Hi all,

The August 2018 General Staff Meeting has concluded and here are the results. As always, you can watch the public portion of the GSM on my YouTube channel.

“Belligerent Dissent” is now a warnable offense

Please read the publicly available version of this proposal here.

When a member of the server disagrees with a staff member, or disagrees about the rules or how the server is run, they may do so as long as they do it in a respectful manner. However over the past several months, we have had to deal with several members who take their disagreements too far and have engaged in what we have termed as “Belligerent Dissent”. This type of dissent includes:

• Complaining publicly in a disrespectful manner about staff, the rules, or the how the server is run.
• Arguing in a disrespectful manner with staff, about the rules, or how the server is run.
• Complaining about warnings or bans issued to them, either in an aggressive or passive-aggressive manner.
• Not accepting staff decisions that have already been deliberated and decided upon for quite some time.

Players who engage in belligerent dissent may initially be given a verbal warning from staff, who will instruct them to give their feedback in a more civil manner and/or direct them to forward their complaints privately to an administrator.

Players who do not heed the verbal warning from staff or repeatedly engage in belligerent dissent may be given formal warnings or bans.

These rules will be enforced effective immediately, and are now stated on the official Rules page. If you have any questions about this policy, feel free to ask any staff member.

Procedure for adding new PVP arenas

Effective immediately, we will now be accepting proposals from members to build new PVP arenas. If you are interested in building an arena, please read the new PVP Arena Regulations and ask one of the staff volunteers listed in that document for assistance.

Road Proposals

• A proposal from shadowboarder to rename the A89 and A9 roads has been denied, on the basis that it would be too much work to redo all signage and labelling for these highways, and that the ward region boundaries may be changed in the future with the Epsilon expansion of new world.
• A proposal from CodyHM to build a new A13 road to connect Seoland to Lalatown in the northern portions of the new world has been denied, on the basis that it is too close and parallel to the existing A1 road, and that the A13 proposal cuts straight through a mountain biome. We suggest that a B-road connecting Seoland to the A1 would be more appropriate.
• A proposal from SkyjumperTalon and Cortesi to build a new A54 road from Grisville to Cactus River has been partially approved, only the portion from Grisville to Murrville will be approved for now. Future phases may be proposed at later GSMs once this first portion is complete. Also, this road will need to connect to the existing interchange east of Grisville instead of connecting to the town directly.
• A proposal from CodyHM to update the A8 to the new Road Building Guidelines (specifically the removal of carpets) has been approved and completed.

Projects & Funding Proposals

• A proposal from shadowboarder to construct the short Eden Canal to connect Grayzen to Lake Achowalogen Tachaksin has been approved.
• A proposal from SkyjumperTalon to make a modification on how the MGA Season 2 Golf Tournament is funded has been approved.
• A proposal from hvt2011 to construct a BluRail tunnel under the inactive town at C93 has been approved.

Property Auctions

• A request from sesese9 to gain ownership of the town at P22 formerly owned by malbert911 has been approved.

MRT Line Proposals

• The MRT Savannah Line proposed by _HeavenAngel_ has been approved. It will be located in the southwestern desert area of the map where it will connect with future extensions of the Western, Mesa, and Desert lines. Stations on this line will be prefixed with the letter “H”.
• The MRT Valley/Island Line Extensions proposed by godzilltrain have been approved. Both lines will converge in Fort Yaxier and share the same alignment southward into the tundra biome, where they will eventually split off  and terminate at the Southern Line at two different locations. The routing for these lines can be viewed here.

Please note that building on the routes of these lines is now prohibited. Once the lines are finished, all stations will be auctioned off at a GSM

Premier City Reviews

• The feedback for Premier City Reviews during this meeting can be viewed here.

Away From The Server

As a final note, a few staff members and myself will be away from the server from Tuesday, August 21st to Thursday, August 30th to attend an MRT meetup in the United Kingdom. While I am away, the remaining admins and staff members will be available to answer any questions and deal with any situations should they arise.

That’s all for now.

Thanks,
Frumple

Hi all,

The MRT Server turns a whopping 6 years old this Friday, July 13th!

To celebrate this occasion, we are organizing several official server events during the week. Here is the schedule:

• 7 pm UTC = 12 pm PDT = 3 pm EDT = 8 pm BST = 3am (+1) Singapore
• 11 pm UTC = 4 pm PDT = 7 pm EDT = 12 am (+1) BST = 7 am (+1) Singapore

Details for each of these events will be added below (and announced on Discord) as they become available:

Build Competition

• This competition organized by Tom_Pairs will consist of two rounds: a speed round and a long round.
• In the speed round, players will be given a subject at the start and they will have 15 minutes to build it. At the end of 15 minutes, Tom_Pairs and any non-participating spectators present will judge the builds. The winner will be awarded $200 of in-game money.
• In the long round, participants in the speed round can then improve on their build. They will be given until Friday, July 13th to complete their build, at which point Tom_Pairs will judge the builds. The winner will be awarded $500 of in-game money, and the build will be moved into an empty lot in Central City.

The Weakest Link

• An elimination gameshow consisting of nine contestants similar to the IRL show of the same name, organized by Just_robinho.

Secret Hitler

• Secret Hitler is a voting game of intrigue and deception for groups up to 10 players.
• To participate, sign up for an account at https://secrethitler.io/ and be able to join Discord voicechat. Voicechat is mandatory.

PVP “Death Arena”

• Details to be announced.

The Amazing Race 9

• The Amazing Race 9 continues as teams of two trek across the MRT server and solve various challenges.
• Participation in TAR 9 is limited to the players who remain in the race at that time, but you can spectate and watch the action on Frumple’s stream at https://twitch.tv/frumple, or the MBS stream.

Bootleg Telephone & Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe

• Bootleg Telephone is a building game where each player make up a phrase, and then another player must build something to match that phrase. Yet another player then tries to guess what the person was trying to build, and then that answer becomes the phrase for the next round of the game.
• Utlimate Tic-Tac-Toe is the newest game made by megascatterbomb. Details to be announced.

Jackbox Games

• Participate in various party games with your fellow MRT members.
• All you need to play is to be able to watch Frumple’s stream at https://twitch.tv/frumple, and a mobile device or computer in which to input your own answers or vote on other people’s answers. Joining Discord voicechat for this is entirely optional, but greatly enhances everyone’s experience.

Thanks,
Frumple

Hi all,

The main server is back online and open to all. The CoreProtect fix did complete after about 60 hours, but unfortunately it was not successful. With the fix, CoreProtect was able to track further block changes, but it was not able to do any rollbacks. The only way to make this fix work would be to change the CoreProtect code, which we are not able to do given our time and resources. Therefore, I have dropped the CoreProtect database, clearing all block logging data since September 2016. CoreProtect will now continue logging new block changes as normal starting from this point.

I sincerely apologize to everyone for all of this inconvenience. I thought that this fix was the best possible approach to try to keep our block logging data, but I thoroughly underestimated the time that it would take. At the very least, we now know that this fix doesn’t work, and to prevent this from happening in the future, we will need to make sure to purge old records from the CoreProtect database periodically, probably at least once a year. Each purging of these records would likely require server downtime lasting for at least a day, but hopefully not as long as the downtime of almost 3 days that we just experienced.

If you have any further questions about this, please feel free to ask me and discuss this in our Discord #general chat. Thank you everyone once again for your patience.

Thanks,
Frumple

Hi all,

Due to a serious CoreProtect issue that started this morning, the main Minecraft server will be down for at least the next 3 days. The issue stems from one of our CoreProtect database tables running out of IDs. We are currently running a fix to increase the limit of IDs, but it will take many hours to complete.

Current estimate for when the server will be back up is: Friday, June 15 at 9:00 AM PDT

Please note that this weekend’s GSM will still happen as scheduled, and will be live-streamed at twitch.tv/frumple as per usual.

For the latest updates, please check our Discord and Twitter. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Thanks,
Frumple

Hi all,

The last General Staff Meeting of the year has concluded. The audio recording for the public portion is available, but this time around I also streamed the public portion on my Twitch channel and uploaded it to my YouTube. The recordings are available below:

• Public Portion Audio Recording
• Public Portion Video Recording

New Administrators

Before we get into the GSM results proper, I would like to announce that as of January 1st of 2018, we have decided to bring on two new [Admins] to the server. chiefbozx is actually a former admin who is returning to the admin position after a 3-month probation as a moderator, while godzilltrain is a long-time contributor to the server and brand new to the administrator team.

Congratulations to both Chief and Godz for their promotions!

Rule Changes

A new rule has been introduced: Speak English when having conversations in public chat.

For this rule, “public chat” refers to the global and media channels, and any conversations in Mumble or Discord. Please note that conversations in other languages are allowed as one-off jokes in public chat, or any conversations in private messages or project channels.  This rule has been put in place because public conversations in other languages exclude others and are not respectful to others.

Another change has been made to our Warning and Ban Policy: Guests will no longer receive warnings. Instead, guests will now be immediately muted or banned upon any infraction of the rules, at the discretion of the staff member. 

In practice, staff have rarely ever given warnings to guests. This update to our policy simply reflects what has been done historically.

MRT Line Extension Station Allocations

Allocations for the Desert Line, Zephyr Line North, and Forest Line extensions are now complete. Note that the allocations below are based at the time of the writing of this website post, and that unclaimed towns may have become claimed since that time.

Desert Line

• D24 – Granted to jamess2912
• D25 – Town of Bikini Bottom by Traindood
• D26 – Unclaimed
• D27 – Unclaimed
• D28 – City of Whiteley by AP_Red
• D29 – Town of Eep by SoSo123
• D30 – Granted to CyAmethyst
• D31 – Claimed by ConnConn2005
• D32 – Town of Marsius by SoSo123
• D33 – Town of Fenton by zefunman
• D34 – Claimed by FredTheTimeLord
• D35 – Town of Temple (claimable by auction request)
• D36 – Unclaimed
• D37 – Town of Cavia by Captain_Cavy

Zephyr Line North

• ZN23 – Unnamed town by XtremeCoder
• ZN24 – Claimed by Frosty_Creeper10 and XtremeCoder (to be shared)
• ZN25 – Granted to Frosty_Creeper10
• ZN26 – Unnamed town by Arndorious
• ZN27 – Unclaimed
• ZN28 – Claimed by mcgamer1444
• ZN29 – Unclaimed
• ZN30 – Granted to DevranTheBoyxD
• ZN31 – Town of Plimont by bensismith
• ZN32 – Town of Chalxior by SoSo123
• ZN33 – Town of Chalxior by SoSo123
• ZN34 – Town of Chalxior by SoSo123
• ZN35 – Not claimable at this time
• ZN36 – Unclaimed
• ZN37 – Unclaimed
• ZN38 – Granted to PineapplePerv
• ZN39 – Unclaimed
• ZN40 – Unclaimed
• ZN41 – Unnamed town by _Smae (claimable by auction request)
• ZN42 – Unclaimed
• ZN43 – Granted to MrBearGames
• ZN44 – Granted to mcgamer1444
• ZN45 – Unnamed town by __PiKs__
• ZN46 – Granted to megascatterbomb

Forest Line

• F29 – Granted to PtldKnight
• F30 – Town of Lutetia by Yellowitcher
• F31 – Claimed by mcgamer1444
• F32 – Granted to dubs17
• F33 – Claimed by ThermonuclearWar
• F34 – Granted to woorich999
• F35 – Granted to CyAmethyst
• F36 – Claimed by SubmergedDisney
• F37 – Claimed by ModernArt
• F38 – Granted to Baseball02
• F39 – Claimed by CoolWolfPower
• F40 – Granted to Halfy_Crafty
• F41 – Granted to BernCow

Roads

• A proposal by fffelix_jan to build the B230 around a portion of Monterey Bay has been partially approved. The western section to Christmas Island has been denied as it has no utility, while the eastern section encircling the bay has been approved. However, a proposal to bridge the road over the Eastern Line has been denied.
• A proposal by autobus22 and time2makemymove to split the A5 further south into the A5 to Whiteley, and the A511 branching to the east has been approved. The subsequent B-roads B56 and B54 in this area have also been approved.
• A proposal by Mossie to build the A2 from Verdantium to the south has been partially approved. The portion running parallel to the eastern edge of the world has been approved, while the portion connecting to the west side of Verdantium has been denied, as we don’t think there is enough utility in having this road while there are existing local roads in Verdantium that provide the same connection. If there is further development south of Verdantium, then we may consider this section to be viable at a later date.
• A proposal by IcyGoomba to build the B227 connecting from the A30 up to EN16 has been denied for now as it currently overlaps fffelix_jan’s B230 proposal. We would recommend that IcyGoomba resubmit a new proposal once the B230 has been completed.
• A proposal by Kel5 to build the A230 and subsequent B-roads has been approved. The A230 connects up with the south portion of Mossie’s A2 proposal, running east-west south of the MRT Eastern Line, with the B232 and B233 reaching up to connect the stations to the highway.

Projects

• A proposal by FredTheTimeLord to build the Vernal-Monterey Canal through New Bakersville has been partially approved. Only the Phase II portion from the Monterey Lake side into New Bakersville will be approved. For the actual connection between these lakes, we would rather that a separate canal be built further south with the narrowest portion of land.

Town Auctions

• A request by _HeavenAngel_ to take over the town of Ocean City and integrate it into Quiris has been approved.
• A request by AlfiePops to gain ownership of Mason City (C12) has been deferred to next GSM. We have decided to wait to see if kiwirainbow, the original mayor of the town, returns for the holidays before making a decision about this town. This topic will be automatically added to the next GSM agenda, so Alfie does not need to resubmit his proposal then.

Premier City Reviews

• The city of Espil by EspiDev was considered for promotion but was denied. Feedback from the Premier review can be found here.

City Rank Candidate Batch #20 Results

The latest City Rank Candidate Batch has concluded, with the results coming out on Christmas Day. The feedback from this batch can be viewed here.

Congratulations to the following new [Senator] towns:

• Kantō by camelfantasy (Town Only)
• Levittown by Narasmar

The Snapshot Returns LIVE

The Snapshot, hosted by chiefbozx and Just_robinho, returns in a live format this coming Sunday, January 7th from 9pm to 10:30pm UTC on chiefbozx’s YouTube channel. Be sure to watch and join the fun!

MRT Holiday Town Decoration Contest

Submissions to the MRT Holiday Town Decoration Contest are now closed, and public voting is now open. To vote, please find the link to the voting form in the #announcements channel in Discord. Voting will close on Sunday, January 14th, 23:59 UTC, with the results announced shortly after.

Next GSM Date

The date of the next General Staff Meeting has been set for Sunday, January 21st at the usual time of 7pm UTC. As always, please be sure to submit any topics, road/project proposals, or auction requests by the 48-hour cutoff on Friday, January 19th, 7pm UTC, submitting them to the staff e-mail address.

Please also note the next GSM will be held on Discord instead of Mumble. This is now possible since I will be recording both the private and public portions via streaming software, and streaming the public portion like we did at the last GSM.

That’s all for now.

Thanks,
Frumple