I have a few suggestions to make about telling newcomers what exactly is going on with the server restart, the so-called “player reset”, and so on. Because I think it's worded in a way which is confusing or even misleading.
First, the time:
It seems the server does not actually shutdown on 19:00 EST but 19:00 E
DT because of Daylight Savings Time.
If it were 19:00 EST, I would expect a shutdown on 0:00 UTC (5 hours later), but based on my observation it actually shuts down on 23:00 UTC (4 hours later, which is UTC-4 or EDT).
To make things simple, just say the server shuts down daily at 23:00 UTC and let's just forget about EST, EDT, and so on altogether. Please use UTC for both forum post and server announcement.
Second thing:
I would suggest to add more restart warnings:
At 1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes before restart.
Giving the warning only at 5 minutes may be critically to short, especially if the player's “home” is very far from spawn. Many players already write their own warnings in chat, so it makes sense to automate this.
Also, make it so that they appear in red in chat2 (no need to flood the chat, however) at 10 minutes and below. AFAIK this can be done by starting the message with “!”. The other messages can just use the normal chat, without any coloring.
Third thing:
“Player files are deleted.”
“Server is reset.”
“Players are reset.”
etc.
This is all rather vague. Especially “Player files are deleted.” sounds very scary, it is even a bit misleading. The newbie might ask, what exactly does it mean when a player file is deleted? Do I have to start over daily? Will I lose my protected areas? Will I lose everything? Will I lose my account and password? These were the questions I asked myself on my first day. Apparently, the answer is always “No.”.
I would reword everything in a way which leaves no doubt open and tells all the players need to know. Avoid technical descriptions, just tell players what is relevant to them.
Here are suggested texts:
The server will be restarted daily at 23:00 UTC.
After a restart, the player inventories are emptied and reset to the starter items, players are returned to the spawn point and they are fully healed.
To avoid losing your items, put them into chests before the server restarts.
This sounds a lot LESS scary than “Player files are deleted.”.