is slow and the people are rioting.
The server is rioting too!
You could have made this video 4 hours and I still would have watched it all. Length of the video does not matter to me. The quality of the video and effort you make is important and you do that time after time. If you need to do a 4 hour long video explaining an interesting topic like this one, I am all for it. Make that video.
As a regular player it does hurt to see the server suffering, but thanks for making the real issues public.
Master piece! Let's hope that this server will be improved on. :)
I had never heard of MCO so thank you for telling me! :D
i got banned for breaking a torch
No grief
@@lefywazhere7582 its a torch 💀
@@Flame939 nah fr they goofy im just playin
Scammed 1500. Rough
This is great timing with FitMC's video on the backdoor. Shame that the management was allowed to degrade in quality. Only shows that the backdoor was the result of one of many problems.
-So we got the chaos with the backdoored plugin
-A staff team of orphans
-lagg so bad microsoft powerpoint slide show has more frames
-hardware so bad my pc has more then a entire server
It sucks that your money went to waste. The server definitely has lots of potential, and as a server admin myself, with the amount of time given to them the lag should definitely have been fixed by now. Hope they get it fixed soon. Sounds like a fun server to play in too.
where you at Salc1?
Its a good gesture to do what you did, my son still plays Minecraft, but sometimes good servers even die at one point..
i can relate from it because i also have a server and i disconnected my from my server for health reasons when i was off from my server the server became completely dead my friend on discord tried to be in charge but he unable to do it. then i came to charge again, as a being a owner of the server it's all your responsibility to keep your server alive
This server really makes you FEEL like you're playing on single core CPU from 1995
Good ol Pentium 133mhz...
"You need 1.12 to play on the server, which was released 6 years ago"
Bruh I'm still stuck playing modded 1.7 💀
I'm still playing on 1.6.4 lol, fuck new versions this ain't Minecraft
@@mira6395 Based old version enjoyer
@@mira63951.6.4 sucks. Dumb giant oceans
The server is much much less laggy and more populated now !
I found MCO a while ago and was so excited to play such a historical server but its lag issues in combination with my already bad internet connection and hardware made it really feel more like a chore than something to enjoy or have fun with.
There's something poetic about a guy named SlowRiot being too slow to make use of your generous donation- the man just spit in your face and basically said "Too lazy do anything with $1500." I'm surprised you're taking it so well Sal.
i will mention, there's still development effort from the community being put on 1.12.2 as well as sponge, so i don't exactly agree with them being considered obsolete and obscure.
it's absolutely shocking that poor management could lead to such a large donation being wasted though, it was an awesome display of generosity on your part.
Sad how an anarchy server with a ton of people loading chunks have better TPS then MinecraftOnline D:
Maybe linus tech tips can host the server for a monthly price with New hardware
It would also give ltt more server content
I can confidently say with experienced that a heighrachy is criticaly important for any organisation. Especially when all parties are of the same level. One of the largest groups I helped run had 6 top level design makers but the important thing was we did make decisions directly we simply made decisions of who was in charge unparalleled power for any specific task. I feel this approach to management would be very helpful considering there are many admins on the server.
My todo list to get the server to a better place.
1. Make a priority list of tasks
2. Vote on a leader for each task (this singular person has full authority in regards to this project they also have authority over lower priority tasks.
3. Naturaly this hierarchy will give the leader for item of priority 1 absolute controll over all resources and people until that task is complete (people and resources not needed refer to next highest priority item etc etc)
4. Once priority 1 item is complete all task move up and cycle continues.
5. Priority and leaders of task can and should be regularly reconsidered to best achieve the outcome.