Let's Talk MCME Roadmap

[TotiGonzales]

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Hey everyone! As promised, we've been working on developing an official MCME roadmap for a while. We have a few updates to show you but we also realized that there are many different ways of approaching this and that maybe the community is looking for something else than what we thought. This is meant to be a discussion on the appropriate approach for the MCME Roadmap and which direction our current community could imagine MCME heading into in the future.

Before I dig in, a few ground rules I'd like to establish:

• Please be considerate of the different ways our many members experience MCME and what they view as important
• Take into account the resources available and stated community goal before proposing something
• Remember that most of us are only accompanying the MCME project for a short while relative to its current and future potential age, so personal dreams and wishes are welcome but have to be contextualized and analyzed in the grand scheme of things

Projects & Timelines - The Grind
The main subject of the timeline will be our building and development projects. While researching potential formats and layouts for the official MCME Roadmap we realized that there are multiple ways of approaching laying out the future of MCME. Here are the opinions we felt were best suited for our project:

1. Rolling Wave Relative Timeline: A 2-axis timeline layout with distances and detail being more exact closer to the present and becoming more vague and compressed further into the future. The benefits of this approach are that it's easy to set up, edit, and share with any spreadsheet application, easily expandable, and very flexible. Its drawbacks, as you can see below are clunkiness, a lack of information, only 2 axes, limited controls/automation and it can get messy if subprojects or different labels would also have to be displayed.
   
   Spoiler: WIP Roadmap Prototype (Updated Version)

   
2. Now, Next, Later: This approach groups all projects and tasks into 3 buckets. The "Now" bucket with all present projects and tasks at hand would be quite granular while the "Next" bucket would be near-term broader plans for the foreseeable future. Lastly, the "Later" bucket would contain more high-level long-term planning. The benefits of this approach would be its simplicity and granularity. As for drawbacks, this approach would be harder to set up and manage in a spreadsheet and would probably require specialized software as well not including a timeline view or a way to show dependencies.
   
   Spoiler: Example Now, Next, Later Roadmap

   
3. Treebeard: With this approach, we would be putting the relationships and dependencies between our projects in the foreground. A tree map usually branches out from a central point but with multiple projects running parallelly multiple trees are possible. Benefits: easy to plan new projects and subprojects as well as related or linked projects and integrate them within the wider web of the project structure. Great overview! Drawbacks: Very complex without the help of a specialized tool. Can get very messy with many projects and subprojects being added. The timeline view is possible but could be even messier depending on the level of granularity.
   
   Spoiler: Example Tree Roadmap

   

Even tho we have developed the rolling wave timeline layout to some extent already, I would like to ask you to take the other layout options equally into consideration. With roadmaps, there is no one size fits all so weighing the benefits and drawbacks based on our priorities should help us make a decision. We are not only trying to decide on the layout but also on the way we would like to approach future planning. I can understand if that feels quite overwhelming with all the different variables that come into play on MCME. I think the expectation shouldn't be to have a perfect plan that would never have to be adjusted but rather to lay out a plan that makes sense and that everybody can follow.

The prototype roadmap does not offer much concrete information on which projects feed into each other and what subprojects, larger plans like the Hobbit Path will have. With soon 14 years of cumulated experience in project planning and management, I think we would even be able to lay out a concrete, step-by-step plan to guide the community to map completion. While that would come with its own challenges, we would definitely be interested in your thoughts on it.

So we are looking for feedback in these areas:

• Granularity: How in-depth does the community want us to portray each project and subproject?
• Time Scale: With actual project timelines being hard to pin down on MCME, how should we approach the aspect of time in our roadmap?
• Order & Prioritization: The prototype roadmap lays out the rough direction the community is currently heading in. While the priorities will definitely be the paths of the protagonists from both The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, we are open to suggestions on which other projects should run parallelly.
• Relations: Many of our past and potential future projects seem to develop certain relations with other ongoing projects. How closely should we map these?
• Importance: How integral do we want the Roadmap to be in every decision we have to make on MCME?
• Foresight: We have not talked about the end game of the MCME project much yet but in regards to building, how far out should we extend our planning and would we want to set a "Completion" point?

Recreation & Reward - The Motivation
While working on the Prototype Roadmap (see above) I also realized that the way we are mapping MCMEs future right now is very project-driven. Don't get me wrong, this section is not meant to downplay the importance of the task and goal at hand nor advocate for any distractions that could hinder their progress. While trying to boost recruitment and retention over many years and even more initiatives, I observed that overall community morale and motivation is balanced by two factors primarily:

1. Build Progress: the persistent feeling of achievement
2. Community Building: what really keeps us around

Don't worry I'm not here to pitch a new, yearly Charity Stream. The idea is, however, that we could add events and collaborations to accompany our project completions and other milestones to the timeline. This would be an attempt to prevent builder- and by extension community-burnout. With our roadmap looking quite busy over an undiscernible amount of future time, I find it too easy to get bogged down in the grind. There have to be things we can collectively look forward to other than the completion of the current project just so we can start the next. Here are some proposed ideas:

• YouTuber tours
• Collaborations with other communities
• Large events
• Standalone maps
• Gameplay developments

Part of this should also be about your vision of the long-term opportunities for MCME. Having recently gone back through the founding forums threads and interviews from the time, I realized that there has always been an additional goal beyond just building Middle-Earth. We probably could continue building and revamping Middle-Earth for a very long time but is that what we really want? This may be our opportunity to lay down a game plan that will elevate our work to a new level and open the doors of our project to new audiences. A few years ago we shut down ideas for gamification of our map due to fears of becoming too distracted. This has been very tragic for some members of the community and very damaging to their motivation. As long as we keep our eyes set on our primary goal I don't see why we should discourage motivated members from enriching the MCME experience. So I would like to reopen the discussion in some new light and maybe we can even plan some type of vertical slice into our Roadmap to look forward to.

So we are looking for feedback in these areas:

• Milestones: the concept of accentuating certain points on our roadmap with special activities
• Collaborations: Who would you like to see join the server? What should we be showing them? How could MCME be introduced to new audiences?
• Gamification: How does the community currently feel about introducing some playable aspects of the Lotr story to our map? And how should that be included in future plans?
• Cadence: How often do we feel we would need to (or be able to ... depending) take a step back and enjoy the fruits of our labor for a bit before diving back in?

Finally, thanks to the help of @WieldableMars0 we managed to put together a proper MCME Progress Status page. Based on those statistics it looks like we achieved quite a considerable amount of work on our immediate goals. I think it's also obvious where the community got distracted with Gondor, around 2016, leaving progress on the path dormant for multiple years. My hope with the Roadmap is to provide such a thoughtout, comprehensive resource to our future members that it would be easier and more exciting for them to keep to a plan that steadily progresses the community towards its "final goal" rather than get distracted. I hope you liked this presentation and I would like to encourage you to contribute to this discussion! It will literally shape the future of MCME.

 

[JAN400]

Dear members of this amazing community (and maybe even future members, depending on who will actually read this comment at all),
there are a whole lot of questions in Totis report, so Id like to give some personal opinion on some of those.

Firstly: The format of the roadmap. Personally my favorite approach is the Rolling Wave Timeline, which is mostly because I dont think the other options are of much use and sense: The Now, Next, Later approach may give a lot of flexibility but it lacks proper planning and timelines and leaves zero options for interconnecting projects, whilst the Treebeard approach isnt really a solid build focused planning but more a general MCME planning. My prefered option would be BOTH:
One timeline for community, collaborations, great events, visions, ideas etc. in the form of the tree map like Toti gave us, and one timeline for building, like the rolling wave timeline. But to me, the builds, the artwork of that the server is, is more important, so if I really had to choose, id vote for the rolling wave.

Granularity: I prefer a simple and clear roadmap over one completly covered in crazy numbers and ideas. If possible, Id prefer an approach where you can click on the project name like a hyperlink and it sends you to a seperate project page, with all the information.

Time scale: I like the current idea on the Rolling Wave concept with greyed out start and end, giving us some flexibility when to start or end a project but leaving no room to move things further and further out.

Order and Prioritization: Gosh, thats a hard one... Personally Id say our current way of approaching things is good enough. LotR is definitly first place, but I dont see a problem with running Hobbit stuff in parallel as long as it doesnt hinder our progress on LotR builds. If the community decides to, id also be ok with some minor beleriand side projects for fun, again, as long as it doesnt hinder our main goal: Building middleearth.

Relations: Map them. It is important information.

Importance: It would be a shame to invest hours and hours into a roadmap and then ignore it. The road map is not forcing us to do anything, but it should be a very important asset on making decisions. If we suddenly find out that other areas are of more importance, we dont have to ignore the roadmap, we can simply change it. Nothing wrong with that from my point of view

Foresight: Face it: MCME will never be complete. It would be unwise to try and force some kind of end point into the road map or plan out future projects some 50 years into. Id rather say we call the Roadmap: MCME ROADMAP 2030. In 2030 we can make an MCME ROADMAP 2040 etc. We are all just silly human beings, we cant tell the future in 50 years, but having a nice guideline for the next 5-10 years would be already a very solid start.


Finally, I think its important to remember that we are no huge company of 10.000 full-time active people or huge network of experts. We are maybe about 100 more or less random human beings from all over the world, a collection of a bunch of nerds, connected by some zeros and ones on some screens. Everyone knows each other. Our community is not a company but a family. We dont have to force ourself to timescales, but if Papa Toti can give us some important tips for our future lives, we would all be very pleased

 

[TheStephen]

Thanks to all who've been involved in putting this together, it's great to see this being worked on with a view to creating an overarching plan for MCME. Essay incoming...

• Granularity: How in-depth does the community want us to portray each project and subproject?
  I'd say this very much depends on the individual project. One of the great things about MCME is having detailed non-canon locations as well as the main story locations. A new Adventurer said to me yesterday that it was nice that we'd included Bill Ferny's house in Bree as they were passing though, so I think including as much as we can, with the resources we have, is important. However, it's also important that we don't spend too long getting bogged down in one location as this gives the impression that overall progress is stalling. Which leads me onto the next point about time.
  
  
• Time Scale: With actual project timelines being hard to pin down on MCME, how should we approach the aspect of time in our roadmap?
  Deadlines. Anyone who's talked to me knows I favour deadlines (probably a side effect of having been a teacher). I'm still a believer that if you plan your project area carefully enough, you can give reasonably accurate deadlines and estimated times for completion. From what I've seen, some builders have already started doing this, but I'd expect plans to include: 1. time for planning and revisions to these, 2. time for terrain development, 3. time for building conceptual design, 4. time for review by team/staff, 5. time for building the structures in the project, 6. time for review and quality control and 7. time for burnout/breaks/real life happening. Sure, if you go slightly over your deadline, then it's not the end of the world. If you're a year over your deadline, then something's probably gone pretty wrong.
  Focusing on the Roadmap itself: I'd probably approach this with a view to having clear goals for the next few years. E.g I'd expect most of the existing projects to finish in 2024.
  
  
• Order & Prioritization: The prototype roadmap lays out the rough direction the community is currently heading in. While the priorities will definitely be the paths of the protagonists from both The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, we are open to suggestions on which other projects should run parallelly.
  My view on this is largely determined by the need for new terrain development, as this seems the limiting factor given we have so few people capable of using World Machine. So I would have the following:
  - Terrain development roadmap
  - Building projects roadmap - texture development is directly a result of the order of building project order. E.g. if Udun is planned for Mid 2024, then textures get developed early 2024.
  I know this has been discussed, but I'll reiterate: until such a time comes when we have more builders, I think that when current projects are completed, builders should move over onto existing projects and help finish those before new things are started. I know things have been a bit messy over the past few years with certain things like Emyn Muil being stuck in limbo, or people waiting for Forest Update, but that backlog seems to be clearing now. So I'd say condensing things from now is probably more achieveable. As a very simplistic overview, something like this map below where Phase 1 is everything going on now, and Phase 2 are potential next areas (these are just examples):
  
  
  
  There's also the issue of revamps: we need to balance this out with new stuff, and plan to update the oldest areas as we build the new areas. Favouring one, or the other, is probably not the best balance we can achieve.
  
  
• Relations: Many of our past and potential future projects seem to develop certain relations with other ongoing projects. How closely should we map these?
  This is what I call the "slippery slope". Projects need boundaries that need to be adhered to. One of the reasons projects seem to drag on longer than they should is because areas get added to projects beyond what was originally planned. That being said, there needs to be some form of holistic overview (particularly for terrain) so that projects can mesh together properly in terms of style etc.
  
  
• Importance: How integral do we want the Roadmap to be in every decision we have to make on MCME?
  If you're going to make a plan, and not stick to it, then you might as well not bother having a plan. If there's a bad plan, then you'll not have projects complement each other (i.e one being terrain, another being building etc) and then end up with a rather chaotic approach that causes problems in the long term. The roadmap needs to be rigid enough to provide structure for everyone, but flexible enough to account for life happening, because life throws curveballs at us. Take the time to make the Roadmap sustainable. The roadmap isn't just important for team/staff, it gives the wider community a sense of how things are going to happen, when they can expect things (approximately) etc.
  
  
• Foresight: We have not talked about the end game of the MCME project much yet but in regards to building, how far out should we extend our planning and would we want to set a "Completion" point?
  My view would be to map out the general order in which everything should happen, but only assign a quantitative timeframe for the foreseeable future (3-4 years).
  Here I think it would also be worth having some form of protocol with regards to how revamps are approached. Yes people need to be willing to do projects, but if people only ever do the areas they want, the undesireable areas will pretty much remain undesireable forever.
  
  
• Milestones: the concept of accentuating certain points on our roadmap with special activities
  If planning is done well, you'll automatically have milestones happen at periodic intervals. Again, if you make sure there's a variety of projects, you'll get a variety of milestones to celebrate. This needs to be in the form of regular project completions as it gives the sense of MCME progressing. Again, deadlines and time management will help this happen.
  
• Collaborations: Who would you like to see join the server? What should we be showing them? How could MCME be introduced to new audiences?
  People who benefit our community. Whether that's builders, Tolkien enthusiasts, people who can run activities etc.
  We need to have regular social media (Instagram, Youtube, Tiktok) updates. I've had 2 videos of ours on Instagram hosted by Tolkien-related pages that have had 69k and 100k+ views this last week. There's definitely an audience on there for us. As long as we signpost on our posts how to get on MCME or our discord that should be fine. The trick is retaining them once we get them onto MCME. New Player world will help a lot with this.
  
  
• Gamification: How does the community currently feel about introducing some playable aspects of the Lotr story to our map? And how should that be included in future plans?
  I think this would be nice if we had the capacity to do it. At the moment I don't feel we do. Adding the NPCs to the Fellowship path that were used in the charity stream would be great, and add an element of interaction for players, but this needs to be possible across the map.
  
  
• Cadence: How often do we feel we would need to (or be able to ... depending) take a step back and enjoy the fruits of our labor for a bit before diving back in?
  If planning is done right, people will get breaks from running projects or building. I'd definitely avoid having very little runnning. Having events running for project completions or celebrating events is pretty important.

 

[Wyattrox03]

Could we have some clarification about the purpose of this roadmap?


Is it just for explaining to the community what we are currently working on, or is it more about dictating to team what we will be working on in the future? Or is it a historical document? The purpose of this thread seems to be more about formatting but I want to know what its function is.

Historically I've been opposed to initiatives where projects are decided by the people not working on it because its a lot to ask for a project lead to hitch their horse to a project wagon of a year or more, that they are not themselves super interested in, as I've explained in previous threads of this nature. But I wanted to ask first to see how authoritative this proposal is meant to be, before continuing further.

 

[TotiGonzales]

Could we have some clarification about the purpose of this roadmap?


Is it just for explaining to the community what we are currently working on, or is it more about dictating to team what we will be working on in the future? Or is it a historical document? The purpose of this thread seems to be more about formatting but I want to know what its function is.

Historically I've been opposed to initiatives where projects are decided by the people not working on it because its a lot to ask for a project lead to hitch their horse to a project wagon of a year or more, that they are not themselves super interested in, as I've explained in previous threads of this nature. But I wanted to ask first to see how authoritative this proposal is meant to be, before continuing further.

If you listen carefully you may be able to hear the letters read to you that this is a thread to discuss what the roadmap should be to MCME and how to display that. At no point was there talk about project planning or decision making nor enforcing a strict plan onto our builders. The creating the roadmap part comes once we decide what it should be. The image I shared obviously says "WIP" and "Prototype" tho I'm still sorry if the way laid out some of the projects gave you palpitations.

I don't really have to create a roadmap tbh. This is not what I want to be doing for MCME rn. I thought that's what the community would like. Seems that interest is not really all that high tho. I'm down to shelf the idea for good especially if it makes you guys feel uncomfortable.

 

[Wyattrox03]

If you listen carefully you may be able to hear the letters read to you that this is a thread to discuss what the roadmap should be to MCME and how to display that. At no point was there talk about project planning or decision making nor enforcing a strict plan onto our builders. The creating the roadmap part comes once we decide what it should be. The image I shared obviously says "WIP" and "Prototype" tho I'm still sorry if the way laid out some of the projects gave you palpitations.

I don't really have to create a roadmap tbh. This is not what I want to be doing for MCME rn. I thought that's what the community would like. Seems that interest is not really all that high tho. I'm down to shelf the idea for good especially if it makes you guys feel uncomfortable.

Ok, then I misunderstood the purpose of this project, my bad. Thank you for clarifying.

 

[Top_Gun]

I'm just a random Tolkien nerd who stumbled across the project many years ago, and up until a few weeks back I hadn't even opened Minecraft for 2 or 3 years, so take my opinion for the very little that it's worth. But it's encouraging to see this emphasis being placed on creating a more formal public roadmap going forward, because I think that kind of focused effort is invaluable for a project of this scale, and it can help create and sustain enthusiasm for the work being done.

When I was last on the server regularly, maybe 3 or 4 years ago, I remember it being a really exciting time. Gondor had pretty much just been completely finished, and new Moria was well underway, and hype was building for what seemed like an imminent start to the holy grail project, Mordor. Then I kept reading the project updates, and I kept seeing new revamps announced for random Gondorian cities, or the Pelennor Fields, or Moria West Gate, and I always had the same reaction: "Wait...why are those areas getting revisited? They were just finished, weren't they?" I'm sure there were good reasons for those projects happening, and they certainly don't need to be justified to a random person who's not involved with the actual building, but it sapped a lot of my enthusiasm for coming on to the server, and I drifted away for a while and just hung out in the lore channel on Discord. I only popped back in when I saw Credoo looking for help stress-testing the Barad-dur concept, because that was finally something brand-new and exciting.

Another example comes to mind from much earlier. I remember being on the server during and soon after the Hobbit films released, and pretty much every new member asked the same two questions in chat: "Is Mordor done?" and "Is Erebor done?" Obviously the former is a much more extensive project, but the latter felt like it was a huge missed opportunity to capitalize on the renewed interest generated by those films and create something for new members to latch onto. Of course can't just snap your fingers and make a big project like that happen overnight, but if there had been a decision to shift some work to Hobbit-specific locations, that might have been a good move. I bring these two cases up because I think they're examples of situations where a more formalized roadmap could have benefited the server.

More generally, I think the best sort of roadmap for a community like this is one that's reasonably detailed, yet also flexible. I think there's good value in prioritizing certain projects over others, particularly the "main" locations along the path of the Fellowship and/or Bilbo that most visitors to the server will want to see. And as you said, given how certain projects naturally overlap with others, it's good to lay out coordination across a region. Where I think the flexibility comes in is in terms of timescales. It's fine to say, "We'd like project X to be completed by mid-2024," but that comes with the caveat that this is a fully-volunteer server where people work in their spare time for fun. Life happens, people are busy, and sometimes goals slip a bit, but that's okay. I think it's a good idea to limit the number of concurrent projects to a sane level, to avoid stretching everyone too thin. And if possible, I think it's best to hold off on any more major revamps at least until the major canon locations have been fleshed out. The phrase "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good" comes to mind, and I think it's better to have the entire Fellowship path complete than to keep refining one part of it while another hasn't even been started.

As far as the format goes, I know next to nothing about graphical design, but that rolling wave looks good to me.

 

[greencaver]

If you listen carefully you may be able to hear the letters read to you that this is a thread to discuss what the roadmap should be to MCME and how to display that. At no point was there talk about project planning or decision making nor enforcing a strict plan onto our builders. The creating the roadmap part comes once we decide what it should be. The image I shared obviously says "WIP" and "Prototype" tho I'm still sorry if the way laid out some of the projects gave you palpitations.

I don't really have to create a roadmap tbh. This is not what I want to be doing for MCME rn. I thought that's what the community would like. Seems that interest is not really all that high tho. I'm down to shelf the idea for good especially if it makes you guys feel uncomfortable.

Grand Master Toti, I must say that I am extremely intrigued by this fresh development to the wonderful Minecraft Middle Earth! I think that it is an important project to pursue! Even though there have only been a few replies, the original post received 18 likes and many members of the server don't often voice their opinions on projects such as this, because they do not have a strong preference for what happens, or they don't have the time to answer all of the questions posted in the original thread. However, I believe that a very large portion of the community is interested in an MCME Roadmap, no matter what the format is. Thus, I must implore you to continue this initiative and bring something to MCME that will almost certainly qualm the feeling of distress that envelopes many people when they hear that a new revamp is beginning! If you personally feel reluctant to focus on this project and would rather spend your limited free time on other components of the server, I am confident that there are other community members who would have the desire to at least coalesce everyone's opinions and create a plan for what format roadmap should utilize. I thank you for your hard work and dedication to this server, and there will be no judgement for whatever decision you decide to make.

I think it would be cool to have a general roadmap using the "Treebeard" style, which would cover all of the general parts of the server. On top of this , there should be a "Building Focused" roadmap that goes more in-depth regarding the Building aspect of the server, and it would be best to use the "Rolling Wave" style for that.

• Granularity: I think that all projects and sub-projects should be portrayed with as much detail as possible, because it seems silly to me that a project should take a year to build and look garbage compared to another project that only took a few supplemental months to build. The better and more detailed a project is, the longer it will be until that location requires a revamp. Having as much detail as possible makes the world realistic and more fun to explore, because everything has a story. While I'm not a Builder, I can safely assume that, up to date, Builders have been following this method and it has been working quite well, even though projects take quite a bit of time to complete.
• Time Scale: Having a sort of "gray zone", like the ones portrayed in the first roadmap example, would be effective when attempting to display that projects may not finish on time. Additionally, having some sort of "soft start/finish time" that expresses when we "want" projects to be started and finished is important.
• Order & Prioritization: I think that, as you said, the fellowship and hobbit paths should be prioritized. The prioritization after that should certainly follow the desires of the Builders and what they want to build, because the locations outside of the fellowship path are proportionally unpopular and there will be few people wondering if, for example, the tomb of that one Silmarillion character's cousin's great grandfather's fourty-second sheep is on the server, but if a builder wants to build said tomb they should be able to. However, there should definitely be a focus in areas that are listed in the timeline as an upcoming project, and Builder's should try their best to look at the possible project options given to them by the timeline and choose their favorite from those options, rather than pick a random area.
• Relations: I'm not sure if you're refering to the physical proximity that different projects have to each other and how they connect to old projects and new projects in... peculiar ways or if you're refering to the fact that many projects often lead into new projects next to them, but I think that Stephen made a good point about the terrain and how that is one of the largest factors that prevent newer and older areas from connecting to each other in fluent manner. There should definitely be hard boundaries specifying where one project ends and another one starts, and efforts outside of said area should be limited unless a new project is officially started.
• Importance: The Roadmap should be followed as close as possible, and people should only be allowed to stray from the timeline in very special cases, or if they despise all options given to them by the roadmap. To avoid instances like this, older locations of varying styles should recieve regular revamps, and there should be a variety of ongoing new projects in the roadmap. However, the Builders should not be required to build things that they do not want to build, because that becomes unproductive and enraging for the people involved, so, if this situation arises, an adequate solution would have to be made.
• Foresight: It would be beneficial for the planning to cover 5-7 years into the future, with emphasis on the fact that the further out the plans are, the likelier it is that those plans will change. This would give people an idea of what the server is planning to pursue, which may keep them excited about server progress and resultantly encourage them to apply for artist.

• Milestones: The completion of any project could be a "minor milestone", while the completion of whole regions should be considered "major milestones". This would be translated to other parts of the server as well, such as texturing goals, music plans, and social media follower milestones. Milestones could be celebrated with special events, such as scenic/lore tours or minigames in the newly finished areas, and larger milestones could have bigger events.
• Collaborations: I want as many people as possible to join the server and experience the effort that the Builders of MCME have exerted over the past 13 years. We should focus on showing them the newest locations as well as the most iconic and popular locations that make almost everyone think of lord of the rings. New players should also be able to see the prosperous community that has grown around the server, and its family friendly regulations. Social media is the primary way for new audiences to be exposed to MCME, as well as hosting popular youtubers on the server and gaining attention in the minecraft community by posting our cool builds in different building communities. However, having the capability to retain new players is what's most important.
• Gamification: I strongly support the implementation of some sort of LotR and Hobbit storyline onto the map, simply because it would add an additional level of immersion and corporeality to the map that would increase the active playerbase and bring more cool people to the community. I have personally been interested in pursuing this goal, particularly through NPC models, because NPCs are the most important step in making the server more intriguing. It has been stated that Eriol's NPC script can run NPCs client-side so that they do not put stress on the server, and it allows for players to limit the number of NPCs they can see if they have a weak computer. Thus, I plan to begin my work on this project after the Mordor RP is released. In conclusion, the gamification of the server is extraordinarily important to its long term success.
• Cadence: I think that this depends on each individual person. Some people may want to dive back into things right away, while others will want to take extended breaks.

#futureofmcme