My plan would be for us all to pool resources, build a huge compound, all play out of one building. This way, it's more likely that someone is keeping an eye on the place. One big building will be more secure than a bunch of little ones. Yes, we become a more juicy target. But hopefully, with our combined resources, it will be prohibitively expensive and difficult for people to break in. However, I am not on board with a jumping puzzle of death to enter/exit our house.

Other problem is, I do not have a very good ping to the current server. It's playable. But when we were fighting zombies, I could not track them very well due to the lag rubber banding they were doing. Made it difficult to shoot them. Collecting resources, building, crafting, etc was all fine. But long term, ping is too high for PvP/fighting.
Could we host our own server? Do we want to? If we did, it would be anonymously. I wouldn't want my in game name to be the same as my admin name. I don't want to be accused of cheating and I don't want to be bothered with admin stuff when I run into people in game.