I had an idea last night after we had yet another new face jump in, walk and chat for a few minutes, then bail after hearing about the registration process.

Even if we allow visitors to freely roam Laurasia, that reaches its limits very quickly. Of course, the goal is to keep griefers and morons away from us with a basic comprehension test (registration). At the same time, it's hard to gauge how fun the place can be after a few minutes only. Ideally, I'd like to bring a lot more players into the fold without sacrificing quality.

That's where that new idea comes in. What if we had another world, one that'd allow visitors to actually play survival Minecraft with the rest of us? Ideally, after a few hours or days of playtime, they'd keep hearing about the fun stuff that's available in the other worlds, the extra features that could be available to them like the achievements, contests and Events Nights, and they'd decide to commit by registering, gaining access to everything.

This, of course, brings some concerns about moderation. It's entirely possible to find and ban griefing players, as we always do, although there'd be more to hunt down that we currently do. We also have an option to automatically remove any changes that a given player has done; it needs a single command from any op.


My original idea was to create a brand new world. There's also the option to reuse one of the existing worlds, buuuuut:

- Laurasia is an obvious no-go due to its complexity and sheer size.

- Gondwana might be interesting since it has few (or any) active players right now, but the amplified terrain might not offer the best first impression... and it doesn't agree with all hardware setups.

- Rodinia could be it since it still has plenty of potential for development yet has an established infrastructure (start city and basic rail network). Of course, its current player base might have strong objections to allowing newbs to run around unchecked.

That's why I was thinking about creating another world, with a set size (something close to current-UHC or Rodinia), that people would be free to jump into and really try out what we have to offer.


Thoughts on any of the above points?

It sounds plausible, possibly as something of a tutorial world.

Could do something like when they join, they are dropped into the tutorial world first, and given an option on that map to drop from there to the lobby if they'd like. Or possibly require registration to move beyond that world. (Maybe even embed the lobby itself into the center of the noobworld? something to play around with)

I like the idea, maybe a town with plots that can easily be reset if no one is there after so long or grief occurs?

Yes. Basically, what I have in mind for that is a system similar to the UHC world: it's linked with the global chat and visitors can freely play in it. That can already help figure out when something goes wrong.