Tharine

What a hefty conjecture. Do you want to discourage people from providing feedback? I also haven't heard any positive comments towards the current situation (outside of the forum threads) but I do acknowledge that of course people will be happy with it and I just haven't spoken with those people. I really enjoy mining, so I am one of the people not personally affected. Your statistics aren't able to tell us whether or not some of those people had goals to build primarily iron-based builds and, naturally, they have to mine those instead of grinding for them because it's no longer viable. If the option was there, perhaps the numbers would be different.

Aye we've not been a "vanilla" PvE server since probably right near the start. We were like vanilla with a hint of strawberry, and now we're probably more neapolitan (big fan of this food imagery). If you look back on the last couple of years you can see the word vanilla stops being included in server posts/advertisements quite so much, but I think there's been a lot of confusion caused by the fact that the term refers to both style of gameplay and the type of client (vanilla or modded) you need to connect to a server. This is also why you might see people vehemently insist that we are still vanilla, they're almost always referring to the client connection. I voted yes to the poll. I am beginning to find this whole "we removed that crazy lucrative source of iron, but also here's a new source of obtaining iron too (instead?)" conversation a bit confusing as a casual player. It seems the solution should've been to nerf the iron golem spawners rather than remove and then add a different method - but that's assuming that this new idea is to remedy the outcome of removing the golem spawners? Is this the case? If this smelting down items idea is completely separate of the whole iron golem thing, I think this is just very unfortunate timing for introducing the idea because a lot of people are going to want to take that into consideration. I think it's a neat idea - ignoring everything else, it's one of those changes that isn't blindingly difficult for new players to grasp and I like that it adds a benefit to solo players that at the same time doesn't bring a huge bonus to townsfolk.

We could consider some light requirements on whether or not something natural should be protected, e.g. area no larger than x blocks by x blocks - perhaps with the exception of the solitary mega-trees, only features that are above (and including?) sea level. I don't think we should seek a truly objective rule statement with this one, it's not going to be possible because there are too many variables.

I'll be away from the 23rd to the 27th (like most others, i'm betting!) so i'll only have mobile access during that time.

[TRS] Just to say, i'm all here for the idea behind getting folks to stay on the server longer and not quit as soon as they're done with their initial build. I'm not a fan of the limited spawners though. I'm not personally affected by them one way or another (I rather enjoy mining), but I don't think they add very much to the revision when there's only four of them. However, I do think that if there are to be more of them, then the way you obtain them should be a bit more diverse. I do think it's a nice idea that additional spawners are won via events, it's tricky to find a fair way of doling them out, but all of the PvE admins are American. I don't think there's anything wrong with this, and i'd never ask any of them to carry out events outwith their timezone because that would be absolutely daft (and pretty selfish!) - but it does mean that a good chunk of people are going to miss out on that chance to get one. I'm presuming the end goal isn't to have very many iron golem spawners on the server anyway, as the only event i've seen so far where you can win an iron golem spawner is the Holiday Hullaboo one coming up (which is fab, because you can carry it out in your own time!), but the winner isn't going to be decided until the new year (two months after the rev start). [iGS] Thought last rev's setup was fab, didn't interact with them much myself so if people think they needed nerfing i'd happily go along with that.

As part of the Community Meeting earlier this year, it was suggested that we put together some form of 'social media' team - in an effort to both round out our community as well as extend our reach into types of media exposure we'd either lacked in, or had yet to really explore. We have a lot of projects that are being worked on to try and meet both of these goals. Our twitter page is now being actively managed, both the subreddit and wiki have been given a bit of extra love (which we hope to continue!), and we're looking at new ways to bring the whole nerd.nu community together in a more uniform fashion so that we can present our best selves to the world. So this brings me on to Instagram in particular. It's a very niche market for companies to tap into, and especially more so for a Minecraft server. Instagram isn't the first thing you reach out to when you think of Minecraft, but we're looking at it in the same vein as posting to the likes of the main /r/minecraft subreddit. We're sharing the amazing constructions you guys make, and we're hoping folks will click through to check us out! The bonus of Instagram is that we're not banned from advertising our server address directly, so there's no extra barrier holding people back from connecting. It's low effort, and at the end of the day, it's nice to be able to see your project showcased or check out some builds you might not have seen before! You can find our Instagram page here - there's not much there just now, but we're going to build on it and we're definitely looking for player submissions! If you have a great picture that you want us to share, feel free to leave a comment here or get in touch with me via any nerd.nu services and we can get it added. We may deny pictures on a case by case basis but really it should only be if it presents something that is not in line with server rules/paints the server in a bad light (e.g. promotes griefing) or is too spammy. As iconic as - say - an Instagram full of 'molons' and Ooer faces would be, we would like to be fair in dedicating time to promoting all parts of the server and its culture.

Your best bet is probably pulling from the forum header if you can't access the files as I think the only other image is marting's original mock-up: I used the bottom right for the twitter banner (because, like a prat, I didn't notice the one in the forum header, thanks! ) and it's noticeably blurry in comparison.

I can't believe i'm reading a thread about the right to pretend you're farting in a computer game. I'm guessing it was getting too spammy over a great length of time (as opposed to condensed spam) and someone wanted an automated way to curb it, and i'm willing to bet whoever did this thought it was a good laugh with few repercussions (bet you're regretting that now, whoever you are). I don't necessarily agree with the way this was handled, so really, totally get where you're coming from. Not the normal method of moderation and everyone who - christ - farted in general chat too much should've just been told off like usual. I don't think this is an abuse on the part of the admins because this was almost certainly just one person's decision and action, this wasn't a team effort to ban you from pretending to fart (... can you imagine the notes from that staff meeting?). At the end of the day though, really i'm sure you could've just hit up one of the headadmins and said that you were uncomfortable and felt this was a bit too personally directed for a server-wide response and I bet they would've seen to things for you.

I haven't played so I don't want to put in a vote for the first question (and it won't let me vote overall without doing so) so just to comment instead: This is genuinely the first i'm hearing of anyone pvping with their weapons in the middle of their hotbar, so i'm not at all surprised if most people favour having the sword to the far left. It's kind of intuitive (sword is a left-click action, most people are inclined to read from left to right, the sword is your primary pvp tool and should be at the "forefront" of your kit) and in pvp if you're micro-managing between weapons and potions you're kind of wanting it close to your WASD keys in terms of hotkey slots.

I like the idea of timed bans. We had a jail on Survival for a long time, it was great when you couldn't catch someone's attention to stop them from griefing (no /cmsg, or they don't tend to read chat) but i've seen it devolve into people taunting players they've jailed so it's one of those things where you've got to make sure everyone's on the same page about appropriate language/actions (i.e. just because it's a jail does not mean you get to role-play as a bad cop!!)

Could we get a couple of sub-channels under DOTA 2, maybe "DOTA 2 (Free Talk)" and "DOTA 2 (Game Chat Only)" (or something like that)? Will save Zomise having to make a new channel every day :P

Heya, yeah that's fine :) I have started on something (I had the spare time mostly today, so figured I shouldn't waste it) but i'm not bothered if I have to scrap it, I was mostly trying to get a feel of what shapes I could work with. All of the other builds look so nice!

Oh yeah i've incorporated all of those into my planning so far, I figured there must've been something else not mentioned on the forums already.

I'll take a whack at the initial spawn/lobby build, if that's alright Didy. Silver said you might have had some more thoughts on it, are you wanting a particular style/design or something along those lines?

I agree with regards to the challenging aspect of it. Attempting to level the playing field for everyone has kind of turned things upside down and now I suppose (?) people are getting bored with how quick things are, as opposed to how slow it was to initially get on your feet. I can't speak for the people that have larger clans or anything though, as the current setup benefits me greatly as someone not in one. Enchantism's pretty great, in my opinion. Especially since the option to switching back to vanilla was added - that lets you have a bit more control over how challenging you want things to be. My suggestion would be to tweak the things surrounding enchanting, but not the enchantment table setup itself. They're changing enchanting again in 1.8 though (it requires lapis... ) so it would really depend on how people felt about the newer system coming in. Carrying on though, maybe scaling back/forward (whatever seems appropriate) the plumping of ores and experience (these don't have to be the only two) is the better way to go about it, instead of an all-or-nothing approach to enchanting. Really though, if the opportunity's there, the game is only as challenging as you want it to be. You don't need to use Enchantism (at least nowadays), much like you don't need to build a mob grinder or, if ores were plumped, mine all day long. If things are moving too fast for you, just slow down and impose your own personal limits. I don't recall their name sadly, but someone was playing Survival in their own "adventure mode" a few revs ago, where I think they didn't allow themselves to do things like mine coal or accept help from others. There isn't a solution that's going to please everyone, but that guy was happy with what he had despite all that was offered to him.