Arild_

So maybe that's the problem? I've waited for 1 hour now and still no growth like the picture show, even with those torches on the wall. But will I get kicked if I stay AFK for, say, an hour?

Around the time the server crashed today, several of my nether warts did grow to stage two. It looks like the problem most likely is the server lag from all the people online, like awesomeo said. If I continue to get the problem even when few people are on, I'll post it.

I thought about removing potions, but they provide a lot more gameplay and a genuine reason to head to the nether. If people aren't hiding behind such OP'ed armour combat will be easier and potions won't necessarily help as much as they do now.
I think the thing to remember is, besides the older players everyone's going to expect a server with full MC features. Removing enchanting is easy and clean - An MOTD can simply cycle saying no armour/weapon enchants. But when you start selectively removing potions it becomes a little trickier. If we were going to remove potions the only way I'd personally want to see it implemented is removing splash potions only. That way maybe people would use their gunpowder for TNT and revert back to using tnt canons instead of enderpearl glitches to gain entry to people's bases.
On that topic, you can make an extremely effective tnt canon with only 2 blocks. Rangers used the tactic almost exclusively (unless someone really pissed us off) to get entry. Just put two blocks adjacent, light the back one with a torch first and then the second a little after (length of time depending on the distance you want it to travel). Try it out in SP to get your aim and timing right so as not to waste any blocks.
I can guarantee you 95% of dungeons/spawners are found with x-ray. Especially those that miraculously decide to set up base around 4 spawners in close proximity. You can world edit out a block ID so perhaps replacing them before the map starts would help out a bit too.

Said it before, might as well say it again. What about removing enchantments on armour and weapons? Or at the very least limiting it to prot/sharpness 1. With the anvil it really isn't a task to get the best possible pvp gear with a little time investment.
What I found fun about the old faction wars was the small gap in the best on the server and the worst in terms of inventory. A player can join and be on the same sort of level as 90% of the server in less than an hour and the rest is just up to tactics and luck. Now it just seems whoever plays the longest or has the biggest exp grinder wins because they have the best gear. That provided a lot of new people to raid on a daily basis and less people quitting when they get destroyed by people they have no possibility of killing.
And although its against the spirit of what faction wars used to be, perhaps in its current state it'd be advantageous to give new players 20 minutes of pvp protection to avoid the general ass-ery reported above. On a managerial side of things, would it be possible to see if Whimplash wanted to have ftp access? At the least he could restart the server in TC absence.

Mathijs is a jerk to anyone he deems "lower" than him. He flamed me for no reason randomly in chat. Later, He came to my base one day, and proceeded to flame me more hatefully, just because I wouldn't come out and fight his protection 4 butt. I don't think I even had armor at that point, which I made clear to him. According to Mathijs, if people don't fight him with nothing on, they're a bunch of scared little kids.
I don't give a crap about this flaming/ranting, but personally I think it makes Mathijs a horrible choice for admin. An admin needs to kind/considerate and have unbiased judgement. Sure he might be nice to his 'friends,' but 95% of the players on the server aren't his 'friends.'
I agree with Kitty, I stepped out of spawn at the start of this map, and within 10 seconds, Mathijs kills me. I eventually started up a mini DIRT house as a temporary shelter; I had nothing. He came with a bunch of his buddies, creeper'd into my dirt hut, and stole everything. Yeah it's a raiding server, got it. However, It's completely hypocritical for him to even start to blame other players for turning away our player-base when he's a large factor in it.
I'm glad Mathijs records hackers and attempts to ban them. I don't know why anyone would want a bunch of v-clippers flying around. I do find it funny, however, how he treats himself like an admin.
At the same time, I don't blame people for hacking. What else are they going to do when a bunch of protection 4 guys go slaughter them the second they step out of spawn? As Kitty said, we lack a "Middle Class."

Well, that doesn't really matter if there's always one faction that xrayed the easy end portal right away ..
What about 1 public end no other ends, but way more difficult to get to as it currently is ?

I think one big source of lag is the exp mob farms everyone has. Today there were like 10 people on the server and with /lag, there were 2.6 ticks per second. The player Mind_storm from faction Execution had idled a ton of mobs and the area around that base lowers people's fps by a factor of about 10. The whole server was lagging; it was almost impossible to PvP, mine or do anything. After xDerpina got into his base and killed the mobs, the tick rate instantly jumped to 20 ticks/second, and the server stopped lagging immediately.
There needs to be some sort of solution, maybe a plugin that deletes all mobs once in a while.

I've added an AFK-kicker plugin to the server. This makes sure those mob idlers don't build up massive groups of mobs that lag the server.

I dont really like that all the good stuff of a faction is stored in the enderchest.
take this plugin into consideration. It makes player unable to craft an enderchest.
http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/noenderchest/
Yeah its probably the wrong topic. but since you need donations for the external host its good if it keeps in the latest threads.

I've dusted off our subscription system to once again move the community to help out financially with a gameserver.
What's this about?
I want to move the Minecraft server to an external host. Specifically, to minecraftserver.net (which seems to receive a lot of positive feedback). The server would be located in the Netherlands, so no change there. The reason to move to an external host is quite simple: the Minecraft server performance on our current dedicated box is lacking. The tickrate starts dropping after we have just a few dozen people. Moving to an external host should resolve this problem, but of course, there's a price. The external hosting costs would add to what I already pay for our dedi, so I'm going to need some help.
What do I need people to do?
If you log in on your Green-Coins page you'll see the Minecraft external hosting subscription listed. The subscription system works as follows: we start with a preliminary stage, which is basically a head count of people that want to subscribe. You can choose from several different subscription options, ranging from 5 to 25 euros a month, depending on what you're willing to give.
What happens then?
If enough people show that they're willing to subscribe (by collectively reaching the target total), I can activate the actual subscription. I notify everyone who pledged to subscribe via email to come back and make it official. Every subscriber will receive a permanent reserved slot on the Minecraft server. Also you'll receive Green-Coins for every euro you send our way, just like normal donations.
Note that you need a verified Paypal account with sufficient balance. If you don't have your stuff in order, but still participate, it means I have to deal with the holes in the budget.
That's about it. Let's see how much people care
UPDATE:
Even though nobody really seemed to warm up to the idea, I've started renting a 40 slot server anyway. The server has already moved to this new location. The subscription will remain running; if we can get enough subscribers, we can upgrade to a larger slot server.

IMPROVEMENTS TO SERVER:
1. Fix the lag. real soon.
2. Make you not be able to tp away in pvp while tagged (combat tag)
3. Remove the public end. its stupid and annoying. (public end means no fighting for portals)
4. Enable pearls everywhere
5. Remove the enderchest. you dont get any good stuff on raid
6. atleast a little nicer spawn. whit some possibilitys for spawn pvp. (since some pussys wont fight in other places)
7. Install orebfuscator or similliar anti xray. since ppl can xray for spawners/strongholds. (only if your server can handle it. dont wanna make the server even more laggy)
8. Server restart as soon as possible. current map is depressing.
9. get rid of large biome.
10. dont make map too big. or add teleporters like you had in 1.2.5 map
mabey even force nether wart to only grow in nether. (this isnt important just makes less base camping, gives nether wart more value and fights in the nether will be more common.
i think you should keep it more like the 1.2.5 update and setup. cause the server totally pwned back then.

1.4 should be out near Halloween along with a new map, so expect 2-3 more weeks on this one.

Yeah a smaller map would really do the trick. but the lag is worst. Also even if the server is full there just noobs whitout a faction or profanity peacefull guys online, which sucks. What about a vote to remove the crafting/placing of the enderchest. Would make the /chest more usefull again and raiding more fun.
Also, Raiding sucks whitout pearls. they need to be useable again.
Please Put some effort into stopping this lag.
This server was the best of the best, and so it must be again.

What if someone pot spams whilst invisible?

The biggest problem with this chest is as mentioned before that everyone can store their diamonds and other highly valuables safe without the risk of losing them, drastically reducing the rewards of raids

The chat is getting spammed by people dying or lots of people typing the exact same message, and it has lasted for several minutes now. If this is not a kind of joke from the admins, could it be the server getting hacked?