Why We Don’t Accept Donations

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I’ve been asked before why I continue to do this. Suffice to say that the answer is not “money”.

As the principal investors in Some Awesome Minecraft, Tonya and I are often met with incredulous stares over the amount of money we pour into this endeavor. Believe me, it does not go unnoticed by us on a monthly basis. However, as a couple who have found themselves in the unique position to create a community where we can share our love of video games and combine it with our desire to give others the opportunity to bond with their children, we found that Minecraft was the perfect mix of both. If we had let that chance pass us by and did nothing instead, or worse, kept it to ourselves, we wouldn’t have been able to live with that decision.

So what does that have to do with taking donations? Quite a lot actually. I’ll try and break down the reasons that we have committed to over the last year and a half…

1. You’ve already paid $26 (or more) for Minecraft

In fact, if you’re like us, you’ve already paid upwards of $200 for Minecraft (7 PC accounts, 2 XBOX accounts, 4 Pocket Edition accounts, soon a PS3 account). So why would you want to pay more just to PLAY the game? We know you’ve invested as much as you can into playing the game, and like us, you’re probably part of a family that is trying to make ends meet. Asking for more, without reason, would feel wrong.

2. You shouldn’t feel the need to pay for what we can afford

Tonya and I are not rich by any means, but we can afford to pay for these servers. We also pay for the Starbound server, and a few other things related to the Some Awesome community, but we’ve budgeted that into our monthly bills. This is not the by-product of wealth, but this server has grown with us and we’ve made concessions to accommodate that. We’ve had the privilege of leveraging a great community of gamers to seed these servers with players, that’s all anyone could ask for with regards to assistance.

Don’t get me wrong, if something were to happen where we could no longer afford the servers, we would ask for donations to keep it running, but that is a VERY last resort.

3. Money and Friendship do NOT go hand in hand

We consider you all to be great friends. In fact, most of the best friends we’ve made, have been through this group. If you’ve ever been in the position where you owe a friend money, or you have a friend that owes you money, you know that it only dampens the relationship you have with that person.

4. Donations = Obligations

If you need any proof of this, just look at Congress. Campaign “contributions”, lobbying, etc. These are the things that ruin a good system.

Now I’m not saying that all, or even most, of you would take advantage of the fact that you had given donations, but it is always a present danger. Quite frankly, as someone who is very receptive and empathetic, I know that I would have a hard time banning someone who had donated. Even if it was something as simple as a suggestion for changing a rule or an addition to the server, I would HAVE to take their donation into account. Honestly, I don’t want something as frivolous as a donation to skew what I think is best for this server.

5. Mojang and their EULA

Recently, Mojang started enforcing their stance on “pay to play” servers. Mind you, we had discussed, at some length, the idea of monetizing the server using BuyCraft or similar, to generate some income to help us pay the costs associated with Some Awesome Minecraft. I’m actually happy now to say that we decided never to do that, because it would have become something we were dependent on, and we never want to be dependent on outside sources to maintain the uptime for these servers.

6. Our Admins are picked from the freshest beans

I think it’s worth letting people know that our Admins are not paid. They do this because they love the game, and because they love you guys. Should the need arise, we want to know that we can choose our Admins from the pool of players NOT because they can contribute monetarily, but because they will always do what they think is best for this community. Money only serves to dilute the interests that come with such a responsibility. Simply put, our Admins are here because they know they have something to contribute that is much more important than money.

Now, if it ever comes to pass that SAMC is making a profit, they’ll be compensated handsomely of course 😉 But it’s nice to know that’s not an expectation (and honestly we’re at LEAST a year away from profitability).

WE APPRECIATE YOU ASKING THOUGH

Don’t get us wrong, it’s REALLY nice to know that you guys want to chip in, but we made a serious decision at the beginning of this that we want you to be able to play and enjoy these servers without having to contribute. We absolutely appreciate everyone just sticking to the rules, and trying to make the server a great place to play, for all ages. That’s all we ask.

And if you have a great idea for the server, know that if we implement it, it’s because we think it’s a great idea, and not because you threw us a few bucks.

If you want to really help, then please share our group and the Some Awesome community with your friends wherever you can. We are more than happy to send you business cards to hand out, or do whatever we can to help you spread the word.

You can also purchase Some Awesome T-shirts, buy through our affiliate links, or just visit our websites. Every little bit helps, and gives you something in return for your participation, which is important to us.

More than anything though, you can help by donating to the causes that we get behind, particularly our yearly stint with Extra Life. Your money is better off helping those truly in need.

Always For The Community,
– Serverus

17May

Preparing For 1.8

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With Your Host, Serverus Snape…

With 1.8 just around the corner now, we’re all anxiously awaiting the next snapshot from Mojang to let us in on what’s going to be included in this massive update.

We’ll talk more about how this is going to affect the server but first here’s a video on how this changes gameplay:

There’s actually been some more changes since this video but I’m not going to go into deep detail about bug fixes and small stuff.

Some of you are probably wondering what our plans are for moving forward with 1.8, since the Main server is on Bukkit and it may be some time before we have a stable enough build to migrate over. For comparison’s sake, it took Bukkit 6 months to fully catch up with 1.7.

The good news is that this update does not include nearly the same level of world generation differences as 1.7 did. The bad news is that it includes a huge administration syntax update that plugins will eventually have to conform to in order to be compatible.

The good news is that Mojang has already started to include the necessary code required for this administration change in patches to 1.7 and Bukkit has already started working on it. The bad news is that we can’t tell if all the developers for the plugins we use are on the same schedule.

There’s about a dozen other good news/bad news scenarios that I won’t go into, but it’s a mixed bag for sure. I’m guessing late July, maybe early August, to be around where we will actually move the main server over, provided that 1.8 is launched in May.

HOWEVER…that does not mean we won’t be able to take advantage of 1.8 right off the bat when it launches. I’m going to get to that in a bit, but first let’s talk about what we’re doing to prepare for the update.

The UUID Shuffle

Since Mojang has decided (against all better judgement IMO) to allow name changes for accounts, the system for recognizing a specific account has been changed to an ID system. For example, whereas before I could easily recognize my own account in a plugin setup by seeing YTCrackerz there, now I will be looking for 9ae6fb61-8a69-4b2e-8489-9920904d0655 which, as you can guess, is doubtful that I will memorize it.

My original title for this article was “Mojang and the terrible, horrible, no good very bad decision” but since 1.8 is way more than just the stuff that is going to make me pull my hair out (what little of it I have left) I figured it wasn’t relevant enough to all the awesome new features and epic plans we have for expansion. You guys will love all that I’m sure. In any case though, the UUID thing is not only a big pain for me, but also for the plugin developers, so while we may not be moving the main server over soon, in the background there will be a lot of activity testing this. The possible implications to account security are noteworthy, so I’m not going to implement it until I’m quite sure it’s ready.

For now, I am pulling all your UUIDs with an API tool so you don’t have to worry about providing them to me.

What this DOES mean for you though, is that you will have to have connected to the server at least once 30 days prior to the update in order to remain on the whitelist once the switch is made OR we will also ask in the group and if you respond, you’ll be OK that way too. We’re doing this because, if you are no longer active, and you change your name to something else, that frees up your previous name to be taken by others. While the UUIDs are supposed to prevent name changes from registering an OK with updated, protected servers, we can’t take any chances that there won’t be workarounds to this in the initial launch. A griefer could theoretically take your old name if you change it and, with a mod or exploit, get into servers where the whitelist would have previously kept them out. It’s my job as server admin to prevent all chance of that happening.

Plus if you’ve been off for that long, chances are you’re just clogging up the whitelist anyway at that point. If that’s the case and you’re erased from it, you are of course welcome to request reinclusion through the typical server rules format. No big deal.

Loading New Chunks

This may come as a shock to some of you newer folks, but suffice it to say that our world clocks in at over 10 gigabytes in file size. What does this mean? Well in relation to the amount of chunks already loaded, it means that there is A LOT of previously discovered land on the server that no one has built on.

Why is this relevant? Because new features in 1.8 will not load in chunks that have already been loaded before. We would like to minimize how far out we have to go to get to the new blocks, items and updated biomes in 1.8. For this reason, we are asking people not to explore outside of any direction that goes past the 10,000 coord range. This is a VERY liberal number and should not be hard to refrain from hitting.

Mesas will finally have caves, as will deserts.

If you already have a location out past 10,000 (which should be only a few of you) then we ask that you stick to the area close by and not venture out too far from it while you’re out there. Most people stick relatively close to the command tower, and community builds are typically coordinated so as to be closer in, so the likelihood that someone “accidentally” goes outside that range is low. We will be looking for this in-game, so please be mindful of it.

World Border

We will NOT be imposing a world border. Honestly I wish we had that functionality NOW but it will be helpful going forward I guess. The need for a world border will be mitigated by our choice to go with…

The Alt Server

This is where the article starts getting good. Have you made it this far? If so, good for you, you’ve survived my long-winded rambling.

The alt server, which we typically use for game nights, will be converted to our “1.8 Vanilla Map”. It will not be a Rush Map. It will have a higher mob difficulty, and also a higher frequency of ores (thanks to the new “world sliders” in the update). It will NOT have keepInventory on and it will be considered an expansion of the main server. There are already plans in place to link the two servers via command block in the future, but it won’t be available until both servers can be updated to the 1.8 version of Bukkit.

In a nutshell, once linked, you’ll be able to carry everything over from one server to another. So basically, store up as much as you can on the alt server while the two servers are not linked, and by the time they are connected, you’ll be leagues ahead of the people who didn’t bother.

Upgraded Hosting Plan

With the update, we will be upgrading the alt server to match the specs of the main server. If any of you can recall being on during other major updates, you’ll know that moving back to Vanilla means more lag and more crashes, and the only way we can really mitigate that is to move from the 2GB to the 4GB plan.

No, it does not mean we are taking donations now (and yes I’m still planning on writing that article too at some point). I’m basically letting you know so you’re confident that your time on either server, once Bukkit is on both, will be a similar experience, and therefore worth it to expand onto.

Brave New World

Overall, this is a very exciting time in the history of Some Awesome Minecraft. We look forward to the leap in gameplay that many of you will make. Some of you will embrace the wild new lands that promise riches and danger. For the rest of you who are content with how it is already, you’ll be able to continue enjoying that too.

And for me and the admins, we’ll be a little frazzled for a while with the whole transition, so just keep that in mind 😉

Thanks,
-Serverus

08May

Mother’s Day!

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May is obviously a big month here for us, and this weekend, we’re going to give our wonderful admins the greatest gift in the world…

A BREAK

That’s right, for this weekend only, Friday through Sunday. The admins will be OFF DUTY. That means:

No CB requests
No help with complex builds
No CTRL-Z shop
No lottery
No fishing contest
No birthday deliveries (we’ll get to you after the weekend)
No tagging them in the group
No enchanted book sales
No Toad Hut (and if your power runs out this weekend, you get to keep it until Monday)
No CB requests

It doesn’t mean that they won’t be on, and it CERTAINLY doesn’t mean that there will be no one keeping an eye on things (hint: it’s me) but if you do see them on, please treat them like any other normal player unless it is a grave emergency.

This will be an excellent way to learn the real level of appreciation you have for how hard the ladies work on this server to provide you with the best experience possible, while providing them the opportunity to just be one of the regular folks and take it easy (if they decide to get on at all). I’m sure that once the weekend is over, you’ll be quite happy to have them back on the clock 😉

Make sure to wish them a very happy Mother’s Day, and if you have any special plans for them, feel free to PM me (Christopher Morris) on Facebook or leave your well-wishes in the comments.

Thanks everyone!
-Serverus

11Mar

Fireball Update

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Update for the Fire Flower (Toad Hut):

We’ve been hearing that people who received this special from the Toad Hut have been a little disappointed with it, so we’ve revamped it a little bit. Starting today the following changes have been made.

1. You no longer have to type /fireball to use this. Understandably, requiring such a long command made it fairly unusable in combat against mobs, so we’ve shortened this to /l (that’s “slash L”). I whipped up this little animated GIF to show you how much easier this is to pull off now

It’s SO easy! 😉

2. All people with this power will no longer take damage from fire or lava, effectively making it so that you can now do some elaborate parkour in the Nether without risking death.

If you have any questions about this or the Toad Hut in general, feel free to ask in the comments. On a side note, I also added permanent water breathing ability to the Frog Suit, however you will still need your command block in order to activate the high jump ability.

22Feb

Get Ready For Rush Maps

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With 1.8 coming out soon (we think) there have been a lot of questions around what we have planned, will the main server be upgrading, etc.

Since Bukkit has taken so long with releasing a recommended build for 1.7, we’ve decided that we will not move the main server to 1.8 when it is released. HOWEVER, we’ve decided on something which I consider to be just as good.

Starting today, we are introducing what I’ve coined as Rush Maps. A Rush Map is essentially a brand new, free-for-all, PVP-enabled world that you can raid for whatever blocks or items you wish. On the first of every month until 1.8 is released, we will move over all items in your Enderchest to the main server, and a new world will be loaded.

Once 1.8 is released we will do the same thing, except once the maps are rotated out, you may choose between either storing the Enderchest contents in a file until 1.8 Bukkit is released, or forgoing the 1.8 items and moving over all of the 1.7 items to the main server. Once 1.8 Bukkit comes out, we will move the contents of any stored file into your Main server inventory.

Please keep in mind that this server will be NO HOLDS BARRED which means that slaying other people for their items is permitted, as well as theft, so we recommend that you hide any standard chests as well as you can. There will be little to no admin intervention, as there are few standard gameplay rules (only the normal chat and modding rules, please refer to those pages for more on those if you haven’t already).

The only other thing that may be looked down upon is spawn killing. There’s no point in that other than to be a jerk since keepInventory is off and newly spawned players will have no inventory so obviously don’t do that.

I want to reiterate that this is a voluntary activity with low oversight, so please don’t let anything that happens on this server affect your relationships with folks over on Main GM. It’s a competition and it should be treated that way. If you don’t think your kids will be able to handle this without getting upset, I recommend that you not tell them about it.

As per usual, we will occasionally take down the Rush Map for game nights, and I will be putting the creative server map in the download section for anyone to continue with if they have stuff on there.

Otherwise, the 1.7 version is up right now, feel free to head over there now at rush.gmmc.me

There’s a command block that gives Enderchests in the building near spawn, which then teleports you 1000 blocks away (this is to discourage loading up on Enderchests) to a safe location where you can spend the night if you need to. We ask that you don’t mess with anything in the spawn houses, otherwise we’ll have to turn it into a bedstone hole 😉

Any questions let me know. Good luck!

03Nov

Extra Life Amusement Park

Posted in Community Builds, Special Events | Leave a comment

Saturday, November 2nd, the Minecraft server was proud to partake in the annual Extra Life charity event, 25 hours of gaming to raise funds for the Children’s Miracle Network which aids over 170 children’s hospitals all over the United States and Canada.

For the event, we hosted a community build where the incredible members of our server worked together to create an amusement park. Imaginations soared as players came up with creative ways to recreate popular rides and attractions using a vanilla server.

Some of the displays you’ll find are a piggy carousel, a fun house, roller coasters, bumper cars and more. Not at all surprising with this group, the ideas keep flowing, so we left it up for a while to watch the map grow!

As a team, the community was able to raise over $1,300 for this worthy cause, and we’re proud to say that the majority of participants and donations came from this wonderful group of Minecraft people! It just goes to show how a simple Facebook group has gone from a bunch of strangers with a common interest to a community of people who care and support one another. We are people who see each other online every day. Our kids play together in a virtual world we built together. It’s so much more than just a game. Thank you all for your continued support and for making our group one of my favorite places on Facebook!

Special Thanks to:

Stephen Lapage aka “Strangeth0ughts”

Stephen was our Donor of the Year! By supporting everyone in the group, his total donations reached $240 toward our team goal. Then he went on to become a team member and raised another $75.00. Thank you so much Stephen, not only for your generous contributions, but for providing the comic relief on the server that we love. You rock!

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