I first discovered this server around 2015 due to the popularity of EggWars and Money Walls (a now removed minigame) on YouTube, and the first time I saw the player count, my jaw dropped at the 12,000 players online. I played both EggWars and Money Walls very often back then, and was sad to see when Money Walls was removed the same day that a lobby redesign was released. I still stayed for EggWars and Tower Defense, though. As I got older, I found myself busier with life, and slowly strayed away from Minecraft servers. Over the last few days, though, I decided to come back and try reliving the nostalgia of EggWars, but what is left is just a shell of what used to be. (Not to mention the fact that Tower Defense is gone entirely)
First off, the custom shop setup is difficult to navigate at first, and even after getting used to it, still takes a while to get what you want. The only upsides to it are the favorite items at the bottom and the ability to buy full armor sets quickly. The new costs for generator upgrades feel wonky compared to before, and the fact that a maxed diamond generator is 33% slower than they used to be is rather annoying, especially considering that the playerbase had very often asked for a level 4 diamond generator back in the heyday of EggWars, and we essentially got the opposite. I do enjoy how generators now show resources being split between two players better, though. One more very annoying thing about EggWars is the fact that almost every single game gets flooded with ranked players, and they ALWAYS vote for OP items and Half health, and some of them get mad when you vote for something else. There is no more variety in the games because of this. Ultra Hardcore is so sad now, as well. I voted for it today and luckily there was only one other Diamond rank in the game, and I won the 50/50 chance. Not only were the prices for items decreased compared to before (a wood sword used to cost 32 iron and a stone sword 16 gold, and now you could get a stone one for 20 iron, and a full leather armor set is now 10 iron when it used to be I think 32 per piece), but over half the players just left the game when they saw it was hardcore items, and I only had to take out one person to win.
Another very sad aspect of the server now is how ranks work. There used to be 6 ranks: Iron, Lapiz, Gold, Diamond, Emerald, and Obsidian, and each of these could be obtained by a one-time purchase. I have also heard a bit about CubeCraft Plus, which was a subscription that functioned as a sort of add-on for your rank. I was already a bit iffy on that, but looking at the store now is just flat out sad. All ranks are now subscription only, but I guess I got to keep my Diamond rank in-game because I bought it before this change happened. I wonder what happened to people with the ranks that got removed (Lapiz, Gold, Emerald), did they get an upgrade, a downgrade, or even get to keep their rank at all?
Also, whatever anticheat is currently in place is definitely not an effective one. I used to barely ever see hackers, but for (at least) two games in a row, there was a player who got away with very blatant bhopping and kill aura. Reporting is hard since they're so limited (even iron rank only gets 6 per day???) and you can be auto-warped out of a game while trying to report someone, in which case you can no longer do so, even if you type in their username. There's also no option to report someone for bhopping, either.
I understand that the server is struggling with a low player count, but there needs to be an option for one-time purchases for something, since I can say from experience that while convincing parents to buy a one-time rank for a Minecraft server is difficult, it's a piece of cake in comparison to getting them to pay a monthly subscription for one. Also, it doesn't help that you advertise Diamond rank as the "best value" instead of the more expensive Obsidian rank. That probably explains why my EggWars games got flooded with Diamond rank players who always voted for the same things. It wouldn't hurt to take a page out of Hypixel's playbook and show the rank of a player every time they send something in chat, either. Currently, there's just colored chat for that, but almost nobody even uses that.
I believe that the CubeCraft playerbase is so low now mostly because the hype of EggWars is dead, which was the one game that drove the growth the most, and the admin team did a suboptimal job at keeping players in the server. Because of this, all those former EggWars players simply migrated to Hypixel BedWars. I believe a way player retention could be increased would be to allow non-ranked players to vote for items and health, but give ranked players higher multipliers like 4x or 5x just so that one ranked player cannot dictate how a whole game will go. What EggWars needs is a way to stand out against BedWars that makes people want to play EggWars over BedWars, and this would help with that. Additionally, allowing anyone unlimited uses of /report to report rule breakers would be useful at the moment, as well. Since the player count is low on Java, this should be far more feasible than it was before. However, the best way to get more players in would be to sponsor current YouTubers to play EggWars, and remove the games that consistently have 0 players. Even if the growth is slow, that's better than fast growth in the long run since it's much more sustainable. I have great memories with this server, and I'm sad to see how far it has fallen.
First off, the custom shop setup is difficult to navigate at first, and even after getting used to it, still takes a while to get what you want. The only upsides to it are the favorite items at the bottom and the ability to buy full armor sets quickly. The new costs for generator upgrades feel wonky compared to before, and the fact that a maxed diamond generator is 33% slower than they used to be is rather annoying, especially considering that the playerbase had very often asked for a level 4 diamond generator back in the heyday of EggWars, and we essentially got the opposite. I do enjoy how generators now show resources being split between two players better, though. One more very annoying thing about EggWars is the fact that almost every single game gets flooded with ranked players, and they ALWAYS vote for OP items and Half health, and some of them get mad when you vote for something else. There is no more variety in the games because of this. Ultra Hardcore is so sad now, as well. I voted for it today and luckily there was only one other Diamond rank in the game, and I won the 50/50 chance. Not only were the prices for items decreased compared to before (a wood sword used to cost 32 iron and a stone sword 16 gold, and now you could get a stone one for 20 iron, and a full leather armor set is now 10 iron when it used to be I think 32 per piece), but over half the players just left the game when they saw it was hardcore items, and I only had to take out one person to win.
Another very sad aspect of the server now is how ranks work. There used to be 6 ranks: Iron, Lapiz, Gold, Diamond, Emerald, and Obsidian, and each of these could be obtained by a one-time purchase. I have also heard a bit about CubeCraft Plus, which was a subscription that functioned as a sort of add-on for your rank. I was already a bit iffy on that, but looking at the store now is just flat out sad. All ranks are now subscription only, but I guess I got to keep my Diamond rank in-game because I bought it before this change happened. I wonder what happened to people with the ranks that got removed (Lapiz, Gold, Emerald), did they get an upgrade, a downgrade, or even get to keep their rank at all?
Also, whatever anticheat is currently in place is definitely not an effective one. I used to barely ever see hackers, but for (at least) two games in a row, there was a player who got away with very blatant bhopping and kill aura. Reporting is hard since they're so limited (even iron rank only gets 6 per day???) and you can be auto-warped out of a game while trying to report someone, in which case you can no longer do so, even if you type in their username. There's also no option to report someone for bhopping, either.
I understand that the server is struggling with a low player count, but there needs to be an option for one-time purchases for something, since I can say from experience that while convincing parents to buy a one-time rank for a Minecraft server is difficult, it's a piece of cake in comparison to getting them to pay a monthly subscription for one. Also, it doesn't help that you advertise Diamond rank as the "best value" instead of the more expensive Obsidian rank. That probably explains why my EggWars games got flooded with Diamond rank players who always voted for the same things. It wouldn't hurt to take a page out of Hypixel's playbook and show the rank of a player every time they send something in chat, either. Currently, there's just colored chat for that, but almost nobody even uses that.
I believe that the CubeCraft playerbase is so low now mostly because the hype of EggWars is dead, which was the one game that drove the growth the most, and the admin team did a suboptimal job at keeping players in the server. Because of this, all those former EggWars players simply migrated to Hypixel BedWars. I believe a way player retention could be increased would be to allow non-ranked players to vote for items and health, but give ranked players higher multipliers like 4x or 5x just so that one ranked player cannot dictate how a whole game will go. What EggWars needs is a way to stand out against BedWars that makes people want to play EggWars over BedWars, and this would help with that. Additionally, allowing anyone unlimited uses of /report to report rule breakers would be useful at the moment, as well. Since the player count is low on Java, this should be far more feasible than it was before. However, the best way to get more players in would be to sponsor current YouTubers to play EggWars, and remove the games that consistently have 0 players. Even if the growth is slow, that's better than fast growth in the long run since it's much more sustainable. I have great memories with this server, and I'm sad to see how far it has fallen.
