[mitchie151]

Hello MineRealm.

Let’s face it; the world is too small for all of us. Free space continues to fill up, and while only a small percentage of realms are owned, huge percentages are inhabited. In fact, a huge amount of land is ocean. We just don’t have room to build our empires any more. We can have our small buildings, our villages, but the world now heavily restricts the creation of grand empires such as the likes of Exodus, Abyssus, Roanoke and more. I really, truly believe it would take weeks of searching to find a mere 150x150 piece of land which is untouched. There is NO way you could acquire a 10x10 realm area of land without bumping into some random noobs town. It’s practically all junk.

Now, you might be saying, ‘dude, just go to the wilderness’, but in reality, no one wants to live in the wilderness. This is a place where you live short term, this is where we live to try and gather as many materials as we can quickly, and then get out. Trying to create an empire, a grand city, or anything of a substantial size visible to the public is utter stupidity. Here we live in the shadows, generally avoiding combat. We want to be able to protect our things, we want to be able to live in safety, and we WANT to be able to build our massive cities! But we can no longer do this, not on the map we have, not in the wilderness.

So many times have we discussed how we can fix this. In fact tonight, in a conference call with some Minerealm Veterans, we have tried to theorize ways to fix this problem. As far as we see it, no change to the realm system as is, is required. It’s perfectly fine. Gathering credits is fun, it’s a sport, we all like to think we’re business moguls and this is one thing that is fantastic about MineRealm.

MineRealm will always be split between the veterans that want a fresh start, and the veterans that are perfectly happy with the map we have now. We need a solution that keeps the current map, but provides land to those who want that fresh start, and those who want to create their incredible, epic cities. In fact, we had almost this exact discussion before the partial map wipe that came before MineRealm 4.0. And here are the things we discussed: A major map expansion and I mean MAJOR. An extension from 12,000x10,000 to 32,000x10,000 would suffice. At the absolute very least, a doubling in size would be necessary. Of course, only the wilderness would be wiped after each major patch. In my opinion, this would be best. For convenience sake, another spawn could be added closer to (25,000,5000) with a teleporter between original spawn and this spawn. The issue, as far as I see it, is server resources, and no doubt things like this have been discussed before, but this is getting out of control, and an expansion of some kind is necessary.

Another idea raised was as such, another entire survival server, on an entirely fresh map. My issue with this idea was simply that the community would be brutally cut down the middle, with half of us moving to a new server, and half of us staying were we are. I think this is unfair for everyone, and personally do not like it, but I’m putting it out there because some of you may think this is best.
Lastly, we have a public realm wipe, I’m not going in depth with this because basically, we all know how terrible it was last time.

The way we see it, fresh land means a fresh start, and people absolutely have the option of easily abandoning what they have to go and start again, without losing what they have earned over the months/years. I myself do not need this to happen, I am putting it out there because we feel like a lot, if not a majority, of players want this. The people have spoken, MineRealm needs more room, an expansion is absolutely necessary, and regardless of how much less vanilla this may make us.

TL;DR: Map needs more room. There are 3 ways to do this. Map expansion is perfect.


Thanks for reading.

[OrigamiElephant]

There are plenty of huge open spaces.

Maybe a rule change to deal with old unkempt realms that have since gone back to the server. Right now we don't have the players to play with the space we have now. All that's going to happen with a doubling of the map is just more room for "random noob" towns.

A better way is a system to deal with builds that are garbage and need to go, that way after clearing the people that want to build "grand cities" can go in and buy the land you want.

I can only imagine what an expansion like that is going to cost Intelli. Are you going to pay for it?

I guarantee half of what you see on land that looks like owned spaces, probably isn't, and most likely has been abandoned for quite some time.

[SilverKnightM]

I agree with Mitchie151. I personally know a lot of people that would come back and play tons more on the server, if we had much more space.

[BSGSamuel]

I completely agree the map is overdeveloped, not overpopulated, but like you say there are buildings, shacks and ruins all over the place built by people who are long gone. Although efforts have been made to clean the public land, we all know that's not going to happen.

Map expansion would be cool but I don't know to what extent it would create lag. If it doesn't create any additional lag I would say it would be a great solution. Also this would allow an expansion of the nether which would be a good way to introduce netherquartz.

However, if map expansion is not an option for some reason I believe a public realm wipe would be fine. A lot of people don't like the fact that it creates islands of private realms with unnatural borders. I think this is slightly exaggerated though, there are ugly patches on the current map but I believe new clean public land with some ugly bits is still better than no clean public land with ugly bits. Don't forget that some of the ugly patches that have disbanded will be cleared in a new public realm wipe so there might even be some improvement here and there.

A disadvantage ofcourse is the loss of the subway, but honestly, how many people actually use it regularly? The nether will always be faster means of travel.

Regardless, it is inevitable that at some point the map needs to be renewed one way or another. I wouldn't even object to a full map wipe at this point.

[Wormoxide]

Expansion would do nothing to solve the problem in the long term, if your solution is expand every time the current map is full with junk guess where you will end up?
A realistic long term solution is:
A: Get over it, buy realms and clean up the area to meet your needs, this is not at all impossible.
B: Start fresh with a new map
C: Map wipe of public land.
D: Make your own server

[mitchie151]

Expansion would do nothing to solve the problem in the long term, if your solution is expand every time the current map is full with junk guess where you will end up?
A realistic long term solution is:
A: Get over it, buy realms and clean up the area to meet your needs, this is not at all impossible.
B: Start fresh with a new map
C: Map wipe of public land.
D: Make your own server

The current map has lasted over a year and is only just beginning to become overpopulated. An expansion to only double its current size would prolong its life by at the very least another year.

[BSGSamuel]

Expansion would do nothing to solve the problem in the long term, if your solution is expand every time the current map is full with junk guess where you will end up?
A realistic long term solution is:
A: Get over it, buy realms and clean up the area to meet your needs, this is not at all impossible.
B: Start fresh with a new map
C: Map wipe of public land.
D: Make your own server

A: Nobody is going to do that, especially not to the extent that the majority of public land will be clean. Even if you do it is still almost impossible to find a 10x10 realm area of public land.
B: Fair enough, there is a lot of resistance though, which is quite understandable.
C: Good option imo.
D: Someone tried that already, didn't end well

Maps extension is not necessarily a short term solution. If you consider that computing power increases by a huge amount every year, you can expect the server performance to be able to keep up with the increased demand.

[mitchie151]

Expansion would do nothing to solve the problem in the long term, if your solution is expand every time the current map is full with junk guess where you will end up?
A realistic long term solution is:
A: Get over it, buy realms and clean up the area to meet your needs, this is not at all impossible.
B: Start fresh with a new map
C: Map wipe of public land.
D: Make your own server

C: Good option imo.

Please remember that this happened once before at the beginning of 4.0. It was generally considered a bad move by everyone around at the time and ruined a huge amount of landscapes. Even after months of constant teraforming a quick glance at the world map will clearly show you the devastation left by this wipe.

Remember that the world will not generate the same after so many patches, even with the same seed.

[BSGSamuel]

I know, I still think it was a good move. Like I said in my first post, the map already has ugly borders from old realms, another public realm wipe won't make it worse but will clear the public land.

[OrigamiElephant]

Well if anything HAS to happen it should certainly be a map extension. That serves the purposes of those that require more land, and also offers a solution to the netherquartz/wither skeleton issue above and beyond just implementing a nether for the wild.

That still doesn't address the issue of already existing land. I think a big problem we have is that there are so many one timers that show up build a dirt/cobble hut, grief and get banned, that it accounts for a huge portion of the problem.

Maybe something needs to be done about the quality of players we have on the server? Such as disabling use of the teleporter for the first week so those that are intent on griefing don't have such easy access to outlying realms that might have disbanded but are similarly safe by way of distance.

Possibly have a seperate command for "newb territory" (similar to the wild but with all the protections the regular land map offers) and let them cut their teeth. That would help us more easily single out the players that choose to only destroy or impede the joy of others, and gives a chance to quazi "whitelist" players that show a certain ability to not muck up the map with their garbage.

I had also suggested in game giving players the ability to check the status of a structure (date it was created, last block placed etc.) and institute a solid new rule that would coincide with this ability, so that players that do with to terraform land back to it's original state, can do so without having to wait for staff.

There are "options" that are outside of a map expansion, but I do agree that map expansion could be fun. The other problems still would have to be rectified first in order to prevent (as much as it can be) the same issues that plague players now from happening in the future.