P2W -

Pay To Win (P2W for short) is when a Game or a Server offers the player items, unobtainable things, kits, power-ups, potions, upgrades, power, mana, coins, in-game currency, special abilities, etc in return for real-world money.

For instance, a 50$ Rank on a Minecraft server might give you full diamond armor, money, potions, the ability to fly around, and other things that would otherwise be impossible to achieve or obtain by normal means.

All of these things have something in common - They give the player an advantage. This is clearly unfair, as this gives the people with money the ability to buy such ranks and items from the Server while others that are not wealthy or don't want to pay can not.

The server earns money, the wealthy players get an advantage, and it becomes unfair for the rest of the players.

Our servers do not have P2W

Renting -

Renting is a common practice that everyone knows about. The owner of the rented server pays the hoster a set amount of money weekly, monthly, or annually to have a server running. The problem with this lies within the practice itself. This practice nudges the owner into wanting to make money off of his/her server in order to pay the hoster - and usually the owner ends up making his server P2W in order to do so.

There are many other problems and disadvantages when it comes to renting such

• When the owner stops paying for the server, the server will go down and all the server files will be permanently deleted, leaving the players of the server with nothing - All the time, work, good moments, and etc the server provided are now gone permanently. Owners that are dedicated to running a server will often times host it themselves - ensuring themselves and the players that the server will be dedicated, stick around for a long time.
• Hosters who rent out servers only do so to make a profit, so of course the servers are overpriced. Furthermore, often times the machines are running old, outdated hardware and or software that is generations behind - and sometimes they don't even disclose what specific hardware they're using besides the most basic of details (IE, they may rip someone off by offering an "8 core" machine, but a 8 core CPU may be worse than a 4 core CPU).
• Another problem is that all and any problems caused by the hoster are impossible to fix by the owner of the rented server. Things such as power outage, storage methods, file corruption, file loss, physical harm to the server, replacing parts for better ones, and other things can not be handled by the owner whatsoever. However, when people host it themselves they have the full sovereignty and means over their own machine and can guarantee it's protection, safety, and decide what upgrades should or need to be done.
• Yet another problem is the owner of the rented server almost always has restricted or limited access to whatever the hoster allows them to do. The owner may not be able to modify some things about his server, or access all the files of the server - which can possibly prevent the owner from making his server run as smoothly or as efficiently as it could be.
• And of course, hosting on your own is a great personal experience for learning from the ground-up on how to create basic game-servers or any kinds of servers. Personally, for me, it was fun being behind the wheel for the first time trying to create and establish my first server.

Our servers are not rented, are dedicated, and won't be going anywhere anytime soon

Voting -

Voting websites are a very common practice in many servers (especially on games like Minecraft that lack a central server-browser)

This is a very unfair / flawed practice. Here's why

• Server Owners sign their server up on these websites in order to attract more players onto their server
• These vote websites have tons of advertisements on the sides of the page and etc. The website earns money from the advertisements the players see. Websites can also "reserve" spots on their front page to advertise servers for a price.
• Players vote on these websites by going onto the website and typing in their username or etc. In return for going on the website and dealing with the advertisements players are rewarded in-game with items, perks, ranks, unobtainable things, etc, etc.

• The reason this practice is flawed is because more than likely server owners will not attract any players onto their server with the site. The owners server is competing against 10,000 or more servers for a spot on the first or second page. Considering their "ranking" or "place" on the pages are determined by how many votes the server has small servers with few people that are trying to expand will have their server on the 500th page on the site - a page so far back nobody would ever see it
• Often times players need an incentive to vote, such as the reward. Servers that gauge and reward players insane loot, or make voting a core part of the server are the only servers that will be on the first few pages of the voting website. These servers are unfun, as I said, because usually they incorporate the voting as a core part of the gameplay. Those who do not vote on said servers, will suffer the consequences.
• This practice is also unfair/time-wasting, as many players have a hard time trying to open / vote on these websites. Remember, these websites are littered and full of image/video advertisements that take tons of processing power and internet resources. It is also incredibly annoying and a chore to go out and vote on these websites.
• And afterall, voting websites are simply full of flash, click-bait server advertisements and .gifs everywhere. A much better place to find servers is either through a central server-browser provided by the game, or using a good website like Reddit to find the most genuinely enjoyed servers, not servers that promise the biggest rewards for going on voting websites.

Our servers do not use voting websites

Poor Staff -

Some servers are full of abusive moderators or admins that have unnecessary commands or permissions, such as the ability to spawn in whatever they like such as cars, items, experience, currency, etc. These commands are abused by the staff to give themselves or people they like an edge and advantage over players.

Servers can still have poor staff even if they don't abuse in the aforementioned way. Some staff are simply straight-up plain ignorant, unhelpful, or rude. Some staff are completely discriminate towards certain types of people, whether if be over their gender, race, profile picture, online identity, etc. When I go to play on servers I expect relaxation and fun. I come to chill out. Yet this unnecessary drama is so common among a large chunk of servers

Our servers have tolerant, non discriminative staff that try to be helpful and active at all times.

Advertisements -

Some server owners will reward players on their servers for watching advertisements. This is like voting, except the owner is the one receiving the profits made off of the advertisements, and the goal is not to attract players, instead the goal is to make money. This practice is flawed / unfair, too.

• It is flawed because the whole goal of it is to earn money off of advertisements. Very little money is generated per advertisement (around 0.002$ per advert watched) so in the end the server owner is making virtually no profit when including everything regarding electricity costs, and etc. Even if there is a profit to be made not all of it is going to the owner, rather the service that offers the advertisements takes a percentage of it.
• It is unfair because more often than not the advertisements are videos, and are shown on poorly coded video players. This makes the advertisements take tons of processing power / internet resources, which in turn makes it incredibly hard to run or take lots of time to load. It's obviously annoying for the player to watch advertisements, especially waiting for them to load.

Our servers do not have such advertisements

Poor Hardware -

Hosting on poor / outdated hardware can increase latency, and will more than likely produce server lag. Nobody likes lag. This can also lead to slow server restarts, server inconsistencies, slow machine boot-up, longer times on doing server backups, and a higher chance for overall system failure.

I've seen a lot of servers run off of god awful outdated hardware like a laptop from the 2000's running DDR2 RAM

Our servers are running on the latest generations of hardware and software.