In regards to the economy and travel, I think that it is difficult for people who just joined and want to trade because you are not connected to the nether hub and as a result, you are cut off from the rest of the server. Soon those 10 bars of iron for 3 diamonds becomes 20 bars of iron for 3 diamonds . For the first 2-3 days, I could not get a trade to save my life because I live so far away from north spawn. Once I started to go out to get diamond and other materials, trading got easier but there was still the restriction of travel time that prevented that. Once you can connect to the nether, trade is much easier. It also helps to decide what your specialty is, that way you dont spread yourself too thin searching for diamonds, Redstone, iron, lazuli, ect.. For example, I mainly sell quartz, cobble, and potatoes. I think that trying the mall again would be a great idea, one main thing is that it needs to be connected to the hubs, allowing for long distance trades.

Regards,
Ryan

(please forgive any errors, it is 2:30 AM)

Yeaaaa I had considered using “playershop” in the past. But i think using a method similar to sethbling’s player shop would be nice instead. That along with the existing griefprevention plugin could work nicely. Only downside is people will have fewer trades. And we can still say its vanilla! 😉