Recent events have made me believe that it is necessary that I further explain punishments and processes regarding advertisement. As rule 8 states, advertising anything is against the rules on both the forum and the server. What it however does not mention, is how advertisement is seen as a capital offence against the server. We have been known to unban people for xraying and even nodus if the unban appeal with believable and sincere enough to the point where admins were convinced said person felt truly sorry for what he/she had done and would not do it again. No one who has advertised has been unbanned ever. We feel that when someone advertises on MassiveCraft, they truly don’t have any good opinions or shed of loyalty left of MassiveCraft, and only remain on the server to better themselves at the expense of others. We do not insist on loyalty at all, after all players are welcome to move between servers. We actually encourage players to seek different experiences at other servers as MassiveCraft can only guarantee one particular experience out of many. We also hope said experiences can be brought back to MassiveCraft to improve our server. What mainly concerns us however is how some people stoop so low as to abuse and mistreat something we as the staff work hard for and give love to every day to further themselves.

To further clarify on advertisement, advertisement is counted as saying any IP or URL from a server in any chat channel or forum communication method. This means global, trade, help, faction, alliance, even private chat. You are free to advertise whatever you want on skype, email or any other service not related to MassiveCraft but if you use our work and our property to further your own, you will be denied access to it for eternity. It should come to little surprise that people who advertise will never be allowed back, as we believe they do not even want to come back for the server to play, but rather to advertise some more, or cause drama.

If you still do not understand why we take advertisement so seriously, I can give a practical example. Imagine yourself eating at McDonalds every day. At some point you decide their big Mac’s taste like paper and start your own fast food chain. You have a small amount of customers however, so some day you decide to walk into the nearest McDonalds with a megaphone and you start violently screaming how McDonalds sucks and how everyone should come eat at your restaurant.

Some people might get interested in your restaurant and come take a look out of curiosity. More people will think you are being a twat for forcing your opinion and fast food chain down their throat while they are eating at McDonalds. The McDonalds staff will feel offended and probably ban you from using any of the McDonalds establishments and probably call the police on you if not press charges (at least where I come from).

Now while I highlighted advertising for other servers, I should also highlight advertising for MassiveCraft. To keep this point short, I will simply say that we do not appreciate people advertising for MassiveCraft. You will only hurt the reputation of MassiveCraft and if we discover someone is actively advertising on other servers, we will take some form of punitive action, which might possibly include a server ban. We understand if players get aggravated by people going on MassiveCraft advertising for their own server, but as sharding comes closer and more people will join MassiveCraft, the chances that this will happen more often will increase. We request our player base to simply keep a vigilant eye and report any advertisers when they are caught, and to refrain from sinking to their level.

The last point I would like to address is staff members going to other servers insulting or advertising for MassiveCraft against people who advertise on MassiveCraft as some sort of retaliatory attack. If anyone sees this happening or knows about it from second hand, please do not wait a second to report it. We keep our staff to a certain standard and code of conduct and breaching this code of conduct is a serious offence against the staff code. We will take swift action if anything of the sort is discovered.

To summarize everything, advertising on MassiveCraft will result in a permanent ban without chance of repeal, whatever your motivation for the advertisement was. Advertising for MassiveCraft or attacking others because they bash MassiveCraft is unwanted. There is nothing to gain from attacking another server, you should instead focus internally improving yourself so that people will automatically hear good things about your server instead of taking the cheap and easy route of advertisement which will do more harm then good.

I hope I fully covered all subjects properly. If there are any further questions, feel free to post them below.