I know I have said this for like the 30,000th time already, and nobody wants to hear it again, but this is exactly why, in my opinion, that TF should have just been made into a creative anarchy server. If you don't want to read my entire argument this time, I have learned my lesson and put a TL;DR at the end.
Although it was only officially "anarchy" when it was founded I really believe that the idea of anarchy was the spirit and backbone of the server not just when it was founded, but for years after its foundation. It explains why the community "doesn't change," as you said: the only way you can get the toxic bottom-of-the-barrel hellspawn that comprises the "bad" parts of TotalFreedom's community is by giving people the idea that they can join and do pretty much whatever they want. People have been doing that for years, and it would make sense if there was a place for all that toxicity, trolling, and miscellaneous crap to go in the form of an anarchy server. It was that way for years--although there were admins that technically "enforced rules" and "moderated the server," those who played in the earlier days of the server know that was done pretty loosely, and those who were admins also know that being an admin was a pretty fun thing. You got to see the full picture of the nonsensical bullshit that people did, and zap them with lightning bolts for it. There have been endless instances of admin "corruption" and things like that here, which shows us that even the admins here, in spirit, have just wanted a place where they can kind of just do whatever they want. It's why a lot of people who used to be here are just gone now. Even the most level-headed, rule-following of them. I remember that StevenNL2000 discussing that he stopped playing on the server because he couldn't "be an admin" anymore. He, along with everyone else, lost interest in moderating the server because there was just so little to do and so many fewer cases of rule-breaking when the server went premium.
The concept of anarchy also (to some extent) alleviates the problem of needing so much maintenance for the server. It's a lot easier to just allow some bad things to happen and mainly focus on server stability rather than constantly pick tooth and nail making sure everyone is following policies and arguing about interpretations of everything. I hear you all when you say you have a lack of time to spend on it--a lot of us who have been here a long time have grown up now and are in college and/or have jobs. To that, I say you don't really need to be online that often to manage an anarchy server. It can be tricky to set up and takes a degree of maintenance, but this is absolutely nothing compared to the ridiculous amounts of effort current execs and devs put into maintaining custom software that ultimately isn't that necessary as well as keeping the community in check. I realize a lot of quality-of-life sacrifices need to be made to run anarchy, but that absolutely doesn't mean playing on the server still can't be a fun experience. Take Ayunami's server, CreaCraft. That server is a great example of the anarchy idea in action. Have you guys ever seen it? It kind of reminds me of what TotalFreedom used to look like back in, like, 2014. Sure, it's full of toxicity and spam and bullshit, but at least it's lively and interesting, even if it's in a cringey, childish way. Although the playerbase is super-charged by the fact that it's promoted by an exteremely popular and growing version of Minecraft (eaglercraft,) it's still extremely impressive to see a server very similar to what TF once was doing so well today. It also isn't just a bunch of random people joining and leaving, either. The place actually retains a lot of the same players. Many of them play for hours. Why? Because it's interesting and can be fun for people, which TF has struggled with in its recent years. With Ayunami's Creacraft, we have proof that people still are interested in the idea of creative anarchy. And another thing about that server is that it (if I recall correctly) runs on a free 24-gigabyte Oracle Cloud VPS. If TotalFreedom were to run off of this, nobody would have to make a financial commitment to keep the server running. I know that running TotalFreedom isn't the same as running an Eaglercraft server, but I believe that bringing back anarchy and cracked mode would promote growth. People would see that the "freedom" of TotalFreedom is back and return to the server, and actually stay online and have other people to interact with. The players might be toxic often, but anarchy would make the server interesting again. Many of us could actually have fun here like we once did.
Honestly, making the server available to Eaglercraft also wouldn't be a bad idea, either. It would definitely help with a lot of the marketing woes that TF has had and give us a new audience of new players. We have the resources to do it, and running the server on an older version supported by Eaglercraft (i.e. 1.5/1.8) is something many of us are already familiar with and could set up pretty easily.
TL;DR:
I know that anarchy is probably a pretty uncomfortable environment for a lot of the people here, and especially those who joined recently. But it's time to face the facts: the TotalFreedom you know is unmanageable. It is literally dead right now, killed by people who thought they could bring it back. Let's say you are a TotalFreedom executive and you want this server to continue, but you are worried about cost, time, and the community. Anarchy answers all those concerns. You can just run the server on a free Oracle Cloud VPS (with 24gb of ram, shockingly,) the time you spend working on it will be vastly reduced by making some limited sacrifices and letting go of the need to constantly manage the community so much, and the community will be left to their own account, freeing you of any truly valid responsibility or blame other than simply making sure the server is up and running.
Let's put the freedom back in TotalFreedom.
