Minecraft

You know what we need: a Minecraft server.

That would totally get the gullible fools people in...

Also, I actually like Minecraft and I bet most of the people here do too.

You can host your own minecraft servers? I've seen a friend fussing about with it but he couldn't figure out the whole online server thing. He was trying to play in a web browser then it told him to download a thing then that thing told him he could only play online from the web then that told him he had to pay for it. At that point he shut it off. Can I play Minecraft on my iPad? If I can play on my iPad I might consider setting up a server.

I'd visit if we had one. Setting them up can be a *****. Minecraft is a netwhore, can be buggy all the time sometimes. If you want to keep the server safe, you'll need whitelisting or bukkit (which means taking down the server until that gets updated after MC updates.)

I've read rumors that something is planned for a port but can't remember to what platform.

But... if the iPad supports Java (don't know, don't care) then it could be played through the browser.

You don't pay a monthly fee but just once instead although you may have to pay again when the official version comes out.

I haven't played it in a while cause I haven't found a server I like.

Yeah I've heard of people talking about this game constantly too. I wouldn't get into it if you guys go ahead with this...sorry.

There on the verge of creating minecraft war mods with some of the newer features.

Like 16 hold a fort and 16 try to take it over.

I've set up test servers really easily, but I've never tested one with a large number of people.

All you need to do is download a server client and it effectively does the rest.

I've heard a lot of ppl going on about this but it just doesn't seem like the type of game I'd be that into.

Somebody who enjoys it is going to have to explain why it'd be worth the effort I guess.

Anyone?

It's hard to explain. A bunch of my friends recommended that I get it and I asked the exact same question. They couldn't give me an answer like I can't now. It's just... something that pulls you in once you started playing it.

Just one more block...
One more...
One more...

I don't know if it's worth the effort honestly. It doesn't have good game play like jk2 or quake defrag.

It's more just a good game to %$#@ around in. I enjoy building things, stealing things, destroying things, causing trouble, building hideouts and smuggling outfits (which gets be banned), exploring, building giant towers, etc.

I do feel like if you get the correct mod (which I don't know what one will be most fun) it could be really fun. The war modes sounds really cool. I also like the concept of having an official town, but have outlier towns that the admins don't patrol. I think it ruins it when the admins fly around and spy on everyone. I like a nice balance between the civilized town and some out of control crime but most people don't like it this way.

The server I played in had a ton of drama. Everyone hated the lead admin, and the server got griefed (by me.) The owner of the server realized that everyone disliked the lead admin and he was mad that his server was griefed so he organized a countergrief against his former admin's server that he also was running. Then the lead admin found out that the owner was griefing him and got pissed so it turned into like a war between servers. Last I saw both servers were waste lands by the end of it.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2NvaHMNAIM


Here's a video of mine craft griefing. This guy did some damage, and there are like 10 follow up youtube videos in response to this one because people were so mad at this kid. He essentially found a way to login as an admin, ban all the superusers, and then delete the backup logs. Then he changed names to another admin and destroyed the town.

Are all servers public? Is it possible to set up a password-protected server?

I mean, I don't like the idea of admining stuff too much. You guys know how I run the jk2 and jk3 servers... just don't piss people off too much and anything goes. It's a simple matter of respect. From your description, I'm getting the idea that a lot of kids play Minecraft who haven't learned the whole mutual respect life lesson just yet.

Also, what platform(s) can you host servers from?

Ya, i think so. No idea. I honestly don't even know how people would get the IP if you didn't give it out though.

There is a Minecraft forums where people are always advertising. Some servers do something called "white listing" so you have to post ur name, and then they give you the IP by private message so they have a list of all players entering (kinda.)

See the way most people run their towns is to have the players "work" for the admins. You can get a mod that that allows you to give them currency and keeps track of it. So players go mine ore or rocks or whatever, and then sell it to the admins. The admins employ certain trusted players as guards in the town who patrol the server throughout the day and night watching out for griefers and stealers. There was generally some baseline crime that got away with, but a lot of it gets caught esp during the daytime. There are servers that are literally base survival servers without any mod though.

The server I was in originally didn't have this currency mod, and they instead used reed farming, which requires water farms. Consequently they did not allow the use of the private reed farms and had court trials and criminal records or banning for doing it.

But because the reed was worth so much (imagine the diamond trade in real world Africa), there was a high incentive to do it so there were all sorts of covert reed farms going and smuggling the reed around.

Also they charge so much money to build a home in the towns, that this encourages theft so lots of people would steal back the amount that they paid for their homes or land.

Also any building outside the town, the admins would often destroy, which would then cause griefing by angry players. Some houses or towns would be allowed to not be destroyed outside of the town, but it had to meet inspection standards or if the admins liked the house was designed or something random. If a group of houses were built outside the town, and the admin decided to allow it to not be destroyed, he would normally get a mayor who worked for him there to collect money and pay tribute, but normally all of theses towns would eventually get destroyed. Also the servers I have been in have been PvP so although players generally don't kill each other, you can do it and steal all the stuff they are carrying, which is sometimes a lot. Most players have chests though either guarded by town guards (not always successfully guarded) or chests they hide in secret caves or burry somewhere. Also lots of players fought over rank and who got to run the banks and such so there were all sorts of mini power struggles going on, and it all revolved around what would be analogous to "party loyalty" in real life to the leader in a country say like gaddafi. If you are a loyal enforcer of Muammar gaddafi then you get promotions, etc so the servers are kind of run like miniature prison planets of some sort with admins struggling to control all the players and the players trying to survive and hoard essentially. There was extreme distrust between players and admins as well, and the players even if they weren't doing anything wrong were constantly trying to convince the admins they weren't doing anything wrong. Basically whenever certain admins would come on, I would unload all my inventory into hidden chests because the admins would see you walking and become suspicious so they would run up and kill you so your inventory would fall on the ground and they could inspect what you were carrying (if they see something really valuable they might think you just stole something.) Pretty much everyone was considered a criminal at all times so even if you were initially playing by the rules eventually you would end up annoyed about things. Also if you walked off official pathways onto the wrong land you might get killed or have a court trail. People would spent like 20 hours buying and building a house, and then it would get blown up by the admins after a court trial for something silly. Also the jury on these court trials were always the guards whose goal was to get more admin privileges so they voted however the admin with the most power wanted them to. These "court trials" were not really trials so much as public embarrassments, and they normally ended with public execution and blowing up person's house and admins laughing about it as the jury tried to suck up to them. So you can see how it wasn't all the players faults. I think it depends on which server you get in and how it is set up really. As long as you accept you punishment and acknowledge\submit to the power structure, you wouldn't get banned or punished that badly (in most cases although it was random.) I personally found that crime was the only fun way to actually play the game, and whenever an admin messed with me I would normally stay quiet and accept punishment and be gracious\apologetic, but I would always make sure there was 3-4X times payback to come later on when one of them messed with me. You could steal you stuff back from them or destroy their house normally at night time when few people are on and the server is poorly guarded. Also a lot of the admins were very corrupt, and would steal from the townspeople as well, and then if they said anything, they would kill them or ban them.


When I griefed the server, they were in the process of building an entrance cell around the spawn point with electrically driven handles no one could actually enter the server without having an admin open the hatch. They use a type of stone that you could theoretically cut through very slowly but it would take forever so for practical purposes you were stuck in the cell. Luckily the owner was out of town that weekend so the server couldn't be reset. The town just got sloppily rebuild without any of its signs so they shut it down instead. I griefed it at like midnight to 2 or so on a Thursday so admins wouldn't see the damage until after their schoolday. Somehow I convinced them that the head admin did it the next week so idk if they didnt have logs or what.

Seriously? And people play this game? The hell is the point of all that?? Admins hoarding fake money that they enslave regular players to mine for them? Are they all children?

It was just that particular server, and I actually had fun on it although frustration as well. Mine craft is full of weird possibilities though that make it interesting. For instance there was a pirate's cove that had a secret reed farm that you needed to get a boat to get to. People were always tunneling into the guards towers. You can pretty much make anything, and the producers of the game are always updating it so new stuff comes out.

They started a new world after that, and I played on that one as well but for some reason that town died eventually too although I don't really know why. I just logged in one day and everything was gone.

As far as MMORG's go, I actually prefer minecraft to games like everquest where the goal is to level up. Basically you build and hoard stuff in minecraft and mess around. If yuou lose your stuff, no big deal just change servers or get it again rather than killing monsters 1000's a time to level up once. I think I played maybe 30-50 hours minecraft online and another 30 offline? Not that big of time investment. Maybe not even that much,

One more thing about the power structure that is interesting. Minecraft has days and nights. At nighttime creatures come out and you don't survive well if you don't have a home in the town. Consequently a lot of players are "homeless" and wondering around getting killed or trying to find temporary shelter since buying a house costs so much that they don't have enough saved yet. The majority of the people on the server or at least half were homeless. You could dig a temporary dirt cave of sorts, but if you were caught building in town you were punished. You could build it outside the town normally but there was no protection so people could raid the house or dirt shack. Sometimes you couldn't get to your home in time either if night fell too fast.

These hordes of homeless people were generally viewed criminals since they hadn't invested in a home yet with the admins. If you mined for like 10-20 hours to save up to buy a home, and took the time to build it, then it was more likely you were "law abiding." Basically everyone homeless was considered a criminal and randomly killed by the admins as well (think of middle ages Europe when homeless people always gone after by law enforcement.) Why spent 20 hours mining when you can steal that same amount of stuff in say 2 minutes of well planned theft or better yet start an illegal reed farm and make your own currency. Because of illegal reed farms and admins making too much reed, there was also a steady level of inflation going on where it took more and more reed to buy real products made or farmed by players.

But the good thing about being a homeless person is that the admins\guards\law enforcement had little if any leverage against you. If you owned a home in town, then you had to be a perfect citizen or they would blow up or house and you 10-20 hours of saving up and building the house was gone in 5 seconds so this is another way that they were able to maintain control. Even if you were a perfect citizen, I feel like you bound to get in trouble eventually since the admins were so suspicious. One of them would log on, and find out his inventory had been stolen and it was a countdown until his anger would be taken out on whoever was closest or whoever was on his nerves after a long day of highschool.

The server I was in was a weird balance between total chaos and a prison planet type atmosphere.

tl;dr

I've never come across this bullshit, mostly because I play with my friends I know IRL, who all just play base Minecraft, without stupid currency and griefing and stuff.

That's one thing it's lacking, though, password protection. I'm surprised Notch (the creator) hasn't added it yet...

And, as Nox said, yeah, it's addictive. There's no real way to describe it other than must... keep... going...

EDIT: Lies. It has something known as a 'whitelist,' i.e. only players on the whitelist are allowed into the server. Which is so much better .

Whitelists that are IP-based are pretty useless, given that the majority of people have dynamic IP addresses that are always changing.

When you sign up for Minecraft, you create an account, with which you log into multiplayer as. As I understand it, since usernames/accounts are unique, whitelisting someone means that unless they're hacked, you know it's them, and it also prevents unwhitelisted people cracking in even if they're IP changing.

In a perfect world, of course.

yeah people I know play with their real-life friends too...otherwise it'd just be what Acro described.

A lot of people have two accounts btw. Sometimes they use one name for the law abiding player, and another name for the player who steals stuff and then gives it to the good the player.

Bumping slightly.

Right, so, those of you who have set up servers: say I was interested in such a thing. Can one be hosted from Linux? Or is it one of those Windows-only crapwares?

Is there a cost involved MC? Someone mentioned something about having to pay earlier?

Zombie currency-style, fools.

It can be set up on any OS. Turns out it's not as demanding as I originally thought too but I only had 2 people on my server at that time. Server hosting stuff is free but the game itself currently costs €14.95 (~$21/~£13) but it'll go up in price once it's actually finished.

You can check out this for a more detailed explanation.