So, it's almost December, any advances of who completed it, what the pot is, etc etc?

Literally, by far one of the most useful updates we've had in a while I think! This will save so much time for everyone so they can enjoy the things they do more frequently! Love how fast you've pushed this out aswell! Hell to the yes!
It may also help the economy ever so slightly, with something else for people to aim towards sinking their money into, it might also mean other certain items may change price or something...Maybee?

Love it, great update! One little thing i'd personally like to see is a 'sell all' button, so say we are clearing land and get glowstone, gravel, dirt and flint all in our inventory, instead of having to go through all the menu's and do them seperately, we can just do them all in one go! I get this kinda' defeats the purpose of having the shop, but it would be be a heck of a lot easier!
Most of the time I just end up throwing out all the misc stuff because I don't want to go through the menu's and see it all individually, but that's just me.

I'm still in the process of claiming the entire island I'm currently residing on. But as you can see from the live map I have big plans. I've got about 75% of it claimed but when it's entirely mine I plan on walling it all off, which you can see on the live map, and start working on my little almost completely self sustaining little island. All the farms you can imagine, spawners (already have a double spider spawner and a single skelly) and any other manner of build.
I plan on making it an entire little village inside the walls of a self contained island with a huge castle type thing atop a raised hill.
I am however currently still in the process of claiming it all and terraforming it, but you can see the beginnings on the live map just South of spawn.

I could probably knock this out in a couple hours, but i'll leave it for Diamond and whoever else

     I for one am totally 100% for this, especially the part about different jobs, miner, builder, farmer, and so forth. It's all well and good being ranked in McMMO but it gives you little to no worthwhile reward and gets tiring after a while. But if people were to get 'rewarded' per say for things they enjoy doing, then maybe it would create more of a buzz.
     Leading on from the old VIP ranks from back in the day, I am almost certain there is a way around rewarding people in a similar form, you look at other servers for instance, they all some form of system like that, like Floris said the status pickaxe or the ability to fly on skyblock servers, crates that you can open to get random special items or armour that's otherwise unobtainable, and so on and so forth.
     I would love to see the MineApoc zombies come back where they differ in level and difficulty, the higher the level, the hard the kill and better loot it may drop, or more exp you gain, etc.

Anyway, in short, I am all for these ideas and support it 100%

     All I ever did when I came online really was socialise and build, but because it's become so expensive for my chunks, and 3hours per chunk just ain't cutting it, it was getting increasingly difficult to accomplish my grand ideas! I like to build large builds, and the only other way to do this is with a town, of which there aren't many active ones worth bothering.
     I frequent a few other servers, of which I won't name of course, and it seems that this one is kinda' behind the times of sorts, which I guess also pushes people away, but that doesn't mean to say the gang behind the server haven't done an amazing job, because they have, just to clarify.
     As for the socialising, well people move on and since most of the people I used to speak to on the regular stopped coming on, I too did.
Not to mention I'm just so out of touch with Minecraft now because I've not been around in probably a good year or so.
I regularly check the site to see who's online but there's rarely more than 1/2 members which makes me sad
     But in retrospect if more people had the same thought process as me now and just stuck it out instead of saying 'another day' then maybe there would be a lot more players frequenting the server. But I do agree, some form of incentive, or something to work towards would be nice, a ranking system of some sort outside of McMMo or something. I dunno man, but I agree.

Jaeger, you're alive, holyyyyy, I was beginning to worry, it's been some time indeed. That's amazing news about Krishna congratulations all of you! I hope the gang are all doing well, keep us posted, and of course cute baby pics are a must haha! Looking forward to seeing you back. Stay safe, see you soon!

(PS: Smurf here, changed name!)

Hey there. I was around then by the name of SmurfStompa, but I was a nobody so the name won't ring a bell haha! Welcome back Matthew

This all sounds great to me, the summer updates, events, etc etc!
With regards to the 'Donation' shop, maybe it is possible for instead of taking it down, remove all the items that change gameplay (Horses, chunks, rank upgrades, etc) and replace all of those with a couple of cosmetic items,  for example maybe an exclusive cape, or the ability to change your prefix in game, for example instead of [Member] you can change it to something unique that you think of, obviously there would be a character limit and no profanity etc etc, but it would keep the same colour so we can see still who's VIP, Member, Mod, etc!

As with the lowering member count it seems to have been rising again a bit lately which is good news. I'm sure if the updates keep rolling and people talk in chat and so forth and see it's an active community more will stay. Maybe have a look at the optimisation of the keywords and all that stuff which makes Noobscraft pop up on the search engines and other sites like PMC etc.

Maybe a community project now and then also could be great for bringing existing people and new people on, something outside of events, maybe there can be a group competition where you're in teams and you build a new arena, or a new district for the spawn, and then the winners get the build implemented into the server. This couple maybe be done in a completely seperate world which is only open during the period of the event where you get "Unlimited" supplies (everything could be put in a chest shop costing 0nbz, but your inventory emptied automatically when you leave the world so nothing is brought out and exploited, or something along those lines that is community based, aswell as the events obviously, except with this you could just let it run for however long and just check periodically if anything is amiss!

Just a couple ideas of the top of my head, but apart from that, this all sounds like great news to me, glad to hear everything is still rocking and rolling, and obviously now you're solo it'll take longer which is obviously again perfectly normal and understandable!!
(I'm not re-reading this so if it doesn't make sense, say so) Lol

There was a good 5 seconds there where I thought I'd came to the wrong site, this new layout is so much more refined and easy on the eye. Love it!!!

If we have applied for a Staffing role previously, would it be an idea to spruce up our applications and make them a bit more 'up-to-date' so to speak, because I know I talk not only for myself but a few others that have applied months ago but are still interested but may be a little concerned because our applications where from a while back they might be skipped over.

Also, in regards to the Builder and Content rank, you mention it's not possible to apply for and will only be given to those that directly contribute, my question is what is the best way to get our foot in the door per-say' and help with future builds and quests with no direct way of 'Applying'. Will you just ask people, or should we contact a staff member privately about wanting to help out, or something else entirely. I only ask this because again I know of a couple people who would be interested but maybe aren't entirely sure on how to get involved.

As for the supporter rank, about time lol, great to see they will be given the Veteran rank.