I was talking to a few members of Acer Natus on the town's discord and we said that we thought multiplayer survival is better with only 5-10 people. The thing is, people are bored. If you can buy several enchantment books, diamond armor, and diamond tools within an hour of playing, the challenge and fun of survival is gone. Farms are practically useless because the few that make them sell everything for ridiculously low prices. So, this is my proposal: When S10 ends, instead of 3-6 megasurvival servers, have, say, 25 10 people servers. People can group together or randomly get sorted into these worlds. Each could have a tree name and the survival events (Lunar New Year, Spleef, and such) happen at an area at spawn. Each server has a small shopping area and there would be no more spawn shops. End and shops would be immediately available to the members of the groups, though the stronghold would have to be found first. Staff could have access to all servers and all the same rules apply about chat and other things. Ferals who join mid-season can be presented with a menu of all 25 servers and choose one. Global chat would still work, so inter-server communication would still be possible. People in these servers are much less likely to be bored with WilderCraft because they would be either working together to form industrial districts, mega bases, and other things to get what they need or working alone to achieve what they previously wouldn't because they would have bought the things they needed instead of getting them manually. I believe that if people get bored with WilderCraft, they will quit, and if people quit, Wilder might lose the support it needs and go downhill fast, and none of us want that to happen, so I think that this is a viable solution.

1000 people or 10 people doesnt' matter to me. I'm still going to find my own challenges and build stuff. I personally don't enjoy the very early game, I'd rather have decent gear and people to help me find a jungle/ocean monument/spawner and to be able to build off it. It's much more interesting to be able to get some stuff from others and then to continue from there, at least to me.

Personally, I wouldn't play on a 10 person server. At that point, I'd just host my own and add on extra datapacks or something else, rather than having to go through wildercraft. I play wildercraft because I can get to the point where mega-builds are feasible without having to gather materials on my own for 72 hours. But that's the wonderful part, you can choose. Nothing forces you to use the shops or to trade. I've barely traded so far, and it's main for armor and basic enchantments that I could have gotten if I had decided to mine a bit more. But the raw mining for diamonds isn't the fun part for me. This next part is.

In short, forcing much smaller groupings takes away the choice of people with how they want to play. With a larger, integrated server, you can pick if you want to participate and take those benefits, or to challenge yourself. I'd rather have that choice. Those who are going to get bored are going to get bored regardless. It's up to them.

Gonna first say, theres good intentions behind this idea, its just not practical in any sense.

Bowman hit the nail on the head on a lot of my problems with this and another point to this is that it would kill the community we have, as for this to be feasible each world would have to be a separate inventory. This means that you are cutting the community into small chunks and making it so they will never have a reason to interact with each other. No one will go to a different world if it means completely starting again as between that and seasonal resets you would never get anything done. Then when people get bored cause people will towards an end of season or IRL takes importance then the world gets quiet and 1/2 people get left on their own. Doesn't matter if 100 people are still on elsewhere that world is empty and so they may just end up quitting for the rest of the season cause they're not gonna start again to only reset again in 3 months. Not to mention how unappealing it is to new players for there to be several abandoned worlds they may get randomly sorted into.

Spawn would also have to be a separate inventory if there even can be a spawn, it becomes impossible for staff to host events because either its another separate world and you put everyone in some form of creative mode cause again has to be separate inventory and people wont have food or anything, then theres ruby dragon again a seperate inventory and how do people get equipment. Build contests would have to either have supplies provided (which can limit creativity in regards to some build themes) or be run on each world which would be impossible for staff.

As you can see it very quickly becomes a huge complicated web of organisation and management that maybe *maybe* will increase the price of a beacon by a diamond or two or keep someone playing an extra week.

The older a server gets the lower value all items become regardless. As a server owner is rewarded by new players - new cash, voting is encouraged to promote the server and bring in those new players. Why do you think directly or indirectly Red's comments are focussed on the store and items within it?

Rewarding players for voting injects currency into the server, in our case, Diamonds. Without a currency sink (a mechanic that removes currency from the server) wealth will alway escalate. 

I've played this game for more than 10yrs - many many servers. The ones that don't remove currency always end up with a runaway economy where most items become dirt cheap as the market is flooded, and other items escalate to ridiculous levels (generally items/ranks that are originally bought for irl money). Servers that do remove currency still end up with odd economies as many players choose not to participate in the events/actions that cost currency (loot crates, shop rent's as examples), but their economies do seem to do better and prolong a server's life. Resetting seasons works too, however some people don't like losing all their hard work. Everyone is different.

Things that interest you and keep you playing, may bore others, and vica versa. Having extremely small servers (realm sized) doesnt seem like a good way to hold people's interest as they're too intimate, too personal. This may be good for business though as players will come and go. I think what will end up happening however is a core of servers will house the most active players, whilst the fringe servers will be filled with people who server hop (spend a day, a week, a month and then move on). 

Events, competitions, variety, and actively friendly staff are what holds servers together and staves off boredom in my opinion. 

"Rewarding players for voting injects currency into the server, in our case, Diamonds. Without a currency sink (a mechanic that removes currency from the server) wealth will alway escalate."

I do very much agree with this statement too, but I believe it to be worth of a completely different thread of conversation.