To Anyone Buying a Server
 

I think a lot of you have noticed, iPhone players are buying servers and are failing horribly. Of course, other players are too. Before buying a server there are lots of things you should actually think about ahead of time. Make sure you don't waste your time and money.

1. Don't hire staff you don't need. You're giving yourself more work by making yourself babysit bored staff. Does an under development server need any non dev staff? No. You don't need GPs, events teams, FAQs or any of that. You're going to have more staff and visitors than actual players. If someone is causing problems, just ban them. Don't hire GPs, if someone is acting up they are probably trying to distract you or gain attention. Don't hire an events team. If the main part of the server isn't finished, you don't need events.

2. Don't spend your time making staff tools, player/staff houses, events, or anything that isn't actually part of the game play. Spend all your time working on what's needed. Everyone should have something to do. So theres really no point in most staff tools at the beginning. And for events, no players are randomly gonna come on the server just because you're hosting. Theres other servers with events and more players. They could just go there. Events are fine if you have content finished and a player count more than just staff.

3. Make sure people will actually wanna play your server. If you're gonna make a modern server, please make it different from Era. Why would someone wanna play a clone? If you're going to make a generic level up RPG, make it different from Zodiac. If you're going for something different, make sure it's something fun with some goals. Nobody is gonna play a "hang out" server if they could do that on a regular server.

4. Make sure you know what you actually want made. It would be even more helpful if you actually had developing experience. Learn stuff off of graal.net before you buy it. Long term dev experience as staff on another server actually being worked on may help a bunch.

5. Don't give staff rights they don't need and make backups. This is more important than actually hiring useless staff. They can actually mess your server up. Imagine all of your levels being deleted. If someone didn't have those rights, they may have been saved. If someone you did trust had those rights, you should have had backups! Also, you should never allow your staff to give out items or probably give their selves stuff. In some cases, scripters need to test NPCs. But theres no reasons for most people to actually get free stuff without earning it. Plus, you don't need them giving a fair advantage in game play.

If I missed anymore big mistakes for new server owners, please share! :D

You missed a lot. Especially a structural economy.

And this is why Mafia Life is successful.

Most new servers don't even get to that point. >_< But managing an economy is an important part of managing a server.

Have a tight knit staff, like ML does. We're pretty much invite only, for staff members. This also builds a base for somewhat trust.

Just let them get on with it. People that rush in to buy servers often do it because it's so very exciting to be staff and have power when you first play. The iPhone staff have heightened that by turning the staff positions into some kind of gameplay achievement for players to work towards. Encourage people to play and they'll simply play. Too late for most iPhone players though, but once you've wasted money on your first or second server attempt the novelty wears off. Well.. unless you're Jigga of course.

If this was a thread about server design yes, but that's pretty much covered in 3.

Hype is not success.

PC Graal has been supported off these people who buy servers just for the fun of it and getting all the staff power they couldn't get on normal servers. It also indirectly gives people a chance at developing. There are plenty of devs now who owe the development of their skills to these hopeless UC servers.

People jump to purchase stuff all the time and then look back and think "What the **** did I waste my money on that for?" Graal is no different. Let people learn like they would regardless.

Renting a server for 6 months comes to about the same price as a new game now(in USD). I know we've all bought a game and thought it was ****. And I know we've all bought more expensive things we never found a practical use for and now is a dust-collector.

Disagree. Good staff/development tools are essential for a better work flow.

To a certain point. I think the author was talking about stupid staff tools with commands like "/dir all 2".

"Hype is not success."


No, not what I said. I said Mafia Life. We mapped out the entire server, before creation. Making slight changes down the road, to make it better. We have everything thought up, now we're just making it. Which is going well.

Hype is all sorts of success, just look at Drake!

offtopic;

ontopic;
buying a server on a dead game is never a good idea, i for one wouldn't do it, but don't let this be the reason to not try to pursue your own sense of development.

"Will be" successful. Hopefully.

You show them noobs lollipop

Before you ever buy or consider buying a server. You must gather all necessity such as staff, a solid server plan, etc.

For an example, In this case. I am planning on buying a server in the future. To give myself all the time I can get when I buy the server, I must provide myself a solid staff team that have a low chance of attrition, server idea and a complete plan of what the server is going to be. Right now, I am working on my server. For now, I'm just making mock ups and graphics. Later I'm going to make actually levels.

By the time I purchase the server, I should already have a lot of contents ready to be converted for online game-play. I should also have an assembled staff team. This will allow me ample time for any fixes or changes for conversion to online and immediately be ready for Hosted or better yet, Classic! ^^