Fear of Mobs

So in case you haven't heard, Microsoft bought Mojang. Here's Microsoft's announcement, here's Mojang's announcement, and here's Notch's announcement. Now here are my thoughts on it. Please keep in mind that I've had fewer than three hours to formulate the opinions and conclusions put forth in this blog post, so I'm still listening for new information. Who knows; my opinions may completely turn around by tomorrow.

As I hope most of you know, I have a small gaming channel called Fear of Mobs. I think of it as a complimentary hobby to video gaming; it's not going to explode in wild popularity, but it's a place I and others can go to have a good time and play some games. The opportunities to learn programming, game development, server administration, and video production have made this venture more than worthwhile. And since I'm still learning from it, I have no reason to abandon Fear of Mobs. I guess the whole point of this paragraph is to assure everyone that, despite my opinions on this acquisition I have no intentions to dissolve Fear of Mobs. That is as long as there exists some interest and Microsoft doesn't clamp down on content creators. The rest of this post will be about Microsoft's acquisition of Mojang rather than Fear of Mobs, so rest easy.

Rumors claiming that Microsoft and Mojang were in talks began circling the Internet about one week ago. Many respond to this type of news with anger, and many called Mojang and Notch "sellouts"1 long before the news was officially confirmed. I responded in a far more skeptical manner; Mojang was doing well financially, and Notch is often perceived as a pro-indie, anti-megacorp spokesperson, so the entire rumor seemed like a far-fetched troll that spawned from purposefully fraudulent or extremely mistaken sources. Obviously, this was not the case.

When official confirmation of the acquisition blew in my window this morning, I was quite surprised. Despite several days of silence on the matter from both of the involved parties, it still seemed like such a ridiculous move. Many were angry, many were sad. Several spoke of abandoning Minecraft, while YouTubers began questioning their future in video production. Some made valid points, while others became irrational, and in the end, the facts aren't changing.

Microsoft is a very large technology giant; they have the resources and infrastructure to turn Minecraft into the high-quality game it deserves to be. (Not saying that it's not already a high-quality game, just that it could be even better.) Mojang is a small, young independent studio that has 2 games to their name. Compared to other corporations, they have little experience managing the global phenomenon that Minecraft has become. In terms of longevity, Microsoft has the ability to make Minecraft last for years to come, even more so than Mojang. In theory. Unfortunately, Microsoft also has the ability to utterly destroy the Minecraft experience and scatter its enormous community to the wind.

Now this isn't a prophecy of doom for Minecraft. When large buyouts occur, I believe it's irrational and irresponsible to act on your initial (and completely natural) knee-jerk reaction. Acquisitions mean change, and change can be either good or bad; it's the bad acquisitions that leave a lingering taste in the mouth of affected users. Sometimes, however, acquisitions can be beneficial for end users, but sadly those are fewer in number often forgotten.

The appropriate response is to NOT go out and verbally abuse those involved- that is never an acceptable in response to what is quite literally a first-world problem. Concern about this acquisition is warranted. Microsoft's reputation does not inspire confidence. In fact, even before this acquisition was announced, I had little trust for Microsoft; I do not agree with their design and corporate philosophies, and large corporations often make very utilitarian decisions when beloved products start to lose traction. In addition, large cooperation’s have little love for YouTubers or anyone breaking their rules, which means you can bet that there will be changes to the EULA again.

YouTubers should be seriously concerned because Mojang's generous policy on monetizing video game footage is now irrelevant. Large Minecraft server owners should be concerned, because the CraftBukkit project is in shambles and Microsoft has the power to enforce whatever EULA it imposes. Players should be alert, but not as concerned because Minecraft is still an awesome "open world platform", and that's likely not going to change soon. In other words, you are justified in being concerned, but don't fool yourself into thinking that everything will remain the same--it won't. Instead, and especially if you are a content creator or server administrator, start branching out into other areas. Don't place all of your metaphorical eggs into the metaphorical Minecraft basket.2

Above all, DO NOT PANIC! We do not know where Microsoft will take Minecraft. They could do something amazing and this could be the dawn of the greatest age for Minecraft. It could also be a catastrophe. We don't know, and panicking will only cause more turmoil. Please think carefully before making any rash decisions, especially if you are a content creator with followers who respect you.

Footnotes:

1. Please don't immediately assume people are sellouts. Acquisitions, mergers, and sponsorships are often the result of very complex situations and lots of pressure on the party being acquired/sponsored. There are exceptions, but not everyone is a sellout. Even if this were the case, the fans and customers, unless specifically outlined in a contract, are not entitled to prevent the company they love from growing

These are some really old pieces of fan art created by a friend of mine from the Minecrap server. I know that it was one of two people, but they're both brothers and it's sometimes difficult for me to remember which one made these images...

Anyway, they were given to me over two years ago, back when Fear of Mobs was still a baby. Enjoy!

First, how big is the world? In order to keep the world and its backups at a reasonable size, we were forced to install a Bukkit plugin that will prevent players from generating too many chunks. To do this, the plugin puts up an invisible wall 5 thousand blocks from spawn. Some may say that this is a very small area, but let’s do the math for a second. 5,000 blocks out from spawn is a square-shaped wall, which means the entire region is a 10,000 by 10,000 blocks! Calculating the area of the land shows us that there area over 1,000 square kilometers of land to explore, conquer, and develop! I think this world size should be adequate enough.

Second, what are the policies on creative mode? All players, including staff members, must build the world in survival mode using legitimately-collected resources. Except for when admins are investigating and repairing griefing, everyone should be in survival mode. The goal of this isn’t to make the game harder for admins or less enjoyable for anyone; it’s to provide a fair and even experience for all and so that creations by normal players are not overshadowed by those of players who have access to creative mode and WorldEdit.

An extension of this rules is that players are not allowed to teleport around. Those who have played on the server have already discovered that the /spawn, /home, and /warp commands are all disabled. This is quite a drastic change from the previous map where all players were allowed up to 5 unique homes and absolutely no teleportation cool-down. This kind of power however made the game too easy. There was virtually no risk to exploration, and no reason for anyone to form communities. It was simply overpowered and detracted from the survival experience. That is why teleportation has been disabled and why even Admins are not permitted to use teleportation unless they are explicitly on admin duties.

Lastly, why can’t we go to the End? Some of you may have noticed that the End dimension has been disabled. If we had enabled the End since day one, then it would have taken fewer than 24 hours for one dedicated player to find a portal, activate it, kill the dragon, and reap the rewards. Fear not however! This Saturday, March 8th, I am planning a server-wide event that will be recorded and posted to YouTube. Once the End has been enabled and the dragon has been defeated, it will remain enabled, and everyone will be welcome to build every kind of crazy Ender-Ender that you guys come up with.

A few days ago, I created a blog post in which I talked about the Fear of Mobs channel, why episode uploads have been infrequent, and what plans I have for future videos. Today, I’d like to take a moment to discuss the recent changes to the Fear of mobs Minecraft server and what future plans are in store for it. However, as I wrote, the post grew to into an ominous wall of text that no mortal is equipped to fathom.

Of course, that’s an exaggeration. But, the fact remains that I have a short attention span thanks to my lifestyle, and I shouldn’t expect others to stick around for such a lengthy post. As a result, I’ve broken it up across multiple posts which I will be revising and posting over the next week. Each of these posts will be about some aspect of the Server so, if you’re interested in that sort of thing, why don’t you go ahead and follow this here Tumblr blog or, if you’re like me, subscribe to the RSS feed. Ok, enough with the meta content. Let’s get to the meat of the first post.

This past month has been an action-packed one for Fear of Mobs. The channel celebrated its 3-year anniversary with an extra-long episode which included a world tour and a Wither fight, and the server joined in the good times by generating a new map and adopting some new policies. I’d like to take a moment to recap all that’s happened on the channel, talk about what’s going to happen, and maybe answer a few questions along the way.

Where’s 1.7.2?

The server is currently running Minecraft 1.6.4, and there’s a technical reason for this. Bukkit simply hasn’t released a version of Bukkit for 1.7.2 yet; not even a developer build. Until one is released and we can update Golden Apple for it, we’ll be stuck on 1.6.4. Fortunately, with the new Minecraft launcher, switching between versions using official channels has never been easier. I know first-hand what an inconvenience switching between versions can be, but please bear the pain until we can get things working properly and keep protected blocks safe!

The Server Keeps Crashing!

Yes, I’ve noticed that it’s a little less dependable than it has been in the past. The issue has been that the server has been using up much more memory than it has before. Bendude56 took a look at Java’s memory usage and concluded that one particular thing was eating up most of the memory: the world generator! Apparently the world has gotten so tremendously huge that Minecraft’s world generator is eating up many megabytes of RAM. There’s two way to fix this: generate a new world, or somehow cut our current one down to a manageable size. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to cut the world size down, so we’re going to have to generate a new one. Fortunately, this is what we were planning to do anyway for 1.7.2, so we won’t have to wait long for this problem to be solved. In the mean time, we’ll do what we can to keep the server up and, if you ever notice that it’s offline, send me a tweet and I can get it up in a few taps on my phone.

Can I Apply For Admin?

Yes. Where? Here. I’ll be releasing a video some time this week formally announcing the administrator/moderator online application. The form will be available until the end of the year, at which time we’ll decide whether it’ll remain available or not. More information will be given in the video, so keep an eye out for that.

During the event, I plan to live stream from 8 AM Saturday, November 2nd through 8 AM Sunday, November 3rd Mountain Time. I’ll be broadcasting video games such as Minecraft, Terraria, and possibly Team Fortress 2. In addition, I’ll be interacting with the audience and giving out awards to those who donate. The schedule is very loose, so I’ll just play it by ear while giving the audience the opportunity to suggest ideas.

Check out my Extra Life page at http://www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donordrive.participant&participantID=59550

I’m not going to give away too much, but this I can tell you: we will eventually be swapping for a new map. 1.7 brought many changes to the world generation, including many new biomes and lots of variety. Our current world is already so large that you would need to spend several hours walking out into the middle of nowhere before hitting newly-generated terrain. The world is already a few gigabytes large and takes several hours to sprint from one end to the other. In addition, this world has been around since Minecraft 1.5, so when 1.6 was released, the world was already too large for most players to find horses. So, in order to get fast horses and pretty biomes, we will be generating a new world for the server. When this will happen has yet to be determined, as there are still several things to figure out before we go forward with this.

In addition to a new map, we’re also planning on establishing an official set of laws for the server and on appointing some new, trustworthy moderators and administrators to keep the peace and protect our creations. That’s all I’m going to say about this for now, but keep an eye out for news on how you can apply to be a moderator/administrator on Fear of Mobs.

I’ve said too much! Let me know what you think on Twitter, Facebook, or here on Tumblr, and watch the channel and this blog for more information.

Since its release, I’ve uploaded 15 gameplay videos of Grand Theft Auto to Fear of Mobs, and each one has been fun to make. Looking at the numbers, however, reveals that my audience simply isn’t interested in watching these videos. The series averages 40 views and 4 likes per video, indicating this disinterest. Compared to the other Minecraft videos located on the channel, these numbers are borderline embarrassing.

I don’t often take stock in YouTube statistics, as these numbers are estimates at best and downright inaccurate at worst. However, in this recent movement to get things running at top capacity, it would be in the channel’s best interest that I stop producing episodes of Grand Theft Auto V. For some, this may come as a disappointment. I know that feeling; I get it every time I remember X’s Crysis playthroughs. Despite these sad feelings, I must consider where I should be spending my time. The answer is obvious: the most successful videos on Fear of Mobs are Minecraft videos, as these attract the most views and are more appropriate for my audience.

I’d like to thank all those who watched the series and gave helpful feedback. If you would like to see more Grand Theft Auto videos, I know that Guude is doing a let’s play on it, as well as VintageBeef, so I encourage you to give those series a go.

If you would like to voice your opinion on this decision, please send me a message on Twitter, Facebook, or reply to this post on Tumblr. You can also send me a YouTube message or email me.

Thanks for your support!

Since its release, I’ve uploaded 15 gameplay videos of Grand Theft Auto to Fear of Mobs, and each one has been fun to make. Looking at the numbers, however, reveals that my audience simply isn’t interested in watching these videos. The series averages 40 views and 4 likes per video, indicating this disinterest. Compared to the other Minecraft videos located on the channel, these numbers are borderline embarrassing.

I don’t often take stock in YouTube statistics, as these numbers are estimates at best and downright inaccurate at worst. However, in this recent movement to get things running at top capacity, it would be in the channel’s best interest that I stop producing episodes of Grand Theft Auto V. For some, this may come as a disappointment. I know that feeling; I get it every time I remember X’s Crysis playthroughs. Despite these sad feelings, I must consider where I should be spending my time. The answer is obvious: the most successful videos on Fear of Mobs are Minecraft videos, as these attract the most views and are more appropriate for my audience.

I’d like to thank all those who watched the series and gave helpful feedback. If you would like to see more Grand Theft Auto videos, I know that Guude is doing a let’s play on it, as well as VintageBeef, so I encourage you to give those series a go.

If you would like to voice your opinion on this decision, please send me a message on Twitter, Facebook, or reply to this post on Tumblr. You can also send me a YouTube message or email me.

Thanks for your support!

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In a spree of productivity, I created a simple and elegant plugin from the ground up that is a Timber mod for servers, titled the Deforestation craftbukkit plugin! Using the power of java, it will allow players to chop down entire trees by breaking the base block of the tree.

Cultural competence is as important to a video game as the game itself. A game develops cultural competence when its developers and writers take multiple cultures into account, predicting how it may be interpreted and perceived by players of different nationalities. The idea of cultural competence is to adapt miniscule details in a story, or adjust certain phrases to better fit the target culture. There are many games that are marketed to several different cultures in different countries; some port well, while some do not. Here are three examples of games made in different cultures that were ported to the United States: Azura’s Wrath, Heavy Rain, and Rhythm Heaven Fever.

Running a Minecraft server is one of the most challenging things one can do on the Internet. It is more difficult than most players realize. It may seem simple, but believe me, it's not.There are countless factors to consider when starting and running a server, and there are many technical complications that can ruin your day.

In this blog post, I'll cover the three main difficulties when it comes to running a Minecraft server: Hardware, software, and players.

We will be holding an admin meeting within the next couple of weeks to discuss the future of the server. As for plugins, I still have the BenCmd source code, so I might be able to get that working again, but I won't be adding features or fixing unimportant bugs. It will only be a temporary fix just to get the main map back up, because, let's be honest, we've put hours of work into that map, and no one in their right mind would want to see it gone.

In the beginning, I was a major resident and frequent player on the Minecrap server. I built, explored, and mingled with others. We had some good times on there. Goooood times. I built “Clout Castles”, which were cobblestone disks in the sky hovering above an ocean, connected with 3-wide cobblestone pathways. I nearly finished a major project, codename “Planetoid”, which was going to be a well-designed planetoid hovering not too far from cloud castles. It took many hours, but we got most of it built with assistance from m0xy and XxACExX, and the item-spawning mods Dkaff and sdjk1024, and other admins I have seem to have forgotten. But construction stopped when we got to the design phase where we had to build the mountains, lakes, caves, trees, etc. Oh yeah, and that map exploded and we lost everything, including the famous Lapis Lounge (which may have made it over to the new Minecrap map, I’m not sure…).

But enough reminiscing, let’s move on to how the Fear of Mobs server started. One day on the Minecrap server, several people I knew were online, including Juneybug. I asked everyone to meet up at the spleef arena, and bring their tools; we’re going exploring! Everyone was very excited! We all added each other on Skype and finally were ready to head out! The group consisted of me, ben_dude56, dkaff/sdjk1024 (they switched off), and a couple other cool people. We found a cave, a magical sugarcane, and lots of gold! I seemed to be obsessed with gold at the time. Still am! Anyway, we had a good time, and I recorded most of it, but at a terrible frame size and audio quality, so the footage is gone. But after that little adventure and everyone left, ben_dude56 said he was going to leave to do some programming. I immediately perked up! “Programming? What kind of programming?” “Java programming,” he replied. “I’m writing a plugin for Minecraft servers!” That did it. I asked if he could share his screen via Skype with me so I could watch him code away! It was fascinating!

That was the start of BenCmd. So far, the only things in the plugin as the old permission system, item spawning, warps (I think), and a couple other small things. After watching him code for a few hours and asking millions of questions, I asked him if I could help. After considering it, he let me join the fun. This was before BenCmd was set up through GitHub, so every time we made a change, we’d have to skype over the changed files to make sure our stuff was all in sync. It was tedious, but it worked, and we made some serious progress over time.

Now after discovering that he had set up a personal Minecraft server on his computer, my eyes got real wide. “How did you do that?!” I asked. I had been trying to get a server running on my computer for so long, but had no idea how to get it to work. I didn't know what port forwarding was at the time, so that was my whole problem, but Ben was able to help me through that. We also discovered that my internet connection was strong enough to connect a few players without lag, which was awesome. I had been wanting to set up a public server for the Fear of Mobs community, so this was a breakthrough. Plus, this provided Ben an opportunity to test his plugin on a public server. So we quietly launched the official Fear of Mobs public server. And for a while, it was just me and Ben playing around. We'd code for a few hours, then test our changes, then get carried away and build something. We held these sessions every night for a couple weeks. I slowly started pumping it in my videos, hopefully getting new players to join us. And sometimes, we'd get a new member! They'd stick around, and the numbers slowly grew. For a few weeks, the average was 8 visits a day, which was a crazy ton for my iMac! And those numbers were a huge encouragement that 8 people were willing to invest time in building a great server! We had fun, and we had downtimes, some griefing, and some winning. I still remember our first griefer: KerryMichelin. Poured lava all around and stole all my bricks.We had rollbacks, which were kind of a big deal, since I manually backed up the world a couple times a day. Then, the "Favorite" happened. I don't remember the circumstances completely, but BitBurner from the Minecrap server liked and favorite one of my videos. I believe it was an episode of Fear of Mobs where I really tell people to go check out the Minecrap server to see the (now de-commissioned) Monster Smasher by blunokkad. When BitBurner liked and favorites the video, the subscription count jumped to 120+ in a matter of a day. It was amazing, and I was incredibly greatful for the helpful gesture. More people visited the server, and we got a few more regular users. About this time, we had the TNT-filled creeper and other cool things in the would-be "Mobbywood", or "Fear of Mobsia."

The next milestone was when L0kk3n and Manana joined the team. It was during the 100th video celebration. (100th video, not 100th episode, that's on it's way!) I invited everyone to join the server which was running the Let's Play map. Luclin from Minecraft Workbench took a self-guided tour, and even died by falling down my mine shaft. (lol!) During the celebration, Manana and L0kk3n logged in and we had a good time. They offered to skype call because they were recording for YouTube at the moment. So me and Ben joined the call and explored a cave and played around on the server. We needed help keeping watch over the different people, so we granted them admin powers. They proved to be very helpful, so they just kept the powers from there. These ever was still small, so no one was really begging for admin powers at the time. As time went on and the normal map retuned, we allowed them to remain admins, which they still are today. I'll never forget that first Sunday after meeting them when they took their powers and build a huge part of what was hence dubbed "Mobbywood". The airship, the sign, the market, the pathway and lights,.. It was epic.

Time went by, griefers came and were banned, features were added to the plugin, and Ben and I were still coding. Then, came "The Visit." You probably all know about this. Luclin tweeted that he and some friends were sever hopping and wanted server IPs to visit. I replied the server IP (which was still fearofmobs.com at the time) and eagerly stared at my console waiting for the PLAYER_JOIN message to show up from LuclinMCWB. Just when I was thinking he wasn't coming, there he was! I dropped what I was doing and logged in. Then came Wolv21 and ChimneySwift11. We spawned rain, I stalked them, I gave them diamond swords, they battled spiders and ran away from the friendly creepers. (lol, Luclin.) Little did I know that they were recording all this and were going to upload the videos to YouTube! It was lots of fun, they invited me to their Skype call, and we hung out late into the night. The day after they uploaded their videos showing off the server, I woke up to 77 new emails, most of which were new subscriptions. The server was packed to the brim with new users and lagging out from the heavy load. I could barely open the internet browser with causing a lag spike! It was quite an exciting couple days!  The emails kept coming in, and if I wanted to log on to the server, I had to restart it and immediately log in, because it filled up again within a minute. During this time, we faced many griefers and many great builders, and the community grew!

But things started getting out of hand. The griefing was getting to be too much, and the world was getting crowded. The town was becoming crammed, and we even hand some cheaters. This is when we decided we needed a fresh start, and a better server. My computer couldn't handle the load, and I'd have to turn it off if I was going to record, convert, render, or upload, so we needed a dedicated server. I even looked into buying an actual server! But in the end, after comparing features and prices of many server providers, I went with Provision Host. They had good pricing, offered full technical support and things we really needed, like SSH access, which lets us view the server console directly and manipulate the files to our will. They have been great with the support tickets and features, so I don't see us leaving them any time soon.

The same time we switched over to Provision Host, New Mobbywood was released, with all the lots, buildings, and the Creeper Guardian. That map stayed up for a long while, but unfortunately had it's fair share of hiccups. When we had jus introduced the in-game market, players found exploits to make some serious dough. I believe we should have been more careful when implementing the market, but what happened happened. There was one exploit where you buy planks, convert them to sticks, and sell those back for quite a pretty penny. At one point, one sand block was worth more than a gold ingot! After fixing the different mechanics of the market, we worked on adding a new dimension: the Nether! It wasn't that big of a deal, and it just sat unused, full of fire, ghasts, and pigmen. There wasn't a reason for anyone to go there, which I can understand, since the adventure hadn't come yet. 

Then came 1.8. Because of all the new things added to the game, the map became old. No strongholds, no mines, no ravines, no mushroom biomes, no villages, no rivers, none of that stuff would be in New Mobbywood, and that would have been a great disappointment. We wanted everyone to be able to experience these new features! So, with sadness, we backed up New Mobbywood and generated a new 1.8 world. All the admins and mods began working on the new spawn town. A large spawn witha a protective wall, large bank, in-town ravine, graveyard, market, epic jail, into tower, and ship yard were constructed in just a few days. The land was looking great and ready to be played. But then it happened; the next version of Minecraft was prereleased. 1.9 was made "public", and even NEW features were on their way. We can't release the new map, since we don't know when 1.9 will come and we'll have to start over again. We also don't want players to go running about generating new chunks and locking them as 1.8 world when 1.9 may be here any day! It's a predicament. Everyone wants the new world, but we don't want to lose it as soon as 1.9 comes around!

So at the time of this post, the server is running a temporary map. When 1.9 is officially released and we're relatively sure that no other major terrain-generating updates are being worked on, then the new world will be released. We may have to use World Edit (or some kind of plugin) to regenerate a few chunks, but it shouldn't be a huge issue. We’ll have to make sure we’re happy with it before making it public, fix the seams between the 1.8 and 1.9 land, then open the flood gates!

Whatever happens, my number one goal is to make sure that it is always fun to play on the server. My second goal is to keep the server uptime as high as possible. So even if it's just a temporary map, I still have fun building and chatting with people. And we must always keep in mind that, when it comes to Minecraft, no server can really be set in stone until the game is officially released this November. (By the way, we'll probably generate one last world when Minecraft is officially released!) I will be there, and looking forward to when we can have one map without issues like these. It will be a glorious day for servers everywhere when the "Multiplayer update" arrives!

Before ending this long post, I need to thank several people. Ben_dude55, thank you for helping me with the server. It would not exist the way it does today without you. L0kk3n and Manana, thanks guys for helping to keep the server in line. You've really put a lot into it, especially in the early days. DaxLee101 and Tyirel, you guys take loads of stress off my shoulders keeping people in line and griefers off the streets. NicoBachicha and anidude98, although you guys aren't admins/mods anymore, you guys still helped out, so thank you. And to EVERYONE who plays on the server and has stuck with us through all the difficult times of crashings, griefings, and temp maps, you guys are awesome. I'm truly flattered every time I see so many of you guys online! Your sense of community and teamwork is truly inspiring. Whether you're destroying a large World Edit mistake named "Steve", or teaming together to dig the most epic mineshaft I've seen within the first 10 minutes of a new map, or you're building statues and vine-draped castles, you always amaze me. I can't tell you how many times I've gone exploring and and gotten a smile from the masterpieces you've built. And if you've read this far, I want to extend a special thanks to you. I hope to continue to meet more of you guys every day, and if you're going to Minecon, I'm looking forward to meeting you there!

If you play Minecraft, you're probably aware of the new mob, the endermen. They are tall, slim, dark, mysterious beings that roam the land, randomly picking up and placing blocks. Their features include very long, stick-like arms and legs, and two purple-glowing eyes. They are followed by a trail of purple snowflakes, like those found at any Nether portal. If you look at them, they stare back at you and shake violently. If you look away, they will charge you, and teleport to get to you faster. And this is what Notch calls creepy.