TNTMadnessYT, moderators, and fellow players:
After seeing this thread and hearing much discourse about the topic, I have so much to tell you. Many of my faction members and I have dedicated so much time into our faction and our base.
I remember when I first joined the server, I was very new to Factions and wanted to join the faction 666. However I did not want to go through such a rigorous process to become a member of 666, so I created my own faction called "USA" because that is my country. My first base covered only 1 chunk of land, and I was the only member of the faction. The first base was frugal, for I had a box made of cobblestone. Later, I added at least six walls of cobblestone on each side of the base and also 16 corner pillars on each corner of the base. One point to mention is that I did not generate the defensive walls with lava and water (I actually placed each individual cobblestone by hand). Later, I renamed my faction "Monsanto" after the agrochemical corporation because I thought "USA" was not as fascinating as a company that makes chemical weapons. For my base, I wanted obsidian, but I was too poor to afford it. As a result, I resorted to mining obsidian in the End, which was painstaking and took forever. Even though I spent weeks mining the obsidian, I was so thankful for being able to have an obsidian skeleton for my base.
After voting for TMFactions almost every single day, along with receiving donations from very nice members of Pride (formerly 666), I managed to save up enough for a blaze spawner. I was so happy to spend $300,000 on the blaze spawner because I knew it would help me make more money without having to rely so heavily on the voting rewards. In celebration of my first blaze spawner, I ended Monsanto's isolationism and started to invite people to my faction.
Most of the members are beyond amazing, nice, and helpful, but the faction has run into some insiders. When Regening asked to join Monsanto, I invited him. Unfortunately, he stole all 10 of our blaze spawners and blew up all our items, so we were left poor. Sooner or later, I realized Regening is Dinobro_'s alt. This moment was a turning point in my Factions life because it made me understand that I should be much more careful about letting anyone in the faction. After some time, we were able to earn enough money to buy more blaze spawners to compensate for our stolen ones. Later, JayGreenhill12 and Blake_Of_300 joined my faction, and they seemed nice; however, things changed when they tried to raid an ally's base. I told them to stop raiding our ally's base, but they refused to listen because they just wanted to take joy in raiding any faction's base even if it was an ally. Sooner or later, JayGreenhill12 and Blake_Of_300 turned against Monsanto and almost took our blaze spawners. Fortunately, our allies came to the rescue and killed them before they could do further damage, but now the traitors are part of a new faction called TeamISIS (or ISIS) with JayGreenhill12's brother, Bhni. Occasionally, TeamISIS tries to teleport me into traps and kill me.
Then, we decided that our base needed better defenses, one of which was regen walls. I did not enjoy making regen walls because I was burned by lava countless times. After more than a week, we finished the regen walls, and I was very relieved. For some unknown reason, Regening gave us back our 10 blaze spawners, so we had a lot of potential to make tons of money.
Right before the January update, we were committed to building an iron golem farm. Once our faction made enough money by working our butts off grinding blazes, we purchased an IG spawner, and the feeling of placing that spawner felt like placing a crown on a monarch during his/her coronation. We were able to finish the IG farm right before the server was down for the January update, which made us very relieved. When the server went back online after the update, I immediately went online to make more money by grinding blazes and farming IGs. I have gained so much money that I bought 5 more IG spawners and a mother load of hoppers for the filter/item sorting system (That takes a lot of commitment and dedication). My goal was to get even more IG spawners and make my faction members rich until I found out about the potential server reset. We have come such a long way, but we are now confronted by the possibility of a server reset.
Thoughts
Now that I look back at my faction's history, I feel proud of my faction despite all the misfortunes. Sadly, I will have to say goodbye to my faction if the server does reset. Although ranks may be transferred from the original map to the new map, I feel that the unfairness of "pay-to-win" is clearly displayed at this moment. While some of the top factions on the server have members with high ranks who get OP items every day, the vast majority of my faction members do not even have ranks (we have one member who is an Elite, the lowest rank). Because of this fact, we must actually work hard to become a rich and powerful faction. Now, our faction is extremely huge, powerful, and wealthy compared to many other factions, and this is not the result of paying real money to win. In fact, one of our members was able to defeat Regening, who has the Hero rank and pays a lot of real money on crate keys. This event is testimony that by working hard, players can be one of the best in Factions even without paying a single penny. We worked so hard to become the faction we are today, but our legacy will be flushed down the drain because of the server reset.
I am a college student, and I will be going back to school from my long winter break very soon. As many of you know, college does not guarantee students free time to do leisure activities such as playing Minecraft; therefore, I am using the time I have for winter break on TMFactions so that my faction will be autonomous even when I do not go online as much during the school semester. Now that the server may reset, that dream of autonomy might not come true. I feel like I could have spent a lot more time preparing for the next semester by studying even more, and it seems as if I have wasted so much time on TMFactions. When I go back to school, I will not have the time to create a new faction, build another well-protected base, make even more money, and manage the faction. (How will I get my hard-earned 20+ blaze spawners and 5+ IG spawners back?! What was the purpose of dying multiple times building regen walls if I do not get to keep them?!).
Proposal
I do not agree with the server reset because of the tough situation with which my faction is dealing; therefore, I have a 4-point proposal for the server update that may benefit both parties of the dilemma:
1. Keep the original map but also include the new map. If other Factions servers can have multiple worlds, TMFactions should be able to have two different worlds. The players should be able to access both worlds, but the two worlds are not connected in any way (players cannot bring their items and money from the old map to the new one and vice versa).
2. Use the original map for experimentation. Because the new map will be much better than the original map, the original map should be used for testing. By trying out new plugins or fixing bugs on the original map, moderators can gain more knowledge about those plugins or bugs before even risking making any accidental yet devastating changes to the new map. Once the moderators know more about the plugins and bugs, they should feel safe making the changes to the new map (Had the moderators experimented on a dummy world rather than the actual world, we would not be seeing strange things such as chests that look like stone blocks and players exploiting bugs such as taking items from the crates at the server's spawn).
3. Narrow down the wide gap between donors and non-donors. Although donations significantly help the server, the server seems to give players who spend actual money a tremendous advantage over non-donors. For example, donors get extremely OP gear and commands that beneficially affect their gameplay. To solve this issue, non-donors should be able to have some current donor features such as the ability to mine spawners with a pickaxe enchanted with Silk Touch. Also, the regular shop and the donor shop should be combined together for equal access by all players. One idea is to disable ranks in the original map and implement ranks into the new map since the ranks provide a huge advantage for donors due to the framework of the old map. In the new map, donors can still keep their ranks but will not have the same giant advantage over non-donors compared to its counterpart in the old map.
4. Use YouTube as leverage. By creating a YouTuber rank, players will have an incentive to create videos of them playing on TMFactions and uploading them on YouTube. When viewers on YouTube see gameplay footage of the server, they will be enticed into joining TMFactions, resulting in more players on the server. With more players, TMFactions should expect to see more donators, allowing the server to be funded even more. In addition, YouTubers should advertise TNT Madness's channel in their own videos so that TNTMadnessYT can get more subscribers and potentially more players on the server.
Those are just some ideas that I have in mind. Furthermore, I respect TNTMadnessYT and the moderators' support and dedication to better TMFactions; nevertheless, the server will eventually face big issues such as the potential map reset. The reason why I wrote so much is that I care a lot about not only my faction and its members but also other factions and players. Even so, I am still thankful that you have taken the time to read my reply to the post and acknowledged my concerns. Let me leave you with an important quote:
Monsanto is part of my roots, and to lose my faction and its members is like to lose who I am as a person.
Sincerely,
iLove2EatChurros
![[Hero]Dinobro_ Avatar](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/4f/69/74/4f697465de5a38d177abd6d022a0401b.gif)