As the MCPE team said, they don't want young people find External servers easily. They are a non-controlled area for parents, and would increase the rating of the app (meaning... not recommended for young people). So, there is no problem in making it easier to join servers to the people that want to, while other people will just play the same, right?
One way to do so is improving the "Add External Server" screen. Lots of people don't want to have a big list. This can be solved adding a Connect button just below the Add Server button.
When you add the server details, you have to delete the 127.0.0.1 default value for the Address. The Port one is filled too, but that is mostly unchanged. Just leaving Address empty makes it easier.
- mcpe:server/ADDRESS:PORT
- Example: mcpe:server/play.lbsg.net:19132
- When clicking this on a browser, the user would be sent to the External Servers detail screen with the details filled.
- Extension: mcpe:server/ADDRESS:PORT/PASSWORD, this can allow using custom password strings given by the server owners to authenticate the clients before joining the game (no chat auth!)
- When a player installs Minecraft: PE, its name is Steve / Stevie by default. A dialog could ask them for a valid name. (Valid, as Pocket Realms allows: ^[A-Za-z0-9_]{3,16}$)
+1