Minecraft's Oldest Server is in Trouble

Wow, it must be frustrating to see your generous donation to the server squandered like that. Great vid as always

I've seen so many great servers die due to poor staff management, what a shame.

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. :(

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.

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: https://youtu.be/lDmtDdm6fUc

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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 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

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

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!

Thank you for having me contribute to this project, glad to see it turned out well :) -NightSteak9

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.