Helooo all,

I thought that I share my experience of running Minecraft server with newly starting Server Admins.

There are a couple of thing you need before you venture on this path of fame and glory ( huge sarcasm here )

1st: Lots and lots of alcohol

And that’s my stash only for day one ! Thrust me on this, the biggest player base of Minecraft are small children than don’t understand rules or basics of good manners online. Alcohol helps to deal with that ( just kidding don’t drink ! some hard drugs works as well )

2nd: You need a server, and not some small pip-squeak but huge beast with enough ram that NASA will contact you if they can run some Mars landing simulations as their servers are not enough.

 

3rd: Some Admins as you can’t be online and keep banning players all day. Good idea is to recruit freshly released inmates so they can keep the server population in line.

 4th: some knowledge of Linux OS

 

Ok you are set, if you didn’t give up yet, than seems like I’m not doing my job right !

Basically you need to set up your server and read the fucking manual for plugins, seriously I get so many questions about how plugins work from players type: “I will copy your server and do it better, but I can’t be bothered to read the setup how-to“, but about player types later, and decide how you going to run your server. There are few choices that you should decide on first.

Anarchy:

You can run it admin, moderators and protection free, don’t put your email anywhere and just look at the server once a week if it is still running, and who of the surviving players are the biggest bad-ass still there. This method is is the most healthy and stress free for admin, there almost no downsides.

Police state:

Here come the recommendation where to recruit moderators from above. You basically run 24/7 logging and monitoring service so players can’t take shit without you knowing it ( preferably some key-logger also on their side ). Have permanently at least 3 moderators with /ban and /banip command enabled. How to choose these 3 moderators you ask ? Well invite like 6 – 10 potential moderators to the party, throw one knife in the middle and tell them that only one can leave, rinse and repeat 3 times. So now you have 3 moderators that can hold their ground against standard Minecraft players. Do not listen to your player base bitching, you are the Admin , you know the best !

Good Admin server:

Sorry no such thing, this is the most dangerous role that young starting Minecraft Server admin can get him self into. You can’t satisfy everybody, with anything you do you will get flack from somebody how stupid you are… give up and go back to above models, save your self !

Some information about player types:

Know it all: standard type of player that know everything and claim to be admin on 50 servers, demands Moderator privileges after 5 min on your server and once you give it to them, your server dies with huge hole in map as he didn’t know how to use worldedit

Shut up and leave me alone: Best kind of player, minimal social interaction, no complains. Extremely rare usually age ( mentally ) above 18, find them and put them to separate map so they can thrive there…

Billy The Kid: 95% of the Minecraft server population. This breed is significant by age range from 7 to 15 years old. Usually have no idea how to read rules, demand promotion for no reason, keeps writing in caps and curse a lot. Easy to spot.

Bambi: Occasional player that come to the server thinking its Call of Duty, usually leaves after 5 min or transform to “Billy The Kid” type.

Griefer: You can’t avoid them, this is mostly devolution of “Billy The Kid” type of player after some stupid request rejection by server staff.

So that’s the basics you need to know before you decide to start your own server, you can thank me later !

Admin (since 2011 ) of Mineserver.sk
Article is met to be sarcastic in no way I recommend drugs or alcohol, even though I’m sure some admins will find some truth in this article