Valuable Tips From Successful Rust Server Owners

Growing a server can be hard stuff, luckily for you, there have been plenty of people who have experienced both success and failures and are willing to share their insight on how to grow your own communities! Unfortunately, we cannot give you the feedback from ALL server owners, but here is a handful that was willing to contribute their feedback to you!

---

Rustoria Servers

Rustoria servers are well known for their incredibly large following of players and high populated servers from all the categories of Official, Community, and Modded! Their owner RyanJD has even previously been interviewed which is a good read I recommend checking out here by angry-mob.com!

Here’s their feedback from the owner, RyanJD.

“Yeah I am always keen on lending a helping hand to people as long as they’re willing to do their part. I often get people in my PMs “how do you get population”, “how did you make # plugin”, “how did you make # bot”, “can you give me # plugin/bot” etc. These type of people I try to avoid as they’re clearly trying to do something that I like to call leach. They are in it for themselves.

This goes on to add to my next point. If you aren’t willing to learn things for yourself and you turn to others to do things for you – you won’t get anywhere. You are on your own, you need to be independent and learn things for yourself. You’ll find that this benefits you in the long run too, because if something breaks in the future you’ll likely know how to fix it.

Also, don’t think copying other communities unique ideas and features will get you anywhere either. Likelihood is players will just see you as a copycat community since the place you’re copying from likely has a large player base if you’re copying from them, right? Think of your own unique ideas, you’ll see more benefits than copying already existing ones.

If you’re not willing to put time and effort into your community, then don’t bother. If you gain any success it will become a huge task for you to maintain and keep the success reigning. You need to have motivation beyond money, fame and power.

Most important tip: don’t be a cunt to your players. Always be understanding and assist them with their issues. Players range of all types of skill and understanding, some are new to the game, some are new to your server.”

---

Rustafied Servers

From a huge amount of successful servers, supplying update news each wipe, and being heavily involved with charity events, Rustafied is a name you probably have heard of.

Here is some advice from the owner, Bugs.

“Be active, really active. Provide value to your community. Find a niche – something unique about your server. Ask players what they’d like to see and iterate. Collaborate with other server owners”

---

Project Lazarus Servers

Not every server is the same, in fact, Project Lazarus is one of the most different servers featuring customized monuments each wipe and a vast amount of game-changing mods which makes them stand out from the rest and bring a unique experience to the table.

Let’s see what advice their owner hellman501 has.

“Ensuring you are always evolving, whether that be implementing new server mechanics or QOL changes to your maps is crucial for long-term growth.”

---

Vital Servers

A server that has grown faster than most at the time of their launch by catering to what players truly wanted, especially the dedicated and competitive scene players.

Here’s a few tips from the owner, neeko.

“Ultimately we have managed our success due to player feedback and player driven events. Doing things with our players and making decisions with them in mind is ultimately how vital got it’s start. New advice to anyone new who is just starting would just be to gauge your players, and try and align their visions for what they want to see ingame with how you operate. Once those two things line up I feel the sky is the limit for anyone who puts the effort in and finds their niche.”

---

AimTraining Servers

Not all servers in Rust are a survival experience. There are some who cater to the training aspects of the game and offer players opportunities to train PVP (Player vs Player) elements such as recoil control, melee combat practice, and more.

The owner BekerMelk wanted to contribute his feedback to help new or upcoming server owners as well!

“Its mainly about being dedicated and motivated 😄 And try to give a original swing to the servers 😇 Rome was not build in one day.”

---

Rust Academy

A very large organization ranging in different sorts of modded servers with wild success for their player population, they as well have an organization named AndysolAM which is also very successful. Some may hate them, some love them. Regardless, they’re here to help you by offering their advice on running or starting a successful community.

Here’s what Kyle, one of the few owners of Rust Academy has supplied for his advice to you.

For me, aside from the obvious ways of growing a server (e.g. consistent wipe schedules, high performing servers, and trying to find the balance between following the trends in the Rust server scene whilst being unique at the same time), the most critical thing a server owner can do is block out the noise from other servers/communities and focus their attention to growing their own community for their own players. The server owner scene can be a harsh one, so it is important not to get distracted/brought down by others. If you are passionate about Rust and have a true enjoyment in making game servers, you’ll eventually succeed if you continue to grind and push at it.

---

Rust Reborn

Rust Reborn is the final mention, but not one worth holding back. They offer several servers, most notably is their Bed Wars server which spiked a huge new interest into Rust which is original inspired from a custom gamemode from minecraft. Since it’s so different than most other servers at it’s launch time I think it’s well worth including them in this list!

One of their owner’s collect_vood has some advice to share to you all.

“If you feel like your idea has potential pursue it. Getting your server populated right off the start is in most cases unfortunately not how it works. Try to twist your server idea in a direction where it becomes something that is refreshing and unique for the players. Having a server that stands out from the crowd will ultimately make it much easier for it to gain traction. Finally, listen to player feedback and ideas to further improve your concept. This is essential to gain more and more long term players.”

---

Conclusion

It goes without needing to be said that there are several factors that go into the growth and success of your server, or really anything in life, but ultimately boils down to your ambition behind your goals and catering to a demand of the players. Sometimes that demand is not always apparent so trial and error will certainly be an aspect of your growth. Just keep at it and try your best and you are bound to succeed with enough drive!

We hope you enjoyed this as much as we enjoyed chatting with communities whilst building this article. I feel like hearing feedback and advice directly from them is more meaningful as they’re the ones in the chair that some of us wish to sit in, and could be, with enough motivation and hard work!

If you’ve enjoyed this read it would mean a lot if you dropped a comment if you took anything from this, or even have other advice that you’ve experienced as well! On behalf of the team, we wish you all the best of success with your servers, and life!

---

Credits

Artwork supplied from Facepunch Studios taken by Patrick

---

Connect with us!
Join the Discord!