That’s true. On my server, they even hosted their own building contests (with rewards). What did they do on your server?
PVP contest, Faction war, raids… many of them, even just item raffle.
So awesome, I miss it.
Server ownership can be a blast, but it can also be very stressful. I think anybody who runs a server for more than 6 months deserves an award for being responsible, disciplined, and selfless. 
Big thanks to all of you who step up to the task and make great multiplayer experiences possible! I probably wouldn’t be the Minecraft addict and plugin developer I am today had it not been for a random friend-of-a-friend hosting a small server for his friends, where I saw first-hand how great Minecraft multiplayer can be.
At one point in my server ownership experience, I was running four servers single-handedly:
- Semi-Vanilla Survival (+anti grief, anti cheat, anti crowding)
- Semi-Vanilla Creative (+anti grief, anti crowding)
- Tekkit Classic (many items disabled, +anti grief, anti crowding)
- Extra Hard Mode Survival (+pvp, anti grief, anti crowding)
The top one was up for 3 years, had lots of amazing builds built by players in survival mode. Here are two videos showcasing some of the best builds:
You might not believe this coming from the dev of these plugins, but I firmly believe GriefPrevention + PopulationDensity = hands-free server. Those combined made it possible for me to run four servers simultaneously without having to spend hours a day myself, or “hire” volunteers to help. Trusting a semi-stranger with administrative privileges on your server is in my opinion one of the scariest parts of server ownership. All it takes is one immature admin to ruin your server’s rep. Basically all I had to do was ban a chat troll here or there.
I think all plugin devs should run servers so they can use their own products like their customers would - that strategy has lead to many improvements in my plugins, and also helped me catch bugs before releasing new versions out to BukkitDev.
Anyway, it was great fun. I wish I hadn’t handed-off my servers to others, but my wife was about to have a baby so I played it safe with my free time commitments. I’m back in the game now - I recently restarted a new semi-vanilla survival server called BeardCraft, which I’m using to inspire improvements to GriefPrevention, PopulationDensity and AntiXRay.
Wish me luck!
[rant]
EDIT: Just a quick negative note - let me say that I also think anybody who runs a server which requires server list votes to play or rewards players with in-game items or currency for votes is shady. Also, charging money to get access to vanilla features like diamonds or respawns is ridiculous, and a real jerk move. It’s because of behaviors like these that Mojang was planning to start policing servers, and why once-helpful server list sites have devolved into cheating contests that result in players playing on the worst, most abusive servers looking for cash instead of those designed to make players happy.
[/rant]
Minecraft Multiplayer History
I started playing minecraft during 1.1 - I didn’t really start playing multiplayer until 1.3 ish. That’s when I joined a server called Fox Craft or something like that. Sortly after that I joined a server called The Xaldin Edge, which changed names to XeGaming when it changed hands. Sometime during one of the larger updates I found another server called CobbleForest. I also started experimenting with PvP servers but didn’t enjoy my experience very much.
I started hosting a vanilla server for me and a few friends via Hamachi around 1.4.5 - at 1.5 I started with a Bukkit server with a few plugins. I named it PirateGaming (idk why really), it was primarily a survival server.
Gamemode/Plugins
As for plugins I used PermissionsEx, WorldGuard, WorldEdit, LWC, CraftBook, and a few others I can’t remember.
Advertising
Word of mouth during lunch at school, where I’d throw it up over the LAN (school admin weren’t too pleased about this).
Rent/Slots
It was free as I hosted it on my computer, it was relatively lag free because I had a fair amount of RAM. When I ran it over LAN it had 20 slots, when it was over Hamachi it was like 6.
Ranks
New spawn players were “guests” who had no rights, all they could do is walk around and chat. Everybody else was a “builder” with basic plugin access. I had 2 close friends admin for the lunch sessions, which was primarily kick/mute/ban plus the usual permissions. I was the only OP which I gave the title of “owner”. I had all the power, but was extremely fair (at least I felt that I was).
Community
Not much of one to speak of…
Shutdown
Me and my friends lost interest like 2012-2013 ish.
Reboot?
Publicly? Doubt it. I really just use my Bukkit server with WE to build epic/ridiculous things.
Yes, I know your GriefPrevention plugin (learned a lot of stuff reading your code). I used it on my creative server for a while, later I replaced it with a custom plot-plugin. The problem was that players created many small protected regions, and it was hard to remove something made of 15 regions. Also, there were many empty gaps between claimed regions.
Your plugin is great for survival, one of the best I’ve ever seen.
Just one question: It says that your server is “for adults”? I experienced that most Minecraft players are little kids, how do you keep them out?
Lol maybe ask them a Calculus question when they first join 
Or more simply have them write out a paragraph. Phrasing varies among ages.
I’m not one for big long winded posts because my typing normally hurts eyes and brains. so I will keep this shortish.
I have hosted servers since before hmod. its been an off and on this mostly starting because friends wanted to play and stopping due to a lack of funds or no intrest.
my server hosting highlight would have to be working with guudebolderfist and docm77 and many many other talented people on the first mindcrack public server. ( the one that was up for like a week and a half then shut down. )
My place in all that was head plugin config as such I had what you would expect full stop /start of the 4 500 slot boxes
only 2 were ever online one main and one as a dev. The server was struggling for nearly a week with what every one was saying was a memory leak from a plugin over the week i replaced swapped out and eliminated pluging by plugin to no result at stopping the server crashing every 90 min ( yes the server was crashing that fast because it was FULL ALL the time. even took down mojangs login servers at one point. ) After about 4 days the server host is like derp in the group skype chat we had running and is all like i didnt have any garbage collection running. on the server. Once that was turned on we had 6 hours uptime with no reboot.
however during all the changes I made to the plugins I had forgotten to put the mysql settings back in the config for worldguard and that was a huge mistake because we were using protection stones for landclaim ( saves using worldguard regions) any way the flat file saving made the file size explode because we had over 100k users login in just over 2 days.
with out realising it the host had left the default control panel enforced 10GB limit on the HDD and the control system deleted the region file containing all the land claims. that was the final blow to a horror show.
working with that many players around you is a real challenge this was back in 1.2.5 or something like that and you could still bump other players and push them around I found setting the spawn point impossible as new logins would keep moving me i was also stressed because i could not fix it.
INB4 the first guy on here calls me a liar i have video proof of at least being admin aka flying in creative. on my youtube channel and i still have both guude and docm77 on skype.
wow the part about friends is true. i met my best mates on my server they randomly joined and now we have been on real life vacations and the disneyland minecon with them . (and more)
We had a system where the Guest rank would spawn in a “rules dungeon” basically a door system with teleport XD"
a simple sign with a rule on it with question such as are you allowed to grief ? they could choose yes or no
if they had the wrong answer they would be teleported back to the beginning if they had all correct they could choose builder or survivor all automatically and no admin interaction required.
it kept alot of … dumb folk as we like to call them out… saved us so many headaches.
Actually I did that, but many adults had no clue, although it was a simple equation (like 2x + 3 = 9).
The equations were randomized (2 < x < 5).
Calculus is too easy, ask some differential equations problems, make em work for it
Dude, just no. 
Im an engineer, calc is pretty easy to me. Ask someone a problem involving differential equation modeling though… any kid will run screaming from that…
Yeah. I’ve got an intro textbook for differential equations, I can’t even make sense of the first chapter. I think you can stick with basic single var calculus modeling. It’s slightly harder than plain calculus but not impossible 
Then again… I know some liberal arts majors who struggle with the simplest calc problems. So sad. Most don’t even know the basics of derivatives. You would end up with a server full of pretty smart people though that would be interesting.
Might be a bit boring, smart people usually spend a lot of time planning and no time doing, or no time planning and get a terrible result. At least in Minecraft.
Exactly. Many of the great builders (and donators) on my server were also the ones who had problems with math 
Tensors - that will separate the wheat from the chaff.
It’s true I can’t be 100% sure who’s a kid and who’s not. First, I use Facebook/YouTube ads which serve only to 17+. Then, I label the server “for adults” in hopes that a few kids will bypass it. And finally, the real rule is “mature players only” - so kids can stay as long as they can act like adults. Also, players spawn in the wilderness just like single player, so no safe spawn area - that scares a few little kids off. So far, it’s working out very well - the server’s been up for weeks and there hasn’t been a “drama” incident yet. (crossed fingers!)
/deleteallclaims [player] ?
players had more than one project, so I can’t just delete all claims. But sometimes you want to delete single building, and many players did not understand how to resize claims, so they just added more