Hey everyone! It's been a long time. I'm just here posting that I am, in fact, still thinking about the server and getting it back up. There's just a few small things I'm considering before doing anything big.

1.) Should we use a public or private pack?

Public has the benefit of getting us access to a wider audience so that's a bigger chance of us having a larger and more active community at any given time. Private though let's us create the pack we want. The pack that we think should represent us and the server.

2.) Should we continue to rent or buy a dedicated server?

Renting is easier since it let's a professional company manage the server and keep it in good shape. We had issues before with our host, but I believe they've been resolved since. Of course we can always go with another provider. Buying one is more expensive, but then we have complete access to the hardware and the only bill we have to pay each month is the internet bill. Daniel came up with a list of parts for the server we could use and it looks good, but is a pretty hefty price.

3.) Who will help me run it?

I tried to run the server with minimal staff last time. I thought I could do it almost by myself, but I was wrong. I need a strong staff who I can rely on at any given time. I believe some of the people who helped me run it before were trustworthy, but I think we need more. I also need people to keep me in check. I got a bit hostile later on in the server's life and that's mostly due to stress and I apologize for it. I did things that I shouldn't have and I need people to tell me that I'm not doing things the way I should.

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I have something in mind that may actually help us out. This fall, I'm going to be receiving about $50 a month (My friend is receiving a ton of scholarship cash for college and he's splitting some of the extra cash with me since it more than covers his stay. This cash is also allowed for personal use.). If I was to save this money for a few months, I could potentially rent a server for a year, giving us a discount and a lot of time to build that cash back up. What are your thoughts on this? Should I do it or use the extra cash to help pay for my stay (I don't really need it, but it'd help)?

I just want to thank everyone who is still here by any chance. You guys are great and I thank you for sticking with us through all of our problems. When I launched the server, the intention was to make it our server. Well, I didn't go as far as I wanted to last time. If we can get the server up and running, I want everyone's input on more stuff. I want this to truly feel like our server. With sponge (see spongepowered.net ) coming along nicely, we can potentially get this server up later this year, but I'll need your help. Let's try to actually make this everyone's server and make it one of the best out there.

Please share any and all thoughts below. Am I not being realistic enough with bringing back the server or do you all agree with me that it's possible? Do you want to see us make a return?

Greetings, everyone!

It's been a while since I made an announcement here, and I apologize for that. I had a series of life events pull me away from the Minecraft scene, but I'm finally ready to return. First, I'll briefly cover why I was gone for so long, discuss a little bit about what's going on in the Minecraft community keeping me from continuing the server, and then mention what we could do for our future.

Well, first off, in the past few months (from around June until now), I've been busy handling stuff in my real life. In June/July, I was focused on a summer study trip to Germany I took part in for a few weeks. Once I returned, I had a brief trip to Niagara Falls which took up more of my time. After I got back from that, I was focused on getting back into school and preparing to apply to colleges and scholarships. Then early last month, my computer's hard drive crashed and I lost everything on it (except for what I had backed up on Google Drive and Dropbox). The worst part is that this happened literally the day before a backup hard drive I ordered arrived. So, I've been spending the past month just getting everything back and I think I'm good to go on with my projects. All of these things have kept me busy these past several months. Thankfully, it's all starting to die down which allows me to focus on doing this again.

Now, while I was fixing my computer, apparently there was an incident regarding Bukkit and everything related to it getting DMCA claimed. This is pretty unfortunate as it includes MCPC+ and Cauldron, which are my favorite server software since they combine Bukkit (which has better plugins) with Forge (which has better mods). One of the members from Mojang said he'd personally update Bukkit to 1.8, but it looks like there's a better replacement for Bukkit coming up soon. It's called Sponge and is made as an extension to Forge and is being developed by the creators of WorldEdit/WorldGuard and MCPC+/Cauldron. This looks good because the developers of some of the plugins (like GriefPrevention) that I used on the server say they may remake their plugins on Sponge. This is great news as it means plugins like GriefPrevention will be able to protect against griefing much more effectively than it has been able to in the past.

Now, I would like to make a comment about FTB's official packs really quick. It seems that their flagship packs (in the past these have been Ultimate, Unleashed, and Monster) are always super big. This was fine in the Ultimate and Unleased days when they weren't incredibly large, but I feel they're getting a little crazy in size now. Modpacks that big require more powerful computers for the users to run and more powerful servers for the users to play on. So, unless 1.7.X or 1.8.X have massive performance improvements, I feel we shouldn't base our pack off one of these flagship packs.

So, what could we do for our future? First, I think we should wait for Sponge to become available. I just feel safer using software that I know has a future, unlike Bukkit which might as well be dead by now. Sponge looks like it'll be a huge improvement on MCPC+/Cauldron if they make it right. It'll be interesting to see what they come up with. As for our modpack, I think we should create our own list of mods independent of what the other modpacks have. We should make it more personal to us and get rid of the mods we don't care about. It is nice having the option to do whatever you want, but we should limit how many mods we have. If we ultimately do decide we want a modpack base, I think we should use the mods from Unleashed as our base as that pack was very good in my opinion.

Please leave your thoughts down below or in a thread in the discussion board in the group. I hope this has explained why I haven't said much here at all recently and I hope that we can re-launch our server sometime soon.

Thanks for reading!

Hello, everyone!

If you haven't heard, Mojang is going to be enforcing parts of the EULA for Minecraft and this will affect all servers using a donation system like ours.

Please read this thread created by Daniel for more info and a link to the source: http://eo.steamhost.cc/steamcommunity_com/groups/DigitalFactor/discussions/1/522730535825880710/

If you have any comments regarding the issue, please post them in that thread.

Thanks!

Greetings.

It's great to see that some people here are excited for the return of the server. You are all lovely people. So, I'm now here to share an idea we came up with for the next modpack. We would like to hear your thoughts on it.

For the 1.7 modpack, let's make something smaller than the main FTB pack (In 1.6's case, this was Monster, 1.5 was Unleashed, and 1.4 was Ultimate). In 1.6, the pack was rather big and didn't offer much room for adding mods we wanted. So, we thought about taking the mods that were in one of the 1.5 packs and using that as a base for the mod list and working from there. I'm thinking about Unleashed personally, but Unhinged is also good.

The suggestions we got for our 1.6 pack will still be taken into consideration, but this allows us to make the pack more for what we want it to be. If you have more mod suggestions, this thread is still fine for those: http://eo.steamhost.cc/steamcommunity_com/groups/DigitalFactor/discussions/1/630800445633086413/

What do you think about this idea? Do you like this?

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In other news, we're still looking into how to handle our money. Should we pay for the server annually (Which is about $280) and save about $70 per year or try something else? The problem with this idea is that we don't have the money needed to do that. We could continue doing monthly, which requires less money at a time, but does cost more in the long run. One suggestion I heard was to have 28 people donate $10 each or some other combination of people and money. Do you have any suggestions on that

Feel free to share your thoughts below. I'm reading every single comment you all leave. Thanks in advance! Take care.

Thank you to those of who responded to the announcement from last week! We really appreciate it!

So, let's start forming a plan to work with together.

I was talking in private with staff members on the previous server and here's what we got as a base. I'm sharing this with you to get your feedback and opinions on what we change in it.

We're thinking of keeping the same level server. This means that the server would be identical (tech-wise) to the previous server. We are thinking about doing this because RAM, disk space, and bandwidth were never a problem.

The problems we had before were related to the CPU as these mods love to use up a lot of CPU power. To resolve this, we should consider limiting access to certain items that are CPU crazy.

We could search for plugins and mods that optimize Minecraft and make it run better which would definitely help us out.

As for plugins on the server, we'll get your opinions on what we should have at a later date. Once we get a better idea of the direction we're going, then we can start getting plugins.

The main concern we have with the modpack is whether we should stick with private or go back to an official, public pack.

If we go public, it makes it easier for people to connect to the server and could potentially get us more well known. Perhaps we could switch back to private after a period of time.

If we stick with private, it allows us to make the modpack the way we want it. We can add, remove, and re-configure mods to our liking. However, it's a little more difficult to connect to the server this way. I could make it so the server is already in the server lists when you load up the modpack though. If we do this, we should try to spread the word of our server out as much as possible.

If we decide to go with private, I will have a public beta period before we launch where you all can help us test the modpack and make sure it's good before we start up the server. We want this to be a smooth start.

This is my biggest concern, personally. We need money to keep the server up, obviously. Thankfully, while we were gone, our former host lowered the prices of their servers a considerable amount. The cost for the same server we had before was lowered from $39.60 to $29.99. This could help us out a lot since we'll be spending $10 less each month.

One idea we thought of was to pay annually for the server. It's $150 to $200 for that, but we only have to pay once a year. They'd also give us a discount if we paid like that. I believe we'd save about $70 a year if we pay annually as opposed to monthly.

The question is, though, how will we make enough money to keep the server up and keep consistantly making money?

Donations worked on the old server for a whole year (Thank you to all of you who donated if you're reading this), but I feel we should be relying solely on donations as it's not a solid source of money.

So, we need ideas on how to make money for the server!

I could attempt to get a job, but that's something I'd prefer to avoid at this time. Due to school, sleeping, managing a Youtube channel, working on game mods, and (hopefully) soon this server, I really don't think I'd be able to manage the time well enough for that. If it comes to that though, I'll do it.

I did become a Youtube partner recently, so I will get paid for making my Youtube videos, but it's not too much. I haven't gone through a whole month yet, but it looks like I'll only get about $3 - $5. It's not much, but I suppose it'll help.

One idea I had was to get a plugin that puts ads on the server in the chat, but that could potentially annoy players. The chat was already pretty cluttered at times, from what I remember.

We could try to make some sort of deal or partnership with others though. Perhaps advertise a service for someone and have them pay us a set amount per month.

If you have ideas on how we could make money for the server, tell us! We'll love you. :)

I keep saying it, but I'm serious when I do say it. We want your feedback! We want to know what you think about all this. Tell us you thoughts, comments, questions, or concerns about all of this.

You can leave your thoughts here on this announcement, in a comment on the group page, or in a thread in the group discussions. Feel free to open up a new thread if you want.

If you rather it be in private, you can PM me on Steam/Skype if you have me on there. If not, I'd suggest for you to contact me on Twitter (since I check that site rather often). You can find my twitter page here: Click Me For Teh Twitterz

Hope to hear from you soon. Thanks for supporting us!