The Closure of MCFRP
The End of an Era
Summary
The possibility of a community shutdown had been looming around the staff team since December, but this was no more than just a distant possibility at the time. At the end of February, in Dylan's monthly staff announcement discussing session logs and other factors, he announced that the shutdown possibility would be announced to the community before the end of March 1. On March 1 at 9:10 am, Dylan made an announcement to whitelisted members, titled "The Future of MCFRP". In this announcement, Dylan explained reasoning for shutting down the community, and proclaimed that the community would be shut down on March 28 if 14 sessions weren't hosted before that date. If 7 weren't hosted before March 18, the server would enter the shutdown phase.
It became clear very quickly that the server would not reach its final goal, as many members were discouraged by the announcement and the looming shutdown threat. On March 5, in a conversation in staff chat regarding the shutdown, Dylan stated "mcfrp coming to an end is basically unavoidable at this point". On March 18, it was announced that MCFRP was entering the shutdown phase.
Over the next 10 days, MCFRP would transition to an archived state. Channels were slowly locked, CDN files became unavailable, and the server was slowly being shut down. On March 28, 2024, the server was officially shut down.
But what brought us to this point? This is the question many members asked when the shutdown was announced, and its a completely valid question to ask. The shutdown possibility was circulated at the end of December after the 3rd Annual Oakland Christmas Parade was cancelled due to a lack of attendees. The parade was an event held every year, and it had never been cancelled due to insufficient attendance. When the parade was cancelled, Dylan knew the community was in trouble. Over the next few months, community activity slowed down as current members moved on and the amount of members joining the community was at an all-time low. The management team knew that saving the community was going to be an impossible task, and that fact, combined with Dylan's lack of motivation to continue with the community, mainly stemming from financial reasons, led management to the decision to close the server for good.
