If anything, having the server private and password-protected doesn't seem ENOUGH to my paranoid self. As someone kind of new to Terraria-likes, I feel very nervous about having stuff like the houses you guys have build being entirely player-editable. Hell, I mentioned Retro's house to someone already logged into the server and immediately felt like perhaps I shouldn't have, just in case.
Fortunately, it seems like a handful of tools for improving security in this regard are in the works. Stuff like individually personalized username/passwords should help with word of mouth getting out, and with any luck planet or even zone permissions will be implemented soon.
I build "important" stuff on my single player world; that's where I keep all my weapons, building supplies, etc. so if there's every any kind of crash / hack / grief, I'm not starting from scratch. Stuff I build online is always just to build for the pleasure of building, and I don't mind if people see it.
In fact, I prefer that they do, so they can see something I've built and maybe modify the idea a little for their own buildings. For a while there on the Terraria server, a bunch of us were building things back and forth and kind of inspiring each others' next project. A couple buildings I've done were inspired by other builders' works.
That sucks. I think it's not the first time it happens, as I remember the planet wiping not long ago, and it wasn't connected to any of HaRyu's scheduled post-patch wipes. Might be simply "beta is beta". In any case, HaRyu, perhaps you might want to backup the universe, or at least GAFPrime, every now and then? It's just a matter of copying the "universe" folder, right?
Beta gonna beta. I got a screenshot for that exact purpose, and I'm not terribly upset at the loss. I'll use what I learned from that little structure to make the next build better (no latticework for the arbors, pick a location with narrower trees, etc.). Until things are solid, I'm treating all my build projects like sandcastles.
Starbound should have some kind of account system, where you need to be registered with a server to login.
So is GAFworld still gonna be at the coords listed in the twitter?
There's already a "Server account" field when you enter the address / password, so I'm thinking that's planned. If it doesn't happen, there are lots of modders who will step in to do it, like they did with Terraria and TShock. And since Starbound is actually open to moders instead of making their job difficult, it should be even faster and more up to date.
As for the GAFworld, probably. That's where people log in by default. Once the game is wipe-free and stable, I imagine whatever planet we pick for GAFplanet is going to start looking like Coruscant. I hope we find a really big one. I've seen a few suggestions on reddit about having 'industrial' and 'urban' planet biomes, that'd make for a sweet background. It will be interesting to see GAFers spreading to nearby worlds too, hopefully we can have Stargates and such to the major GAF population centers.
Keeping organized where we are is going to be pretty important, though I imagine anything in our celestial neighborhood is going to be colonized pretty heavily. I imagine when we get closer to launch we'll need to sit down and discuss where we want to settle. I'm in favor of easy coordinates (0,0 is nice and easy to remember) with a large solar system. In Terraria, we usually set the spawn to be in a safe place with a sort of 'tutorial' where we went over the basics (how to use wooden platforms, what to avoid, etc.), I'm thinking having a kind of "Tutorial Moon" would be cool here where we can keep it stocked with respectable starter weapons (nothing too good, that ruins the experience) and link it to the main planet via a stargate.
Start jotting down interesting planets now so we can reference them later. We can use the beta as a sort of planetary survey, cataloging interesting locations for the future GAF Empire.
