[cyan3]

Originally Posted by Fysez

But if you think about it, people don't seem to care.
All around, people are buying servers and paying their time to achieve something great.

Everyone knows there's a small chance it'll actually become a famous server.
But there's a little piece in everyone that says "I can do it!" And so the time begins to try.

The only way a server truly fails to become what they want, is when they give up.

You can make a bad server, and then change bit-by-bit to become better -- If you don't give up.

So it's worth a shot if you're up to the challenge.

That outlook is a little bit naive. The biggest reason a playerworld fails is that they lack any sort of focus or clear direction. This is mostly because project management practices are ignored and the development team blindly works on either none-essential or unfit for purpose systems. You can't tell me that realising, after one year of development that almost everything has to be redone that the "I can do it!" mentality still exists. I am sorry if this comes off as being mean but history does show us that a lack of project management will lead to a loss in moral for development teams upon the realisation that the last year of work was pointless.

I have quoted an old post by Dusty that explains it in more detail.

Originally Posted by DustyPorViva

(^ timeline assumes playerworld actually succeeds, majority of the time they don't)

But in all seriousness, servers fail because they're too hyped to get working on stuff without actually putting all the time that's needed into planning. Really, really good planning can shave a few years off dev time, and possibly save a good server. And I don't mean just a small .txt with little details, I mean fleshed out stuff. Sketched maps of the overworld(and perhaps even settings, along with REASONS for a town, personalities and histories of the NPCs), lots and lots of ideas, concrete plans that bring everything together, and a firm, firm idea of what you want.

If you're talking about classic servers... oh, I dunno honestly. Just something doesn't tick for me to bring me in. If I wanted to play an RPG, I'd go play one of the many better ones out there. Era is too laggy for me(I've played 3D games where lag wasn't that big of an issue for me, being on 56k). Hmm, and others just don't seem to offer much. Maybe some would be nice but they insist on ass-ugly tilesets that burn my retina's and push me away from the server. As for the 'classic-type' servers, they offer no direction. I like exploring, but I hate randomly running around doing mindless things hoping I find a quest, and then finding one only to see it's kill a bunch of baddies or push a million blocks. Then find there's nothing to do with the fullheart I gained because the server is dead.