I've been trying to find a decent SMP server to play on, and I've been met with nothing but one piece of garbage server after another. Every server is either griefed all to hell, laggy as hell, full of stupid mods that give players magic spells and flying carpets, or it requires a "donation" before you can build. If there is a decent free server out there, it requires that you fill out a three-page application form, provide a portfolio of screenshots, and go through a 3-week probation period during which you have you log on to the server and stand around doing nothing until they trust you enough to let you build. Then once you endure all of that and spend a week building things, the server owner may just get bored one day and shut the server down, and you lose everything you spent all that time building.
I put most of the blame on the game itself which has basically no built-in defenses against griefing, and provides hardly any tools for server admins. It puts a lot of pressure on server owners to provide not only the server access which can be very expensive, but also provide a security infrastructure, and often an economic infrastructure as well. This involves researching and installing mods which is a lot harder than it should be since the game offers no built-in support for mods (besides standard resolution texture packs). The mods alone are usually not enough to stop griefing, so you have to also recruit an army of admins to police the server 24/7. I've never seen a game that requires so much work to have some fun.
I know, I know: the game is in beta, and just barely into beta at that. But we have spent money on it, and I'd like to see Notch & Co. working on these issues more. It's great that we can throw eggs now (oh how I longed to throw eggs), but that kind of crap can probably wait until after there is a built-in way to stop asshats from burning down forests with buckets of lava.
Hopefully over the next couple months, Mojang will focus on mod support (which notch has said they are focusing on) and, more importantly IMO, built-in anti-griefing and powerful server admin tools.
I also think Mojang should provide official SMP servers on their own dime. They shouldn't be relying entirely on the community to shell out hundreds of dollars on the SMP server hosting.
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I put most of the blame on the game itself which has basically no built-in defenses against griefing, and provides hardly any tools for server admins. It puts a lot of pressure on server owners to provide not only the server access which can be very expensive, but also provide a security infrastructure, and often an economic infrastructure as well. This involves researching and installing mods which is a lot harder than it should be since the game offers no built-in support for mods (besides standard resolution texture packs). The mods alone are usually not enough to stop griefing, so you have to also recruit an army of admins to police the server 24/7. I've never seen a game that requires so much work to have some fun.
I know, I know: the game is in beta, and just barely into beta at that. But we have spent money on it, and I'd like to see Notch & Co. working on these issues more. It's great that we can throw eggs now (oh how I longed to throw eggs), but that kind of crap can probably wait until after there is a built-in way to stop asshats from burning down forests with buckets of lava.
Hopefully over the next couple months, Mojang will focus on mod support (which notch has said they are focusing on) and, more importantly IMO, built-in anti-griefing and powerful server admin tools.
I also think Mojang should provide official SMP servers on their own dime. They shouldn't be relying entirely on the community to shell out hundreds of dollars on the SMP server hosting.