Total Freedom (Minecraft Server) - Close Down

30th Sept 00:30 - This announcement has been superseded - https://forum.totalfreedom.me/d/2849-an-apol…a-plea-for-help

Hey folks,

This is a bit of a thread I never expected to be making, much less within a year of taking over TF and on what is around my 9th Birthday here on TF.

With a combination of significant factors becoming more apparent over the recent weeks, I've taken the decision to significantly scale TF back, before closing down the Minecraft game server entirely. The combination of a substantial drop in players, a significant increase in the abuse I've received (And at this point much of it is legally classed as harassment) and ultimately this and a number of other factors have put things into a position where I no longer see TotalFreedom being viable to continue in the current format.

With this in mind, and having informed the servers executives and reviewing the ownership policy to ensure I can do this, and that it cannot be a means to then trigger the ownership policy, I am outlining the following plan with regards to the gradual and planned close down of the TF Servers.

Between Now and October 2nd

The Hubs, Development servers and any other Minecraft servers which are not Freedom-01 or the bungee will be closed down, the bungee then re-configured to route people directly into the Freedom Server.

At this point we will make a number of sections on the Discord and forums read-only, mainly those server chats and discussions / applications impacting them.

15th October 2021

The Freedom-01 server will be turned off along with the Bungee.

Schematics from Freedom-01 will be moved to a new location to facilitate the downloads in the longer term.

Additional categories on the Discord and forums will be moved into Read-Only Mode

The forums will disable the ability to sign up for new accounts, steps will be taken to prevent new joiners from accessing existing Discord channels.

Later in October / Early November 2021

All outstanding sections of the Discord and forums will be moved to read-only mode. A new tag and channel will be created for those already signed up to allow some ongoing conversation, and everything else will be snapshotted in time.

FAQ

I'm invoking the ownership policy, fuck you
Cool, the ownership policy doesn't prevent me from doing this, I've checked and double checked. I'm still active, I have not resigned as owner and the server did not unexpectedly go down, that's the purpose of this thread. You've been notified and as such even when the MC Server goes, I will still "Own TF"

Why not hand it over?
Honestly, because I don't think it's fair to inflict the level of harassment that I've been getting on anyone else here, All that I can see happening is TF cycling through owners quicker and quicker. Also because everything on all of TF's servers is the intellectual property of my company (ATLAS Media Group Ltd) and as such they will own the legal rights to the content on those servers, and it's not something that can then be transferred to someone else.

Will downloads be made available
Eventually yes, I will be actively archiving everything prior to the servers actually being deleted, while I will not be publishing any of the world files, configs or anything else any time soon (Mix of security and other reasons) I will make the full backups available on the world download tool in the future, as long as Mark (Original owner) doesn't pull the DNS authority from me.

Where will the schematics go?

I'm still working on this, there's a few options as to where they might get hosted, but I'll be looking to do it in such a way that even if the DNS is pulled / expires / anything like that.

Why Now?

Honestly the abuse on the "reperakfreedom2" forums targeting me was the straw that broke the camels back. I've been putting up with varying levels of abuse for a while, but when it's coming from my own community, and the community doesn't like removing people and riot when I do it, my hands are at this point tied. I either continue to spend hours and days of my time taking on the legal work to get sites like that taken down while trying to grow TF, or I just bring TF to a graceful conclusion and let folks get on with their lives.

What about the pro boards forums?
The pro boards forums mean a lot to me, between now and the end of this year I'll continue to work with Steven to ensure the Proboards forums are preserved and archived going forward, and make it easy for tools like Wayback machine to access it and archive it for future prosperity.

Likewise this forum at some point in 2022 will be made public read-only in all boards to allow for the same archive process by external tools.

Closing Note

I just want to thank everyone that has been genuinely supportive of my ownership, being able to own TF while probably a huge mistake for my mental health, has also been exceptionally rewarding being able to try to contribute something back to a thing that has for a reasonable amount of the last 9 years of my life been a steady and supportive community. I don't know what the future will hold for me, if I'll do something anything like TF again in the future or if this just isn't my jam.

I would also really ask folks to respect this decision, you don't have to agree with it or like it, but I've intentionally tried to safeguard TF's history by ramping things down in this way. I know a lot of people may not even like me, but I would please ask people to try to be a little understanding of why I've come to this conclusion, and understand that I'm going to do my best to ensure things are preserved for us to look back on fondly in the years to come.

Thank you to all admins and players, past and present. It has been a true honour to own the community and I wish you all the very best of health and every success in the future. Thank you.

I'd like to add some additional clarity, as I've already gotten a lot of shit for this post, which while expected unfortunately is yaknow part of the original issue but also shows people didn't read the thread, so go read the thread then keep reading this.

As I said, I've been part of TF as an admin for the last 9 years, and a player for longer than that... This to be honest has been one of the most difficult decisions I've had to make for a very long time, and it upsets me that this has felt like the only option left and without living with the guilt of putting what I can only describe as a never ending full time burden on someone else's shoulders.

I wish I could say I have a plan, I wish I could reassure people that this is all a joke. Right now this is how TF is looking to me.

1 - The "Community" is primarily made up of individuals that only login to the Minecraft server when there is significant drama to be had. I've been totally unable to actually change things on TF despite making it clear it was my entire purpose as owner, even recently when I highlighted this I've continue to be blocked and abused every time I've tried to make changes.

2 - We realistically at this point have no way to keep the server up to date, which means we will continue to lose interest from new players who want to play with new blocks. As well as this we're not able to develop functionality the community wants, meaning our current community that had been active, gets bored and goes elsewhere.

2.1 - Due to the major Changes Mojang rolled out and the limited time the dev team have had, we've not have a functional developer server, which has caused issues with new plugins, making the original issue more significant.

3 - Lack of player retention, despite my best efforts to find and empower people to promote and more importantly retain some form of player base without this we've found the previous points to get worse and worse to the point we're at today.

4 - The bullying and targeted harassment at me and other executives, has honestly gotten to be too much... And it's been impossible in the last year to take any real time away from TF, because every time I did I'd get a ping within a couple of days telling me there was something that urgently needed my attention.

All of the above, with the reduction in active players and active community participation, means I've felt my options rapidly diminish, when that's been combined with the abuse against me today, it put me in a spot I couldn't find a way out of.

So to clarify some of my original post, the Minecraft server is what I intend to close, the Discord and forums will at least for as long as I have servers to host the forums on and a valid Discord account, remain accessible to the current community in some form or another.

I also want to acknowledge some of you that have reached out, I know for some folks here TF has been a part of their lives for a long time, and has been here through some very difficult times, I'm honestly thankful for the aspect of our community that is welcoming and supportive, and I have no intentions to make that go away, so many of you have been excellent friends now and over the last nearly 10 years of me being a member of TF, and there are quite a few from back when I was a much more active admin that I'm proud to call friends IRL now rather than only online and via TF.

As I said on Discord, if folks have a serious plan for how to try to bring TF back to be something better than it has been for the last few years, I'm open to suggestions, I've tried my best, I've tried to bring in the right people, but I also appreciate "Major Drama" like this brings out folks from the woodwork that haven't been here for a while, and sometimes they can have an insight that we've all been missing.

I am sorry for those that I have ultimately let down in my time as owner, and those who I've let down here by trying to bring TF to a graceful close. I've only ever wanted what's best for TF and the community, and I am sorry that I seem to have failed it in trying to do my role here as owner.

I certainly don't see this as being a goodbye, I see this as being able to say Hello in a better place for us all.