I feel like the reason where I/we messed up a lot was a mix of a few things:
1) How players will interact with the rules we made?
IMO, I feel like we tried to make a middle ground of not-super complicated rules and complicated rules. We shouldve chosen one extreme and lived with it, but the more rules and the more complicated the rules, the harder it is for everyone. About the walls and raiding, a rule of "walls can only be x height" mightve done some good, with the inclusion of enderpearls and elytra/etc. The reason elytras werent there from the beginning is a) theyre in the end and it was supposed to take ya'll a hot minute to get them. and b) heroes didn't play nicely with them/we hadn't added them to the allowed shit.
Another bitch was locks. The raiding rule worked great for old LoP imo, and that was the motivating force in allowing that rule, but locks were a different beast this time around. We shouldve put some hard limits around them, or not allowed them at all. Redstone was meant to be rare and slow down the lock building, but that did fuck all.
2) How players will spend their time and what do they have to strive for?
The only initial goal that we had for players was the broken class progression, brand-new city building, and getting to the end with the somewhat expensive recipe for eyes of ender. I had thought that the end would take you guys at LEAST a month or two, not a week, and I had hoped that more people would care about it. It was an experiment that didn't go as well as I'd hoped. If I were to plan a new SMP, it is something that I would look at, but if I did I would have a much longer thought and consideration for what it would really do.
Once the cities were built, and everyone had class progression with the BROKEN classes and skills done, I/we weren't ready with new shit at hand. I said it multiple times to myself and others, and had several say it to me, that we shoudlve had shit ready before release. Like, shit done, just enable a config or press a button and implement new stuff, so we're not panicking and scrambling at the last fucking second to try to pull some quality material out of our eye holes.
3) Are you actually fucking ready to release the server?
I single-handedly dropped the ball on this one. Everyone told me to wait, and be ready, but here's what was going through my mind: We have to generate hype, not better time than the present. With hype came pressure to get it done and KEEP the hype up, not say "Oh hey smp" then not mention anything new for 8 months. I think we did well with the hype, because the signup and release had GREAT turnouts, but I didn't live up to my own or other's expectations. I rushed the release date, and shouldve kept my fucking mouth shut until it was ready. There was pressure from the Admin team, from my own smp team that had already gotten burned out on it before release, and on myself who was already getting burned out before release.
On top of that, things that I THOUGHT would be ready, weren't. Heroes worked great before the update I did RIGHT BEFORE RELEASE which broke a ton of the skills and classes, and I didn't know they were broken until after release, because I hadn't properly tested it. Then Kainzo and his team took their sweet time fixing it.
If I was still on at this point, I would cut my losses, take a very thorough survey and take a serious hard look with the team and what went wrong, what went right, and how to play those strengths and weaknesses for the next iteration.
What I would change, definitely:
Ditch the hard-drawn family lines. Let people make their own clans, where they want, with who they want, for a cost, no land claiming/anti-grief, just disallow griefing. No 'complicated' clicking a sign to join a family. Leader with enough money does command to pay price to become official leader, then invites who they please, if they please.
I think the biomebundle/terraincontrol map was great, but put less effort into the biomes and more into the structures and the loot. Add more structures, change the loot around, and make it worthwhile to explore. Add bigger dungeons manually.
Ditch the spawnworld, it did nothing. Make a small beginning town in the center of the map, not a huge fancy city, just a small village that might have a few necessity shops.