Neoseeker Server Reviews

[Disclaimer] The opinions in this review are purely my own, and may change from the time of posting.

There are three main servers on the Neoseeker Minecraft forum. Each of these servers varies greatly from the other two, and the three of them all have their respective amount of pros and cons. As a moderator on the CommunityCraft server, some may expect me to be biased, but I will do my best to take a neutral view upon each server as I attempt to review them. Reviews will be given based on several things, including buildings, activity, community, and more.

I will start with my own server,
CommunityCraft
Server Owner(s): Stv32, Ali_45 (manages all technical aspects)
24/7? Yes

The Community Craft server is the newest of the community servers, and enjoys the benefits of a whitelist. Due to the whitelist, the server has experienced practically no grief since it's creation.
Unlike Neocraft and Neonshift, the CommunityCraft server seems to be more balanced in most regards, which you will see in each of the other server's reviews. CommunityCraft is undoubtedly the most "dead" of the three servers, which most would take as a con, with usually 0-3 players online at most times, and only 4-7 during peak times. Although small, the community generally works, well, as a community. Groups seem to have developed, but all users get along with one another and are respectful to each other. The staff of the server, bar myself, is located in the UK, which leads to many unstaffed hours (that I help with, being EST), which would be more of a problem if there was no whitelist.
As for what many may consider the most important aspect of a server, building, CommunityCraft definitely boasts some talented builders, but is also weighed down by an equal if not larger amount of untalented or uncreative players. Large-scale (more than 50x50) projects are in the works at the moment, and many decent to nice small-medium sized projects have been completed.
TL;DR:
Community= =
Building = =



The next server I'll review was where I played before CommunityCraft,
Neocraft
Server Owner: NeoBenedict
24/7? Yes(ish)

Coming into fruition around the same time as the NeonShift (ChunkError, other names, w/e) server, Neocraft has a relatively small community compared to Neonshift, but there are usually 5+ players online. I personally feel that early on map losses steered people away from the server, but that doesn't appear to be a problem anymore. The only problem I DO see is Benedict 's "24/7" server, seems to have an abundance of down time.
The community on this server is nice. They gave me a tour, unlike Neonshift (CommunityCraft members almost always offer tours to new members). Unfortunately, I was disappointed with what I saw. There seemed to be some amount of grief, and looking on the server thread I have seen many complaints about just this, which is a deterrent to a server. The average level of building also seemed to be lower than CommunityCraft and NeonShift. The player I definitely considered their best builder, Ajax , quit the server fairly recently, and shared these same views in a brief visit to CommunityCraft.
The staff of this server is fairly well run. The iConomy plugin is in place, allowing players to buy items from Mods+ (or donors) that have /give, allowing for easier construction, and they generally try to help where possible. The only reason I refrain from saying WELL RUN, is that there is griefing from time to time.
TL;DR:
Community= +
Building = -



Lastly is the server I jumped on for the first time today,
NeonShift
Owner: Chekkaa
24/7? Yes

About the same in age as Neocraft, the NeonShift server has a much larger community, averaging 10+ players at any given time. Given, not all of their community is from Neoseeker, that probably explains a lot of that.
I haven't heard anything in their thread about large downtimes or excessive grief, so I take it (from my brief visit) that their staff is properly organized. Unfortunately, they are staffing what is easily the rudest of the three communities. Again, I feel like a portion of this comes from their community not being solely Seekers. I was not offered a tour by any of the 16 players when I joined, nor was I given one even when I asked, and asked again, and even expressed a little bit of discontent.
The server definitely has the highest standard of building, albeit nothing was jaw-dropping, and some of the builders from my own CommunityCraft are just as talented as NeonShift's builders (, just smaller in number).
The community left a bad taste in my mouth (be mature, please), and my visit to this server was short, but I think I got what I needed out of my stay.

A personal complaint with NeonShift is that you must walk 500 blocks from spawn in order to first be able to build. A bit excessive, imo.
TL;DR:
Building = +
Community= -

Please share your opinions on any or each of the three Neoseeker servers, or agree/disagree with my own.

I'd like to say a few things.

1. I have been running my server since October, I just didn't post it on Neoseeker for several months. It's actually been around a lot longer than Neocraft, afaik.

2. I have not visited the other servers, so I wouldn't know if I have the rudest community, but being a very public server, it's much harder to accept every single new member in the community as soon as they join, since we get them so often. Once you have stayed a few hours/days, built some stuff, ranked up to builder, built up some trust, etc., the communities do start to become a bit more welcoming.

3. The large spawn radius is for 2 reasons: a) it helps prevent griefing by making the griefable buildings less accessible, and b) it needs to be large to hold all the creations (I copy a lot of good builds from around the server to the spawn area, and I made it large so I could fit more stuff in).

However, I do plan to abolish the 500 spawn radius soon in favor of a new system.

4. This is something that new players easily miss: the plugins. I'm not sure what exactly the other servers have, but I know that I have the following:

• A money system, with both a global shop and many user run chest based shops.
  
• Tree mods, which allow loads of extra items to be dropped, including apples, golden apples, ice, sponges, cocoa beans, slime balls, and many other rare or hard to find items (including leaf blocks, although you can get those pretty easily now in 1.7).
  
• Redstone mods which expand greatly upon current redstone functionality by allowing the use of ICs, or integrated circuits, which include everything from light sensors, water sensors, mob sensors, sensors for specific players or groups, gates, bridges, and more than I even know about.
  
• Easy chest/furnace/dispenser and door protection.
  
• The ability to protect areas on your own.
  
• Runecraft, which allows you to create magical structures that change the time, make hidden passages, power up your tools, fly, etc.
  
• An XP plugin that allows you to level up various abilities (such as mining or woodcutting) and gain new, powerful abilities (such as getting double ore drops, faster mining, breaking whole trees with a single ax swing, lighting enemies on fire with arrows, etc.).
  
• Even more stuff that I can't think of right now.

5. I'm sure if you had asked a specific member to give you a tour, you would have gotten one. Since the chat often moves relatively fast, many people only scan it for their name to see if it's anything that concerns them. General questions are often ignored because people are focused on other things. It's also possible that you just got unlucky and none of the more helpful and nice members were online.

6. The website. The very professional looking website.

ive only been to communitycraft.

and it is freaking awesome!

quote SwiftBlade

Yeah IMO this is completely pointless. No matter how much you claim you have no bias, you still will. We see Chekkaa over there advertising some stuff about his server, Manic Nirvana has decided to mention mostly positive things about the server he frequents. I'm pretty sure that if I gave my view I'd be arguing that NeoCraft is very good. And I could also give examples.

If you truly want to get a good review, get someone with no preference. But unfortunately, there are few.

Surely the fact he stays on one server suggests it is the best in his opinion? why spend most of your time on a server you dont like?

quote SwiftBlade

Dude that's what we call bias. Having preformed loyalties or preferences. He's spent a *bleep* load more time on Community Craft than on NeoCraft or NeonShift. An impartial reviewer could give you a completely unbiased review.

Sorry, I don't know what you read, but I insulted my own community's skill just as I did with Neocraft. Each review was around the same in length, and there were plenty of insults to CommunityCraft. Somewhat poor staffing, many dead hours, & an abundance of bad builders were my insults to my own server.

& thank you bionicle1995 , what you said basically just.. makes sense. It's true, I like CC more than the other two servers, and part of that IS because of the small community, but, as I said, most people take that as a negative.

quote Manic Nirvana

quote SwiftBlade

Dude that's what we call bias. Having preformed loyalties or preferences. He's spent a *bleep* load more time on Community Craft than on NeoCraft or NeonShift. An impartial reviewer could give you a completely unbiased review.

Sorry, I don't know what you read, but I insulted my own community's skill just as I did with Neocraft. Each review was around the same in length, and there were plenty of insults to CommunityCraft. Somewhat poor staffing, many dead hours, & an abundance of bad builders were my insults to my own server.

& thank you bionicle1995 , what you said basically just.. makes sense. It's true, I like CC more than the other two servers, and part of that IS because of the small community, but, as I said, most people take that as a negative.

Fair enough, I didn't properly read it I suppose. The point still stands though, if someone has taken a liking to something they're less likely to point out it's flaws.

quote Benedict

Server hasn't been down since I switched my host... you haven't been on it much i guess

I read the server thread pretty often. Has it not even been down for several hours here or there? If so, my apologies . There also seemed to be some problem when 1.7 came out.

i just randomly got banned on neocraft while punching a tree.

wtf!