Hawknet should try implanting an autorank plugin or command. I'm not familiar with MCLawl config.guis and such, but making an autorank file would be great if Hawknet ever goes public. You could allow the plugin/command to only work on online players. . You can do a search for online players every 5 seconds. So every 5 seconds the server could send updates to the playerDB for online players. You would prob need an AutoRankEditor.exe and an AutoRankEditor.xml file.
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~Ask not what your server can do for you. Ask what you can do for your server~