The Future of Noobstown  (Read 2782 times)

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ItsLawrence

The Future of Noobstown
« on: 19 Jul 2016, 19:06:08 »

If you haven't read it already it's important you read the post made by Foob a few days ago where he made an announcement that he would be stepping down from his long term role as a server Administrator and the project lead for Noobstown.com within the next few months. This post is just some information about the future of Noobstown moving forward. I want to begin by personally thanking him for the many years of enjoyment and fun he has provided to thousands of people including myself, and for giving me the opportunity to help out all those years ago and to now keep the community going forward.

Firstly I want to reiterate very clearly: this is not the closure of the server, all of the aspects of the server which used to be controlled by Foob will simply be moved over to me, and we will continue on as before. There will likely be a few changes to things, both in the short term and longer term; but they will not be major and I will definitely consult you all as players before we do anything large/game-changing. I have already been the main contributor to changes and have been managing many of the aspects of the server myself for several months anyway so that is just going to continue. I speak to a number of the active players on a daily basis and really hope I can make Noobstown even more of a community moving forward.

As for a few planned changes and things which were in the works I do need to make a few aspects of the future of Noobstown clear though, I know a few questions have been asked so these should answer some of the larger ones:
  • The Summer updates will continue on as before, there are more coming later this month (July) and further ones in August. Some of the in-game changes such as the head shop and Snowball rewards might take slightly longer, but they will still be coming this Summer!
  • All of the planned changes listed at Noobscraft.com/work/ will still go ahead as I get the time to implement those changes/develop those features.
  • The planned Noobstown Dungeons project (the MineApoc merge) will be put on hold for now, this was a project being introduced by Foob primarily and without him it is likely to take much much longer than the many months planned anyway and as such for now we won't be implementing it as planned. That's not to say the features won't come in the future, but for now it is on hold. The ability to get VIP/VIP+ for free if you had it on MineApoc is also on hold because of this.
  • Any Donations made between now and when the server is passed over to me are still welcomed as a gift to Foob for his hard work, and will continue to provide the benefits in-game and on the site as normal, but since the longer term funding of the server is going to be from myself you should be aware at the moment  they are unlikely to be directly assisting the longevity of the server. The plans for any changes to the perk purchasing system once Foob has passed over to me will be announced later.

There is likely to be an amount of downtime as we move over from the hardware Foob is currently using to some that I will pay for, any downtime will be planned and announced with estimated dates/times beforehand though.

If you have any questions at all about the future of Noobstown, me taking over things, Foob's goodbye or anything of the sort please do ask it, I'll respond to any questions asked if you've got any.

- ItsLawrence

Tweeked_out

Re: The Future of Noobstown
« Reply #1 on: 19 Jul 2016, 19:16:06 »
I have a question... Im not sure if anyone else is going to ask. So I guess I will. Are you going to be moving anyone up the ranks to "admin"? I ask this in regards to the server being as big as it is, Just wondering if you would be able to handle it all by your self. Im sure there are plenty of Noobs that would help you out. Im one of them. So please keep us in mind if you need anything. We Noobs will do what we can to give you full support.

ItsLawrence

Re: The Future of Noobstown
« Reply #2 on: 19 Jul 2016, 19:29:58 »
I have a question... Im not sure if anyone else is going to ask. So I guess I will. Are you going to be moving anyone up the ranks to "admin"? I ask this in regards to the server being as big as it is, Just wondering if you would be able to handle it all by your self. Im sure there are plenty of Noobs that would help you out. Im one of them. So please keep us in mind if you need anything. We Noobs will do what we can to give you full support.
At the moment I have no plans to introduce any further Admins, the admin rank currently is those who are able to manage and directly edit all aspects of the game, this isn't something we need lots of people to have. We introduced the 'Content' rank a few months ago and they're able create the quests and run events, and it's likely they and the rest of the staff will get more abilities over time so they can assist me also. I have already been running 'admin things' for many months myself now already so it shouldn't be much more work for myself really.

DadJaeger

Re: The Future of Noobstown
« Reply #3 on: 19 Jul 2016, 20:53:53 »
Working on the staff side I allows me to see lots of the 'behind the scenes' aspects of the server and community management. Foob as a person is irreplaceable. He started this server out of love and chose some great people to help him in building this neighborhood, this community, this family. We will miss him. Larry is one of those great people. He is attentive to the community both in terms of the player and server balancing/improvement. Larry is another irreplaceable individual. I am optimistic about the direction of the server. Thank you Larry for taking the responsibility and keeping this experience going.

crashb4

Re: The Future of Noobstown
« Reply #4 on: 20 Jul 2016, 20:41:41 »
Sad to hear that the mineapoc merge project is being put on hold, but looking forward to seeing what the future holds for noobstown growing as a server and a community :)

daniel_blackwood

Re: The Future of Noobstown
« Reply #5 on: 22 Jul 2016, 12:32:43 »
I'm sad to hear that the Dungeons thing is postponed, but I'm glad its still in the pipeline somewhere.

When that does start to happen, and you end up needing a bunch of content, or random builds for dungeons or little holdfasts, or just anything at all, lots of us on the server would be happy to help. I don't know what your vision for Dungeons is, or if it's fully developed this early, but for some reason I was imagining the town world being similar to the Skyrim map, with main cities and towns being the big, main areas, which is kind of already the case, and loads of areas scattered all around, ranging from ransacked carts with a few wolves and gold nuggets as loot, to bandit camps, all the way up to sprawling underground dungeons full of undead or something, a big, ambitious main quests. I didn't play on Apocalypse enough to get a feel for it, but what I saw did remind me of Skyrim.

The point I'm trying to make is, plenty of people, myself included, would be more than happy to contribute dungeons and all those tedious little assets and backstory things that I'm sure Jaeger can't be expected to do all on his own.

Anyway, thanks Larry, for all your hard work keeping our favorite server running and alive. I really don't say it enough.

avoirdupois107

Re: The Future of Noobstown
« Reply #6 on: 23 Jul 2016, 18:58:05 »
It's been good working with ItsLawrence over the years. Hope to keep that up!