The Origins of the Fear of Mobs Minecraft Server
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!
P.S. If you hate the server crashing, try staying and building near spawn. If enough people wander too far, the server will have trouble staying up. Keep on crafting!