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Discussion Some ideas to help shotbow maybe?

Discussion in 'The Network' started by VictorLight, May 28, 2016.

Discussion - Some ideas to help shotbow maybe?
  1. VictorLight Regular Member

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    199,159xp
    Now we all now Shotbow is going down and it's not as it was before (esp. EU)... well i've thought of some ideas they probably won't be working on but they're just something to keep in mind at least.

    First...Shotbow's gamemodes are being really boring back in the day when it had mini games it was really cool but then they all died...Current gamemodes are boring which caused people to leave shotbow...Slaughter breaks your fingers,DBV causes you to rage quit,Quibon creative... ugh so typical...and lastly Gun Game which isn't preferred by players..
    The only gamemodes that keeping Shotbow alive are Anni,Minez and MTA...Shotbow really needs to create more gamemodes even if so simple that would still bring back some players that have Shotbow on servers list but they rarely visit it..

    Second..Updates...Updates occur rarely and not for all gamemodes only Anni and Minez...Anni update is coming ''sometime'' which could be really far and that way more people would get bored of Anni and leave Shotbow is it was the only gamemode they play...If updates occur occasionally that would keep players connected with Shotbow and bring back some old players as well...Instead of 1 update a year that it would add a lot of maps and classes just make an update every 3 months or something and add only few classes...

    Third...Bad Reporting System... Everyone knows this you report a player...BAM he's not banned yet... you might meet him in several games which makes you leave that game you're in instantly...Hackers really affect Shotbow in a terrible way they should get more Admins and stuff on so they watch some people...

    Forth...Almost no events... Some servers make an event and post it! If shotbow does it people might be a bit rebel and come to check what's happening! Most events are organized by players not staff members...
    Also there are some events that should occur for example... Saturday's all classes for free games...Last time i played it was in August or something...Shotbow Staff needs to be more committed with their events and try to organize more by time...

    Fifth...No activity on social media...I've never seen a post in my facebook homepage by shotbow or on twitter or anywhere else...If Shotbow never posts on social media esp. Youtube they wouldn't get more players! A lot of players have YouTube channels but who are the subscribers? It's us! No new players joining Shotbow because of inactivity

    Sixth...Votes...Now votes are massively important for servers to grow up! Sadly Shotbow isn't getting enough votes to stay up with high servers...Now if we all vote this will support Shotbow a lot! Let's aim for 10K votes a month for each site? idk this is just a beginning...

    I hope this thing helps comment down of what you think cause we really need Shotbow to grow up and stand up again!

    thx for reading :heart: :3

  2. _RunningKing_ Platinum

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    I'm starting to lose count of all these "Shotbow is dying threads", but at least you're giving suggestions on how to get more players and not just stating the obvious.

    I'm failing to see how DBV, Slaughter, Qubion, and Gun Game are boring gamemode. Qubion is "typical"? It's a creative build server, what more do you expect out of it?

    If you can prove to me that DBV rage quitting is directly linked to Shotbow's low playerbase, then I will sell my laptop and move to China.

    Not much I can say for Slaughter and Gun Game, but I can say that they are not boring. Definitely not my most favorites gamemodes, but definitely not boring.
    Now I can sort of agree with you on this. I don't mind how they have a huge update release for Annihilation, I just don't like how it takes months and months for the update to be released. I'd almost prefer smaller updates that came once a month or so.
    The report system is far from perfect, but I haven't really noticed anything too bad about it. Only seldom do I come across someone who I know is hacking and has not been banned, despite playing on the server for extensive amounts of time. Just because you don't see someone banned right before your eyes doesn't mean they don't get banned. Unlike most servers, when Shotbow bans cheaters, they do so very discreetly. People don't see the results and then jump to the conclusion that the reporting system doesn't work.
    If you haven't already, I suggest following Shotbow on Twitter. They frequently announce events that are taking place on the network. Just today there were two sandbox matches on Annihilation, and there have been a fair amount of MineZ Race/Wave Events, as well as events such as Bionic_Prodigy's head hunt event.
    Hopefully the Film Crew can make some good use out of Shotbow's YT channel. You are correct there though. Social media is vital for gaining more players. I'm only following on twitter and subscribed on Youtube so I wouldn't know how active the other sites are.
    MTrout, Fluffoon and Haichao like this.
  3. sunlost Retired Staff

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    217,843xp

    We have a lot of gamemodes sitting in The Garage at the moment, waiting to come back as soon as we are ready to move to 1.9.

    Again, this is something that will be remedied when we move to 1.9

    Let's just look at how many reports are made every week..

    7319 reports the week of May 15th
    7107 reports the week of May 8th
    8361 reports the week of May 1st

    That's a lot of reports to go through every week, even for the number of mini-admins on the Shotbow team.
    Our event servers are finally migrated to the new servers, which is why we have an explosion of events on the forums and on the twitter. If you read the weekly arrow, we post times for our EU and US All-Classes-Unlocked games, and any other scheduled events. On twitter, our in-game broadcast system is automatically tweeted with the prefix [Broadcast] at the beginning of the tweet. Make sure to follow our twitter for speedy updates on when events may be happening, like Anni Sandbox Games and MineZ Wave Events.

    We definitely haven't abandoned our social media. Our Film Crew (which is accepting applications!) is working to revive the Shotbow YouTube channel, and our twitter account automatically tweets any in-game broadcasts and whatever our two diligent PR people decide to tweet on top of that. Our media team (also run by our PR people) are in charge of their own channels, but post Shotbow content occasionally.

    Unfortunately, this isn't something we can highly influence. We post the voting links every week in the weekly arrow and occasionally have a tip in game that notifies you. 600 free XP per day is a fairly nice incentive to vote though, so make sure to here, here, and here.
    Barskey, Pretty_Iram, MTrout and 3 others like this.
  4. matjellison Regular Member

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    It's been happening since 2014 and not much has improved since.
    Let's break this part down.
    Slaughter does not break your fingers. It's easier than PvP. What does break your fingers is Gapple or even Pot PvP. The problem with Slaughter is how repetitive and limited to options it is. There's a boundary to where your creativity and imaginations go. Unlike Annihilation and MineZ, you can't think outside the box and try different strategies or pathways.

    Death By Void does in fact make you rage quit time to time and those with little perseverance tend to quit and that's why it's not as popular and referred to literally as a mini-game. However, DBV is not the only mini-game that is on Shotbow and therefore, doesn't force players into quitting.

    Quibon is there for players who want to create. I agree it's bland and nothing is exactly 'special' about it but I guess it was a desperate thing on Shotbow's end.

    Your statement about Gun Game may be true but players, such as me, do prefer it over game modes such as Annihilation. I usually play Gun Game when I'm on Shotbow because of a small number of reasons, such as how quick games can end and it's fast-paced. Besides, it was a mini-game based off Wasted.
    I made a thread concerning about this and it's still on the front page, although it's gotten extremely little responses. You can check that out here and yes, I do agree with you here.
    I'm still yet to see a server that has a decent reporting system that is efficient from my time on Minecraft, which started in 2012.
    Too much social media is the problem. They should just honestly stick to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. There is literally no need for any other types of social media to be out there and the only reason why there's so much out there is because the XP Codes were an incentive for players to follow, etc. It's just too difficult to handle 10 different platforms when you're announcing something, such as an event.
    I remember when Shotbow didn't want to be on Planet Minecraft, etc, because it would bring too many little kids and hackers in. Well, how times have changed! Anyways, voting was implemented to boost player count (this is what I think so it is not fact) and XP was obviously incentive. I don't particularly like the voting system but it's there, I guess.

    Anyways, those are my thoughts on your suggestions and right now, I don't see Shotbow moving back up.
  5. VictorLight Regular Member

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    bruh the replies...well i'll reply generally for you guys...I might be wrong about the Report System but a lot of people complain about it
    Also Shotbow has to move to 1.9 ASAP if that's the thing when the gamemodes get updated/new ones are being added or just reviving old ones.
    Also I wish the best for the film crew it is a nice idea to revive the youtube channel because it is the one that requires effort but a good result :)
    _RunningKing_ likes this.
  6. Fluffoon Retired Staff

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    Alright, I really wanted to refrain from responding, but the amount of those threads drives me crazy and saddens me.
    About your first point there is not much I can say because whether a gamemode is boring or not is a matter of a personal opinion. I cannot blame you for having an opinion.
    About your second point - you know, I'd agree here with you, but 1.9 came out at the time the new Anni update was close to finished. After it came out the developers decided to use the new features 1.9 offers and I guess that delayed things. If you really want a detailed explanation on this, I'd say to wait for a dev to respond as they can give you a better answer on this matter.
    Moving on to your third point - here I will have to completely disagree with you. Most servers do not even offer /report. They want players to submit reports via the forums because it is easier. Here you have the opportunity to instantly notify us on the moment you see an user violating the rules and if there is a staff member on, they can easily gather evidence by themselves and take action. Of course there are times where there close to no admins available and you will not get an immediate response, but trust me, sooner or later we catch them. Also I'd hate to say it that way...but the amount of false reports we go through is insane. I personally spend 3-4 minutes on a report on average, even on the false ones. So you can imagine how much time we lose on those :) I was not bashing anyone, just presenting you the facts.
    About your fourth points - I will have to disagree here too. The builders are trying to host MineZ wave events or head hunts whenever it is possible and there is an event server up. There is a dedicated map rotation team for Anni testing suggested maps on Sandbox, hosting all classes unlocked games, or just messing around by doing hardcore Anni events. Also there are and we always appreciate community-hosted events - for example Madness Friday(no longer a thing) or Suicide Saturday/Yolo Sunday.
    On to the fifth point - Indeed, advertising via YouTube is really important. Not while ago Navarr started a media program and there are many media partners with a decent amount of subs(talking about thousands or ten thousands) who present particular gamemodes to particular communities - for example some Japanese YouTubers or streamers. We even do events on their request. About the outdated channel we have, MineReepers and Bionic_Prodigy have taken the responsibility to revive it by forming a Film Crew. That team is still in the process of forming, but soon they will start producing all kind of videos, and I personally am really hyped to see what they will bring us.
    And sixth - votes are indeed important, the PR team has been trying to influence that too, but I will be real here - I really doubt those sites get that many users anymore. I'd rather focus on Twitter where we post a lot of stuff and answer question. Reddit can do too.
    Anyways, thanks for sharing your concerns, I am glad to see there are people truly caring about the network :)
    Have a nice day!
    Pretty_Iram, MTrout and _RunningKing_ like this.
  7. VictorLight Regular Member

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    well for the first point i think Shotbow needs more gamemodes it's been stuck like this for months and some got removed for a time
    For the Forth point... Well if you go to the Upcoming events page.. you see that every saturday there should be a game with all classes for free in anni..we need more events and be more accurate with time also there's a new event ''Annihilation Map Throwback'' This event is great but i can't join it cause it's not available for EU server and i can't join US server by the time it should start..This is really sad for me though..

    I really love Shotbow but when i see it like this it really hurts me because i remember how people were joining it!
    btw i'm not just stating the situation i'm trying to help :)
    Fluffoon likes this.
  8. Mychon Obsidian

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    There are actually a lot of minez events that are not on the upcoming events page, Watch out for broadcasts to see when they are being hosted
    MTrout likes this.
  9. VictorLight Regular Member

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    well making them on the upcoming events page is more helpful and it would be noticed by more people... i still don't know what are these events and when they start...
  10. sunlost Retired Staff

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    Most MineZ events aren't scheduled because they are hosted whenever a full admin or builder has spare time and wants to host one.
    MTrout, Mychon and Fluffoon like this.
  11. Ivandagiant Silver

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    38,537xp
    No events? Bro they do weekly events. (unless you are talking about something different)

    The reporting system has worked fine for me- I don't expect a player to get banned if I report him, but if my entire team reports him? He is usually before the game ends. You can't expect them to look into every report as it happens, there are too many. It works fine to get hackers, just don't expect someone to get banned/punished for team griefing without you recording.

    For the gamemodes, I agree. They got rid of HCF which I thought was popular- although I never played it. I really miss shotbow games and LMS. I get bored of walking around forever on MineZ just to die, so I was a big fan of LMS. I have tried playing survival games on other servers, but it doesn't compare to shotbow games, They are different. (Not very many people played shotbow games so I can see why it was removed)

    As for updates, I would rather have working updates that take longer. There would be less frustration. They are also working on going over to 1.9 and they are revamping alot of old games, so I can see why updates are not coming soon. (Remember how OP bloodmage used to be? I would rather have something like that last for a week twice a year rather than once a month.)
    MTrout likes this.
  12. TechnoMaster4 Obsidian

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    269,487xp
    As a former Full Administrator, I would like to give a more unbiased opinion and drop this "the network is fine" façade. Understand that this post is not meant to start any kind of wars, but it is meant to give you all some information that you have not previously had; information that personally, I feel you as a community have a right to know.



    The community as a whole can blame it on a number of things. We can say that the gamemodes have gotten old, we can say that the community has become toxic, or we could even go as far to say that hackers are causing a decline in the playerbase. It seems that few of you like to tackle something that I, some former community members and other former staff members saw to be one of the main issues: The staff itself.

    Ask yourselves: How can the other top networks not only keep their large playerbase, but grow it at an exponential rate? They have a fluid infrastructure that is (in most cases) well organized, well run, and executed near-perfectly. They have the resources necessary to pay their employees and pay them well, something that Shotbow does to an incredibly select few. These networks pump out content like a cakewalk and have updates at a minimum once a month, in some cases once every week. Most of the staff on Shotbow provide their services on a volunteer basis, meaning they have absolutely zero obligation to do their job at the rate this network needs to stay competitive, Yes, this includes dev work. Something to think about.


    That point aside, what I have believed to be the biggest issue is the lack of voice not only within the community, but within the staff as well, coupled with an astounding lack of inter-staff communication. As I was progressing as a Website Moderator and Anni Admin back in the day, I noticed that much of what I nor other lower staff members said was't really listened to. Not only this, but it seemed like more than half of the lower staff team had no idea what was going on with large network happenings. One specific example was one of the bigger Annihilation updates, to which NONE of the lower staff members, even the ones on the Annihilation staff team knew about until just a few days before release. It was then that I tried to express my concerns to an upper staff member (who shall remain nameless) at the time, to which I received this response:

    "Nearly all of the uppers wish for a sectionalized staff team. Each staff member sticks to their specific area and doesn't ask questions about the other. They talk among the other upper Administrators and do not pay much attention to the lower staff members and what the have to say. I understand your concerns, but it is out of your hands. Just focus on being the best moderator you can be and don't worry about what goes on above you."

    In other words: Do your job and don't ask questions. Let us handle it.

    Now this is not word-for-word; the actual conversation is a novel, but this summarizes one of the key concerns I had early on that when I left the team was still applicable: If there is a lack of communication within the staff team of a network and if even the lower staff members; DIRECT representatives of the community below them do not have a voice, how can the community even dream of having any sort of voice within their community? If the many of the uppers wish not to listen to members of their own lower staff team, how can a community expect the uppers to listen to them? Something else to think about.


    Some of you may recall when several Upper Administrators left the staff team all around the same time. They are for many of these same reasons. They saw Shotbow "as a sinking ship and decided to abandon it and swim to shore." Speaking that this server once peaked at around 10,000 players during peak hours and is now down to a mere 1,000 to 2,000, it isn't hard to see why they saw it that way. These are staff members who had been with the network for even longer than I had at the time and hopped off that ship after all that time... No one really talked about them, either. Maybe people should have... I digress.


    All this aside, the staff team has done some absolutely wonderful things. There have been some incredibly awesome and unique gamemodes that have come to this network. There have been many a meme made due to some awesome thing a staff member did. They do work hard and most of the staff team does what they can to provide the best services they can offer given their limited resources. Hey, they even have a team dedicated to making videos to get some YouTube promotion going. These are strides in the right direction, but this still doesn't make up for the issues that are present. I feel these strides have been made far too late, but then again, nothing is impossible.


    The first step the community needs to take in addressing the issues with Shotbow is to talk to the staff team. Ask questions and concerns you have and don't pass them off as unnecessary. A network is nothing without its community. Let them hear you.





    Oh, and one more thing:



    The Report System? Wonderful. It is an excellent system that allows each staff member patrolling to see who is being reported for what on what server, whether it be an automated report or a report sent in by a player. Seriously, this is a wonderful piece of dev work that helps out tremendously. Send in those reports.

    The patrolling process? Incredibly inefficient. I am unaware if things have changed since I left the staff team, but the process to catch and ban a hacker "properly" was so unnecessarily rediculous that it is no wonder players get frustrated with the hackers they see in-game. You had to have [X] number of "indisputable" instances recorded in order to ban a player. I will not give out the specific number, but it was unnecessary. If I was observing a player back when I was a lower staff member, I cannot tell you how many times a hacker "got away" because I did not catch them hacking on recording [X] number of times.

    They do not need to bring more Admins onto the team and they do not need a Report System overhaul. They need a better patrol system.
    Wun, missingnose, Kazumii_ and 24 others like this.
  13. matjellison Regular Member

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    I remembered a lot of the older members got penetrated in the backside for saying that lmao
    and let's not forget the plethora of instances that that statement was denied.
  14. VictorLight Regular Member

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    199,159xp
    Omg i don't even have a response...
    but hey,We still need to do something about this
  15. Andrew_64_MC Retired Staff

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    715,884xp
    Hopefully you should see quite a few MineZ Events now that we have out Event server up again. In fact, there is one starting right now as I speak. Also, you may enjoy checking the MineZ reddit for some event listings.
  16. VictorLight Regular Member

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    199,159xp
    I've been to one yesterday..I'm actually disappointed everyone was killing each other and teamers made it worse...it ended up with a kick to everyone and no one understood a thing..
    sorry but that what happened...if the events like this i think i'm not into it then :stuck_out_tongue:
  17. sunlost Retired Staff

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    217,843xp
    You must have attended a PVP event. Unfortunately those are hard to moderate. Wave events are much more fun. :stuck_out_tongue:
    VictorLight likes this.
  18. Lil_Jeffy_com Platinum

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    897,183xp
    I freaking love it! We've had daily events the last few days, and we had 2 Head Hunts! That was so much fun, I participated in both Head Hunts and even won one. And those daily events (Mostly Wave Events) are so much fun too, keep MineZ up like this. I'm really enjoying it :3.
  19. Navarr Councilor

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    1,333,433xp
    That is correct. Larger networks have tonnes of money and we do not. Our players have not been terribly charitable, and the changes we made after the EULA enforcement announcements did not help. Shotbow is absolutely a volunteer project. All of the staff on Shotbow provider their services on a volunteer basis. This gives us less man hours from each individual person, a higher burn-out rate, etc. This does not change the obligation most of the higher ups feel. I have been a "donor" to Shotbow for a long time. From buying ranks at the start of MineZ, to volunteering my time for Unavowed, Web Dev, Translation, Graphic Artist, and more.

    Whomever told you that was wrong in various ways. It's perhaps the most unfortunate part of this whole piece because it's what your entire piece is based off of.

    We do sectionalize. A lot. This isn't because we don't want people to know what is going on, but for the sake of our sanity. We have nearly 150 staff members. This is why we invented our leadership structure. But it's not to keep people in the dark. Leads of Teams are supposed to be communicating decisions made by this leadership board, and are supposed to be bringing their teams concerns before it. Large decisions take up a good chunk of time, and anything that concerns a game is discussed with the members of that team because they care and know about the game best.

    While I can't for the life of me remember when exactly you were retired, it was not recently - and your concerns were either with a specific admin or are just immensely outdated.

    Again, the staff have been discussing this post and nobody really knows where your concerns are valid. I am consistently caught reminding the mini team that they should be voicing their opinions. That if things that need to be done are not being done they should take it to their lead, and if their lead is not resolving it in a good manner, they should bring it up with other leadership such as myself, Adam, Highlife, or others.

    Communication with 150 people is hard, but there is no excuse for someone's voice not being heard with the way our team is laid out. Most discussions are out in the open where all 150 people can read and reply to them, even with our sectionalization.

    This is not correct. Sadly, I'm not at liberty to talk about all the reasons these staff were let go/retired/left. There were some complaints, and a large number were either unfounded or were already in progress of being fixed.
    [/quote]

    Reminder that I previously noted that these communication problems are not at all present. Tackling communication is one of my biggest and most ambitious goals, and while communication is always difficult - especially when you have ~150 people - it has been constantly improving. Especially for the last year. I've been on the staff team around (before and after) the time you were - so I'm incredibly disappointed to hear complaints about staff here instead of the many places it could have been relayed to me and addressed - if it was indeed a concern at the time.

    I cannot tell you how often I have minis asking me for advise, etc.

    THANK YOU. I probably take more credit for them than I earned, especially b/c I didn't write any of the server code, but I take a heck of a lot of stuff about reports personally and I'm always so happy to hear praise on it. I was just talking about it on reddit.

    This is also the first I've heard of this - and I can see where you're coming from. These are not staff-wide policies, and from what I've been told you've either forgotten or was a victim of miscommunication regarding some of the details.

    Shotbow is very, very stern on their 100% proof before banning. I've been informed that during your time as an Anni mini, your lead requested x pieces of proof if they were small things, but that it was ultimately the call of the mini. Again, I can't be entirely certain what you specifically were told, but this is not network policy and is not entirely on the dot.

    One of the major problems we have with the report system is variant coverage however. Timezones - having enough staff with enough availability over all times to get what we need. It's a very large problem of a volunteer workforce and it is not one that we can perfect.

    Re-iteration for those in the thread - We require 100% proof. It's what allows us to see an appeal, look at who was banning, and say "No, you will not be unbanned." It's what gives us faith in our team and our processes. It is incredibly rigorous, and we've been known to mass-unban people banned by an admin whom we later doubted the trustworthiness of their bans.

    Staff communication is way better than it has ever been - and continues to improve.

    We compartmentalize our teams for sanity in communication, but we cross communicate when and where appropriate. Some Leads more than others - which is okay, it's the gamemode they're directing and it's their team.

    I am so incredibly proud of the report system.

    Patrol system is not as bad as you think it is.

    We are a completely volunteer workforce that does not have the resources it needs to compete in the fashion you think we should.

    And all and all, even with a declining player count - Shotbow is fine. From several staff perspectives, we are not trying to compete with player numbers. There are two big defining types of networks in Minecraft -

    Minigame-based: Think Hypixel. They make lots of small games, constantly make new ones, sell tonnes of cosmetics, etc.

    PvP-based: Think Badlion. Their goal is to corner the market on PvP-based games. Lower the latency as much as possible, try to have the best automatic cheat detection in the world with the fewest false positives, etc.

    Shotbow has fingers in both Minigames and PvP-based games (we started with HCFactions!) - but it's not Shotbow's identity. It never has been and never will be. In the end, PvP is not our goal. It is simply another mechanic. It's logical for us to play around in PvP - Annihilation, Gold Rush, HCF - it's incredibly popular.

    But what most of the staff wants to do is make games. MineZ has an incredibly rich Lore and world out there to be explored. MineZ 2 is in that process of deepening the world. More Lore is coming to MineZ with Origins. When in Rogue is a primarily PvE game that is damn awesome.

    We will dally in PvP - and certain leads will probably make it their goal for PvP games - but we primarily strive to make great games. We will continue to do so for whomever wants to play them. So we continue to consider the network fine. We're not in this for money, We're not in this for glory (though MineZ had so much and it was so nice). We're not in this for the playercount.

    We're here to make damn good games, and it's what we're going to continue to do.
  20. manuelolo98 Gold

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    Damn

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